Breakfast on the Beach
Jesus meets Peter and several of the disciples on the beach after the Resurrection. They come across Him cooking breakfast. Of course, since He is their teacher, He has a few more things to share with them. Especially with Peter…
Jesus uses an analogy between Peter’s denial of Him before the crucifixion, with His three questions of restoration.
Text: John 21:1-25
Do you love me?–then do this assignment.
Do you love me?–then feed my lambs, take care of my sheep, feed my sheep.
It’s time for Peter to stop replaying the old film in his head, and move on. For Peter meeting up with Christ for a breakfast on the beach was the turning point. It was time to push the stop button on all the guilt he was drowning in.
Self forgiveness is a tool that we should use to face what we’ve done in the past, acknowledge our mistakes and move forward.
This is exactly what Peter had to do when Jesus was questioning him. If he truly loved Jesus, then he had to realize that the guilt and the self-punishment had to go. The grace of God covers a multitude of sins.
Hit the stop button!
Replaying your personal bad movie isn’t going to help. Listen to yourself.
Every time you catch yourself rehashing your sins, mistakes, missteps, faux pas, or screw ups you need to intentionally stop, breathe and refocus. Let go of that old crap and decide to move on to more productive things.
If you need to go back and apologize to someone you’ve hurt, then get it done!
Begin to repair the damage you may have done in the past by spreading good to others around you right now. There will be some things we can’t go back and change or fix.
We won’t always be able to make things up to someone we have hurt or wronged in the past; but we can do some helpful things for people who are in our lives right this second.
Now, Go forward
Peter could not go back and cancel out most of the foot-in-the mouth statements he made, or his impulsive actions that caused harm. But he was now facing a new day with new opportunities to help people in the future.
There were many, many opportunities that still lay ahead of him.
Jesus was saying, “Stop! Get with the program! You’ve got plenty of work to do.”
Stop beating yourself up over the past.
It is time to move toward doing good and productive work to bring healing into your own life and the lives of others.
You CAN forgive yourself!
Decide to do it today!
What do you think?
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mananetwork/1328471914/sizes/z/in/photostream/
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mananetwork/1328471914/sizes/z/in/photostream/