Thank you. So, have you noticed there might have been a little bit odd going on right now? Normally, this is the time of the year, and I've taken part of this to varying levels in the past, but what I've noticed this year, I'm not seeing hardly anywhere, is people aren't talking about resolutions. Have you called that yet?
Like, there's normally that you'll have the people that declare a word for the year. I've seen a little bit of that, but for some odd reason, things have been just absolutely absent of that conversation this year. And I've been thinking about it for the last couple of weeks, normally when you start to see this stuff like kick up, and it's just not there. And I really feel like for so many of us, we're not going to want to worry about that right now.
And the number one goal I feel like in the last few years of my life is to keep the fire out of the dumpster. You know, we come into this story this morning, though, and we think about what does restoration look like? What does newness look like? What does restart look like?
How do we do things differently? We spend a whole month of advent talking about renormaling. Like, how do we actually do this? And this morning, we're going to look to a speech of scripture, Jack Redford's earlier, that's the story in the Bible that shows us an honest to goodness restart.
And it shows at the level of humanity, at the level of relationships, the level of honesty. It's one of these stories I don't think is outside of our grasp. It's not some crazy endeavor that none of us can touch, but it's just real things happening right in front of us. And it goes inside of something that happens between Jesus and a handful of his disciples, and then Peter.
So we're going to walk this together. Before we jump into that too much, I just want to point out to you, we talk about this a lot. But over on my foundry.life on the message notes section, every week we put together just some reflections and some practices that help you kind of process out Sunday morning across the rest of the week. And so if you want to follow along with the scripture, as we talk through it this morning, it's going to be on there as well as those questions and those discipleship prompts for you to just take care of later on this week.
But we've come to this story that Peter and some of the disciples, they've kind of given up on things. And John's gospel is really different. He's written decades after Matthew, Mark and Luke were written. John was the only disciple to not be martyred.
They tried to. One time they boiled him and oiled, but he lived through that. And after that, we'll just let the guy kind of hang out and do his own thing. And so John lived to extremely old age.
And now decades after those first three gospels were written, John is now writing his gospel. It's decidedly different in many different ways. But he tells this story of Peter and a handful of the disciples, they become exhausted. They get out of Jerusalem.
They go back home to Galilee and Peter and James and John, a couple of other disciples, what they did before they met Jesus was they fished. They were commercial fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. So they went home and just went back to their boats and went out and doing their things. They're out there fishing one night.
They're coming back and there's Jesus on the side of the shore waiting on them. And we find this interaction that's taking place. But really I want to talk to this one about three things that we can learn from this story that will help propel us into 2021 in a different way. It will help us make this covenant relationship with God just at the center and the forefront of our mind.
The first thing is this, be careful of what failed you in the past and its ability to get you to new places. You see Peter and these disciples, they're frustrated. They don't know what's going on. They're scared, they're worried, and they just go back home to try to find some grounding point with what they did before in the past.
I think many of us, with unintentionally and unnaturally returned back to the same things that we always have been doing. There's a phrase that is kind of unpopular in leadership circles in the last few years as this, what got you to where you are now will not get you to where you need to go next. But if we're not intentional, if we're not deliberate, we'll just go back to the same old things and the same old practices. And the sad thing is they've really not helped us out before, right?
What are the ways that we want something different this year that we might just slide back into the same thing that we always have been doing? And we know how that turns out. It turns out exactly how we are right now. So Peter went back to fishing.
There's Jesus on there, but the good news about this is that redemption always operates in the land of the familiar. If we go back to Luke, chapter 5, and like I said, John is really different from Luke, but we find this echo because Peter's call when Jesus came to him and called to him to leave this life and to begin following him looked almost exactly like this scenario that we're having right now. So you have Peter distraught, frustrated. He's just a few weeks off of his denial of Jesus Christ on the night.
And the first verse 5 will come back that later in just a moment. He's dejected all those emotions. He goes back home. It's just doing the thing that he was doing.
He's saying, you know what, these three years were great, but we lost it. It's not coming back. There he is fishing, not catching anything one night. They're coming home tired.
And there at the end is this man standing there saying, hey, how about you just throw your nets out to the other side. You know, we read Luke 5, we read John 21, we can kind of put them on top of each other. And Peter's day, Javu has to be firing right now. This is what he was doing when Jesus initially called him.
You know the other disciples might not be getting the exact situation of what's going on right now, but it's inside of the familiar that Jesus is calling to rep. He's reminding me, hey, I called you once. I'm still calling you now. Now, Jesus can redeem anything.
So even when we kind of get stuck back into the same old hole we've always been living in Jesus can redeem and can call us out of that. This should help us understand that there are parts of our life that we just shouldn't forget. We think about this. Where has Jesus before been with us?
Where have been the places before in the past where things aren't going well, that we can just kind of put a pin down and say, you know, this is where Jesus met me. This is where Jesus called me out of this. This is where Jesus moved me. This is where Jesus changed things.
Now, where are the places that he has met us before in the past? The second thing I want us to think about this morning is this. The best way forward is for us to engage with the faithfulness of the past. You know, this story in many ways is about echoing Peter's memory.
In John 18 verse 18 we find Jesus going to read this for us just real quick. This last night at the crucifixion, John, Jesus is there. He's inside of the high priest house. Peter has followed them in.
We find some John chapter 18 verse 18 because it was called the household servants and the guards had made a charcoal fire. They stood around it warming themselves. And Peter stood with them warming himself. And this was the setting.
This was the place where Peter denied Jesus. And we've talked about this before the way we read scripture, but this charcoal fire thing shows up two times in the gospel of John. It shows up with Jesus making breakfast for these disciples right here. It shows up with Peter warming himself as he denied Jesus.
We cannot argue the fact that John is trying to tell us a story that's right here. This place of broken, this place of denial. You think of everything that happened to all the disciples, and what's also weighing on Peter is the fact that he denied Jesus three times. You know, Peter was a very different kind of guy.
Peter was a very ambitious person. He was loud. He was a disciple that probably always had his foot in his mouth. He was ready to go.
When Jesus comes and takes Jesus away that night in the garden against the Yosemite, Peter pulls a sword out and chops off one of the guards ears. Like this guy was just known for being vital. He said, Jesus, I will do anything. I will go to death with you.
And there by this charcoal fire, he denies Jesus three times. Think about how that incident in his past was probably been weighing on him for weeks and weeks and weeks. And here in the very same setting that he denied Jesus, we find Jesus waiting for Peter. Waiting right there with him.
This is a story about restoration inside of a relationship. We think about the best examples of restoration. They happen just inside of that. It happens when people who have come to a point of conflict in their life are able to come to new places together.
You know, Peter doesn't interact with Peter here as a judge or as an angry parent. He relates to him as a friend. He meets him in that same spot. You know, we go back to some of those discipleship practices we have in the message notes from MyFountain.life.
We think about this. What are the parts of this past year that you need to remember? You know, maybe where are those moments that you have that are either of joy or in desperate need of healing? What are those charcoal fire moments you have of 2020 that you want to rewrite in 2021?
Remember, Jesus wants to do this not because he is God or Lord or is he a father or a judge, but he wants to reconcile this with you because he's our friend. And that's how he meets Peter. The last thing, third thing for us to think about is this. How do we deal with the abundance of God inside of restoration?
So this 153 fish thing, Jack, this earlier, it's an interesting note because we find this sidebar story of abundance. I think it's important for us to think about as we're coming out of a year, we feel like we have not had anything. I've been really enjoying all the $600 memes over the course of the last few weeks. We have this problem with stuff.
We don't want to kind of jump into things. But 153, what's interesting is if you kind of, this is like nerdy sidebar here, if you dig into the way people thought the world works back then, they believe there were 153 different kinds of fish. Now, I try to avoid fish as much as I can. I don't like fish.
I'm scared of fish. I stay away from fish. But they believe there's 153 different kinds of fish. In many ways, what you find the stories, when they throw those nets over, we're having not caught anything all night long.
And then pulling those nets up, we find a story of no. Instead, they brought every single kind of fish there were into the world into that boat. Now, think about the miraculous layer of that. Now, some of you might be having a problem with Chad, you know, see, if you're not going to have fish from like Kansas over there, here's the thing.
We're talking about a guy who rose from the dead. Getting fish into a boat is going to be the least of his problems. But it's a story of a bunch, a story of, hey, every single thing in the world that you've not been able to grab that night, you are now pulling into your boat because of me. And that's not even the coolest part.
The coolest part is when Peter gets to the shore abandoning the guys in the boat with all the other fish, he finds out that Jesus already has fish on the grill. She's like, hey, I'm going to give you every single thing you might need that you have, but I don't need it. I already have it. Thinking that Jesus does not need our abundance.
You know, our resources are simply tools in us understanding the relationship between our yielding to Jesus and his power. You know, the things we have are tools for us to understand who Jesus is. What might happen if we begin just allowing that view of abundance versus scarcity to come into 2021 with us? Every single thing we have, the power of it is fully activated by our yielding and God already has it.
He doesn't even need it, but he wants us to understand the way that unlocks power in our life. So to close is this, how many times do we trust that? How many times in this past year, if we acted like Peter in our relationship with Jesus, for we're interacting and treating him as though we've done something wrong, that he doesn't want to be around us, that we don't have the ability to be with him, that we don't have, that we're not holy enough, that we're not good enough. None of these things going on.
We're acting like Peter did before this moment. The big invitation for us is to act like Peter after this moment, to know that regardless of whatever has happened, Jesus pulls us out of that. He restores us in the context of our relationship with him. He rewrites our idea of abundance and what we need for life and what we need to actually do these things.
And we dwell in the past, but the power is in the afterwards. It's when we know we can't do things. Earlier this morning, Madeleine talked about Wesley and Covenant prayer multiple times. We sang a Mark Swazie's Fantastic Song, Come Like A Fire.
I love that song. I tell you about why this Sunday matters. Back 300 years ago, one night, John Wesley was a young man. He was frustrated with religion.
He was trying to grow. He was trying to touch God. He was trying to have the presence of God. And during a New Year's Eve prayer meeting, the Spirit of God broke in and began to change everything and started this tradition in the wider methods world of coming together at the end of the year, beginning of a new year to have a specific focus time that's about us dedicating ourselves back to God and realizing the power that happens as we continually renew that relationship.
We saw this along with Peter and Jesus was a renewal of a relationship. This prayer was slowly developed over the course of several years to be used. I'm going to read it for you right now. In years past, we've had awesome cards made for this.
We've done very places, but you can find us. We'll post a link to this on social later on, but it's called Wesley and Covenant prayer. This is what it says. I'm no longer my own but yours.
Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed for you or laid aside for you, exalted for you or brought low for you. Let me be full.
Let me be empty. Let me have all things. Let me have nothing. I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you are mine and I am yours. So be it. And the Covenant now made on earth let it be ratified in heaven. It's that prayer.
That is a prayer of yielding. It's a prayer of saying, I want something different and I know the only way it happens is coming through you in my life. My hope is that that prayer is not just something we say. But here, this part of our daily rhythm of a life with God, of continually yielding things over to him.
How and where are the places that we are doing the things that Peter has done? Peter lived in self defeat. This prayer invites us to live in the power of Jesus Christ. Where are we doing that right now?
What if that call is to simply beginning to change those patterns, to move into that life, to move into that world that we have been invited into? At the end of this story, this is the craziest thing about it. The end of this story, John shuts down his gospel. This story is the very last thing in the gospel of John.
This interaction, the last verse of John is crazy because it says this, Jesus did many other things. But I've told you these things that you may believe. John thought the best way for him to close the Jesus story was a story of restoration and relationships and love and friendship. I think that that restart that many of us are looking for is actually right in front of us.
And we have to remember that this is how Jesus comes to us. It's a friend. He wants what's best for us. He wants to give us those things.
And he offers us to a way to find all of that. Let's pray together. This Sunday, we come in, still God, and awkward and anxious times, asking questions about what we have, God about what's next. We've got a time of the year that's always exciting and we might be meeting it differently in new ways this year.
But what I pray for for all of us is to realize that what you come to us with is relationship. You come to us in love and care. Would you come to us as a treasured friend who wants to show us what's best for us? And what's placed right in front of us, the only thing that we have to do is to yield ourselves over to it.
I've got to think of that phrase and that Wesleyan prayer that I think of so much. I freely and hardly yield all things to thy pleasure. Jesus, easy to give away the things we don't like or the things that hurt us. God, there's power in what happens when we yield all things, though.
We yield our treasures. It means we yield our greatest resources. We yield everything about who we are. What do we give those things over to you to discover what you've been wanting to do all along?
Let's hear it in the pray.