Minister Again

Good morning, everyone.

This is a series called the Again Series.

And it's Believe Again, Minister Again, and Step Out Again.

So we're going to think about Minister Again this morning.

And what it is, the idea of this message is that if you have felt you've had a calling from God, and it's come to an end, and you're thinking what happens next.

And when we reflect on a calling from God, it might have been something that you entered into feeling very positive about it, but when you look back, you think, oh, I don't know whether that went so well.

And I'd like to expand this idea, not just to this sense that we're called into different things by the Lord, but also for any experience of life where we feel we entered into it, and we think that didn't go so well for me.

And it could be a job, a relationship, a family situation, but particularly if you feel that it's God's calling for you in ministry, and you're coming out of it thinking, how do I grapple with all of that, with everything that's happened in my life in that situation?

Was it a failure?

Maybe I do feel a sense that I failed in some respect in something that I undertook.

So we'll look at the passage again, which is Jesus' words to Peter just before Jesus left his disciples for the last time.

So in John 21.15, when they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon, Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?

Yes, Lord, he said, you know that I love you.

Jesus said, feed my lambs.

Again, Jesus said, you know that I love, feed my lambs.

Again, Jesus said, Simon, son of John, do you love me?

He answered, yes, Lord, you know that I love you.

Jesus said, take care of my sheep.

The third time he said to him, Simon, son of John, do you love me?

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, do you love me?

And he said, Lord, you know all things.

You know that I love you.

Jesus said, feed my sheep.

So this is a slice out of Peter's life.

And I want to go back in Peter's story to understand how this came to happen.

Why was it that Jesus had to say the same thing three times to Peter?

It seemed like he was overstating it and Peter was feeling a little hurt.

Why do you keep asking me the same thing?

So we're going to look back on Peter's life because these words to Peter there are a kind of a commissioning for Peter to be a leader amongst the early church, to feed my sheep, to tend my sheep, to feed my lambs.

But Peter's story, we know, if we look back, that there's a lot written about Peter in the Bible.

Originally, he was called Simon and he was a fisherman.

And Jesus called the original 12 close disciples to himself to follow him.

And he said to Peter one day, whose name was Simon, he said, I don't want you to be known as Simon any longer, but I'm going to call you Peter.

He changed his name, which is from a Greek word, petros, which means the rock.

So he's saying, Peter, you are now the rock.

As we look at Peter's life in the stories in the Bible, there's a few question marks there about exactly what sort of person Peter was.

Was he actually a rock that Jesus could depend on?

Because he'd made mistakes, and he often acted without thinking.

And you might remember the story of the disciples out fishing on the sea.

And Jesus comes miraculously walking across the water towards them.

And it's Peter who just jumps out of the boat into deep water.

And miraculously, he starts walking on the water, and then he sinks.

So it's a kind of, in his personality, it's his nature to just want to jump in there, dive in there.

Later on, when Jesus is arrested at the time, the very time when the soldiers come to take Jesus away, it's Peter who raises a sword and cuts off the ear of the slave of the high priest.

Maybe he had bad aim, and he meant something worse than that.

But why did he act like that?

It's something in his personality.

He just jumps in there.

Another time in Mark 9 from 1st 2, let's read this one.

After six days, Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him and led them up a high mountain where they were all alone.

There he was transfigured before them.

Jesus' clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them.

And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses who were talking with Jesus.

Peter said to Jesus, Rabbi, it is good for us to be here.

Let us put up three shelters, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.

He did not know what to say.

They were so frightened.

And I imagine we would have been frightened, and I imagine we would be thinking, what's happening here with this Moses, Elijah, Jesus, glowing white?

What's that all about?

And it would be just as if Peter had said, well, Jesus, I'll go down to McDonald's, and I'll come back with three large fries, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.

It was that kind of statement that didn't kind of gel with the situation.

And I don't know whether Jesus rolled his eyes, but I thought, is this the man that I'm counting on, this Peter?

Probably the most tragic situation Peter was involved in was denying Jesus three times.

Let's read this.

Just before this, Peter had said to Jesus, Lord, I'm ready to go with you to prison and to death.

I'm going to give my life for you.

I'll do anything for you.

And Jesus had answered him, I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times, three times that you know me.

Peter was going to die for Jesus.

So, Luke 22, 54 was when they seized Jesus to take him away, where he was going to be beaten and whipped and tried.

They then seizing him, they led him away and took him to the house of the high priest.

Peter followed at a distance.

And when some there had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down with them.

A servant girl saw him seated there in the firelight.

She looked closely at him and said, This man was with him.

But Peter denied it.

Woman, I don't know him, he said.

A little later, someone else saw him and said, You also are one of them.

Man, I am not, Peter replied.

About an hour later, another asserted, Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean.

Peter replied, Man, I don't know what you're talking about.

And just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed.

The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter.

Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him.

Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.

And he went outside and wept bitterly.

So Jesus was counting on Peter at this time when everything was coming to the most intense moment in Jesus' life.

Where was Peter, his faithful number one disciple?

You're saying, I don't even know the guy.

Don't put that on me.

Who is this Jesus?

So looking at the character of Peter at this point, he wasn't really that rock like.

He wasn't the Peter, the rock, but he was impulsive.

He was speaking without thinking.

He was unstable, unpredictable, unreliable, unlikely to be a great leader, perhaps a failure.

Yet Jesus called him.

He said, come, Peter, feed my sheep.

Do you love me?

Back to the verses we were reading earlier, John 21.

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?

Feed my sheep.

Again, Jesus said, do you love me?

Take care of my sheep.

The third time he said to him, do you love me?

Feed my sheep.

Why the three times?

I think it's a good identification with the three denials of Peter, where Peter said, I don't know this, Jesus.

I'm not with him.

Jesus said, can you affirm to me three times that you love me?

Because I'm counting on you.

I want you to be the one who cares for the flock, who cares for my followers when I'm gone.

I'm trusting you, Peter.

So Jesus believed in Peter, even though he was the most unrock-like personality.

So it's time to look a bit more at our own story.

So we looked at the life of Peter.

We see his story, which is represented in quite great detail.

All his flaws are preserved there in the Bible for history, for hundreds of years, for all of us to look and say, well, he was a mistake, wasn't he?

But in our own stories, we have our times.

And as I said before, it's not necessarily ministry times, but it can be anything.

But particularly if we feel God has called us, and we look back and say, I don't really want to think about those times.

That was a kind of, that's a closed chapter in my life.

It's kind of a failure really.

I didn't really do what I set out to do.

I wonder what God thinks of me.

Can he use me again?

What am I good for now?

The first thought that I had in terms of our well-being, and in God calling us again to ministry, was this thought that we need to recognise our failure.

And I know you may not think, well, that situation didn't go well.

I wouldn't say it was a failure.

But when we say we didn't quite do what we set out to do.

When I was younger, I went to study a uni course, and I dropped out of it, and after I dropped out before I did the final exams.

So very clever.

And so I could say, well, I never actually failed, I just left.

But as I've looked back on it, in a sense, I didn't achieve what I'd set out to do.

I'd walked away from something.

For my own life, it was a bit of a fail.

It was me saying, I'm avoiding a situation, which was looming up in front of me, the exams.

So recognize our failure.

We've got to look at what's happened and say, it happened.

I'm going to be honest with myself.

And there's a sense of grieving over that, saying this was a difficult thing, but I've got to realize what has actually happened to me.

And I want to look at these verses, 1 John 1, 8 and 9.

It's really verses in the context of sin.

It's in the context of sin.

And we might look at an experience in life and say, well, it's not really sin.

But what's revealed in this verse is something that's important.

It says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

The idea in these verses is that when we declare what's happened, it says we, when we don't declare what happened, sorry, we deceive ourselves.

This is where we say to people, like when I left uni, I didn't really fail.

You know, no problem.

I just decided not to go ahead.

We're spinning out a story, but the deception is on ourselves.

Says the truth is not in us.

We're not being real with ourselves.

We're not living in reality.

So the verse says live in the reality of the situation.

Think about what's happened.

Recognize what's happened.

Says if we confess our sins, we bring it into the light.

We say, Lord, look what happened.

It didn't go well.

Just go to be honest with you.

Says God will forgive us our sins.

He receives us and purifies from all unrighteousness.

Another verse says cleanses, another version says cleanses us from all unrighteousness.

It's where God can begin his work in us.

When we're saying, I'm real with what's happened.

Yep, it hasn't been great, and I'm being honest about it.

And as God starts to work in our lives, it moves on to healing.

When I talk about healing, I'm not talking about the bodily sickness type of healing.

I'm talking about the inner healing we need when we've been broken by situations.

It's a healing that's more in our emotions and in our spirit within us, in our hearts, where we felt that didn't go well, and I feel wounded.

I come out of the situation feeling less of a person, and it really impedes me, because I don't want to go there again.

So we need healing.

One day, a father called his son into him and said to him, Son, I've just been noticing your behaviour recently.

Little boy.

I don't think you've been behaving very well.

In fact, you've been quite naughty.

So this is what I'm going to do.

And the father said, I'm going to put a post in the backyard, and every time I see you do something naughty that does not please me, I'm going to put a nail in the post.

Sends the boy away.

Boy is thinking.

This is...

What's this?

Sometime later, the father says to the son, calls him in and says, you may have noticed the post in the backyard there.

There's a few nails in there.

And I just wanted you to know that I noticed a few things that you've been doing.

Boy looks very unhappy about all of this.

Silence.

Father realized it.

With a heart of compassion, he says to himself, this is not working.

So he says to the son, if you're a good boy, if you please me, then I'm going to take the nails out of the holes, out of the post, sorry, out of the post.

And so time passes by.

Father calls his son in again and says, have you noticed the post?

Have you noticed the nails have all been taken out of the post?

None left.

So I'm really pleased with you, son.

Really wonderful.

The son still looks miserable.

So the father said, what's wrong?

Like I'm pleased with your good behavior.

And the son says, but I can still see the holes.

And I think in life, we have an experience, and the scars stay with us.

And I just wanted to affirm that Jesus comes to heal us and to remove the holes in our lives.

Psalm 147, 3, simply says about God, He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds.

He heals the broken-hearted, that's us, and binds up their wounds.

One of the aspects of healing, I'll just touch on briefly, is forgiveness.

I'm not referring to the forgiveness of God for us, but I'm referring to the forgiveness of one another, where we need to forgive, and it's a part of our healing.

Someone has done something to us, we may not have done anything wrong.

Someone's done something to us, and we feel the hurt, we feel the anger, we feel just the pain of what's happened to us.

And it's not an issue where we need to do something to confess, but we need to forgive.

And we feel imprisoned, it's as if we're in a cage.

And when we don't forgive, we remain in that cage.

But when we forgive someone else for what's happened to us, for the hurt we've received, then we free ourselves.

We're free from the power of that situation.

We're free, we let ourselves out of the cage when we forgive.

And forgiveness is saying, no longer do I hold anything more against that person, against that situation, even against that organization.

But I've forgiven them.

In Ephesians 4.31, it says, Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ, God forgave you.

So forgiveness is a freeing thing.

It's a part of healing.

So I've talked about recognizing what's happened, in terms of ministering again, and being healed, having a sense of healing from those situations.

Third one I wanted to touch on is hope, to find hope again.

Hope is a kind of a quality.

It's like an abstract word we use.

It doesn't mean we're hoping and wishing for something, but hope is that quality that we're looking in faith, down the track, saying that something better can happen.

It's a real trust in God, that something better is there for us.

It's easier to understand when we think of the word hopelessness.

When someone is hopeless, they're saying, Oh, things went bad in my life.

How can you expect anything better?

It's all going to be bad.

Life's just going to go downhill from here.

That's hopelessness.

But hope means, no, I'm going to trust in faith that God is there for me and that a better life awaits me.

Romans 5, it says, verse 3, not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance.

Perseverance character and character hope.

It seems like one thing leads to another, that out of our sufferings, we can find hope.

In Isaiah 40, 31, it says, those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles.

They will run and not grow weary.

They will walk and not be faint.

Kind of hard to believe as we get older that we're going to run and not grow weary.

But it's a hope in the Lord that renews our strength.

It's a real struggle sometimes to believe that it could be better next time.

You know, we had the experience of life.

Is there going to be a next time?

Could it be better?

Have you heard the expression, it's not over till it's over?

You know, it's kind of like you're in a, imagine you're in a sports team and it's five minutes to go and you're losing and the coach says, it's not over till it's over.

You know, you can still make a come back, you've got five minutes left.

You know, you could win this.

It's not over yet.

But I like to think, I was thinking about that, I said, that's pretty good.

It's not over till it's over.

But I feel like the Lord says to us, it's never over.

It's never over.

In our lifetime, there's opportunities.

It's never over.

You say, well, I'm too old.

You know, what's it gonna become of me?

You know, I'll just hand on to someone else.

You know, I can't do it anymore.

I'll tell you the story of a man by the name of Captain Thomas Moore.

He was in the British Army in the Second World War.

Interesting man.

He served in the Army.

I don't know what the experience was.

I guess, like most people, most young people who end up fighting in a war like that, it was a tough experience.

But he was there with his colleagues.

He probably looked back after the war thinking, they were the glory days.

I was there with my mates fighting away, but now I'm in for the quiet life.

So he married, worked.

His wife eventually passed away.

Then Captain Thomas Moore, at the age of 99, you may know of him, in a nursing home now, decided that when he was 99 years old, he was going to raise money.

During the COVID epidemic, he was going to take his walking frame and walk around the nursing home courtyard, round and round.

He said, I'm going to do this 100 times till I'm 100 years of age, and I'm going to raise 1,000 pounds just to do my bit because of the epidemic we're in.

And Captain Tom Moore became an icon of hope for the nation of Britain and for the world.

Because here was this little man walking around, and people thought, we want to sponsor this guy.

This man is doing something exceptional.

And he managed to complete his 100 laps by his 100th birthday, and he raised 33 million pounds for the national health charities in Britain.

And when he turned 100, someone gave him a present of a gift to the trip to the Barbados, and he went to the Barbados.

And the Queen knighted him when he was 100, and he had a number one hit record on the charts when he was 100 years old.

And all of this happened in the last nine months of his life.

And sadly, he contracted COVID and passed away.

But, you know, it's never over.

If a man like Captain Thomas Moore can strive again, can strike again, can have an idea, an inspiration, you know, he wasn't necessarily doing it because God told him, but there is hope.

There is hope for us.

It's important, I think, to think that our future, when we view our future, it's in God's hands.

Our future is in God's hands.

When I was a student in college again, I was in this lecture, and I was, you know, writing my notes, listening to someone talking, and next to me was sitting a girl.

And she, I could tell, I could just feel this.

I don't know if you can feel it in someone.

She was very depressed and very dark and miserable.

And she was sitting there in the lecture.

And so I thought, you know, it's kind of like I was feeling a little bit uncomfortable because I could just feel it.

I don't know whether I spoke to her or not, but she was very down.

So I remember that time I had some Bible verses, and I wrote one on a piece of paper, and I passed it to her.

And this is the verse I gave to her.

It's quite a well-known verse.

It's a verse which we can say is like a specific in the Old Testament, but it's also general in time for all of us as to how God thinks.

It's Jeremiah 29, 11 to 13, where God says this, for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

It's a wonderful thought that God is thinking about us like this, that he says, I've got plans for you, plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future, and he will meet us there as we call upon him.

So I gave this verse to this girl and didn't see her for a while.

And she, I saw her some months later and she came to me and she said, thank you for giving me the verse.

You didn't realize this, but I was planning to commit suicide.

So, I reflect on that thinking that a few words, knowing that God has that sense of a plan and a future for us makes all the difference.

And so, as we look back on the story of Peter, we see that Peter, that Jesus believed in Peter.

When he said, feed my lambs.

Peter, you've been a bit of a screw up.

You know, you've denied me three times, but I'm counting on you.

And Jesus believes in us, and he loves us.

The first thing that Jesus said to Peter, when he was a fisherman, he said, follow me.

In that last chapter of John, chapter 21, verse nine, Jesus again said to Peter, follow me.

It was like, it's the same message.

Follow me.

And he does love us.

So in this whole topic of minister again, where we've looked back and said, is there anything more for me?

There is.

Jesus does believe in us, and he loves us, and he has things for us, for our lives.

So let's pray together in closing.

Lord and Heavenly Father, whatever the experiences of life have thrown at us, we acknowledge and appreciate that you care for us, that you do love us, that you do desire a future and a hope for us, that you have plans for our lives.

And Lord, we pray that when things haven't gone right in ministry or anything else, that we can look to you, recognize what's happened, receive healing from you, and see hope kindled in our hearts again.

Lord, we thank you for Jesus, who is our great hope, the one who never abandons us.

And we pray, Lord, you will bless us this day as you minister to us.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

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