“That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea.” – John 21:7 (ESV)
Just after His resurrection, Jesus had promised to meet his disciples in Galilee. Before that, an angel at the empty tomb had given the two Mary’s the message from Jesus. “…he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. Now, I have told you.”(Matthew 28:7) The disciples were introduced to a new normal for their lives. Have you ever had a crisis in which you deliberately and emphatically and recklessly abandoned everything? This is the state Peter is in and he has gone fishing, back to his old life. Peter undoubtedly had a sense of failure over his sin in denying the Lord. For Peter it is a crisis of will He wants so to be restored and nothing will be in his way. We may come up to such a crisis many times externally, but it amounts to nothing. Oswald Chambers says, “The real deep crisis of abandonment is reached internally, not externally. It is a transaction of will, not of emotion; the emotion is simply the gilt-edge of the transaction. If you have heard Jesus Christ’s voice on the billows, let your convictions go to the winds, let your consistency go to the winds, but maintain your relationship to Him.”*
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*Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year, (Grand Rapids, MI: Oswald Chambers Publications; Marshall Pickering, 1986).
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