John 21:22 “Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.”
Focus and Follow
Have you ever made a BIG mistake? Well, if you are like me, you probably have a story or two! Peter had made a big mistake, and the Lord Jesus commissioned him to follow again. Despite the Lord’s call to “Follow me,” Peter was more focused on self and on John (“the disciple whom Jesus loved”) than he was on Christ.
Although Peter had failed, God was and is a God of second chances. Thank God for that! However, God is a God of second chances who deserves my first and my best. He doesn’t deserve anything less than my very best.
Too often we find ourselves in the same place as Peter. We look around at others and wonder, “What shall this man do?” We are dedicated to doing whatever the Lord wants us to do, yet we can’t help ourselves when someone else has more of what we want or less of what we don’t want. We are ultimately focused on self, just like Peter in John chapter 21. What was the Lord’s response to Peter? In so many words, “Who cares!”
Your focus can keep you from following Christ like you should. You can’t follow the Lord and focus on yourself at the same time! When you are focused on self, you will find discouragement and failure. When you are focused on Christ, you will see things differently. Peter was a totally different person on the day of Pentecost!
High in the mountains of Colorado, just outside of Breckenridge, sits a water cache (pond) just off the summit. Miners devised a way to carry all the melted snow from the mountain to where they were working. The water funnels down from a huge mountain, to a water cache, all the way down to a tube where it exits at a high velocity. That much water under that much pressure, compressed for nearly a vertical mile, makes an amazing tool that can cut through rock!
The water is the same water in the pond; the focus of the water is different. You can do more for the Lord than you think you can do because it is not about you. Living for the Lord is a matter of what Christ will do when you follow Him. When you focus on the One you should follow, you will focus His power on your life.