Navigating an Uncertain Future

Let’s take a brief walk through the rollercoaster that was Peter’s life as reported in the gospels. First, Peter’s name was actually Simon and he was a simple fisherman. Uneducated and raised up in the family profession of catching fish. One morning, as he is returning from his nightly fishing, a man approaches him with a large gathering of people. The man asks Simon if he could push him out into the water. Simon takes the man just away from the shore and from there the man begins speaking to the crowd about the kingdom of God. Once he was finished his message, he looked down at Simon and told him to go out deeper and let down his nets. “But master,” Simon protested, “we fished all night long and caught not a thing. But if you say so I will put out the nets again.” He cast out his net and as they pulled it up he had to call for help from his partners for the net was so full of fish it was beginning to tear. Simon fell down in awe of the man who then called Peter to follow him. This man, Jesus, promised to make Simon a fisher of people and renamed him Peter, which means Rock.

Peter begins following Jesus around from town to town and sees Jesus do incredible things. People are healed of illnesses and disabilities. Peter’s own mother-in-law is healed from a dangerous fever. He sees him walk on water, calm storms, and feed thousands of people with only a few loaves and a few fish. Peter is the first to identify Jesus as the Son of God come to establish God’s Kingdom and Jesus tells him that he will build his church on Peter’s testimony about him.

Then Jesus starts saying strange things to him and his fellow followers or disciples. He starts saying how he is going to be handed over to the religious leaders who have been opposing him and how he is going to be killed but three days later he will rise from the dead. The night before Jesus was arrested he told them again what was going to happen and how all of them would desert him. Bold Peter stood up and told him that he will not desert him, that he was even ready to die with him. Jesus told him that before the rooster crows that three times Peter would deny even knowing him.

Then it all happens. Jesus is arrested in a garden as he is praying. Peter and another disciple follow them into the area where Jesus is to be questioned. When Peter entered the courtyard one of the servants asked him, “are you one of his followers?” “I do not know the man.” Peter responded. As he was warming himself by a fire another servant asked, “were you not one of his followers?” “I do not know the man,” he responded again. But one of them answered him, “but your accent is not from Jerusalem but from Galilee to the north, where he came from..” “I tell you,” Peter responded angrily, “I have no idea who that man is!” Once he had denied knowing Jesus a third time a rooster crowed. Realization hit Peter of what he had just done, denying the man he claimed he would die for three times, Peter ran out of the courtyard. Jesus was handed over to the Romans and executed on the cross.

Now what? What’s next for Peter? Had he just blown his shot at the calling that Jesus had placed in his life? Could Jesus possibly build his church on the testimony of a man who had three times denied knowing him? Even if he hadn’t blown that shot Jesus is dead. Could he have been lied to by this man? How could the Son of God be killed by the Romans?

Peter entered into a time of real uncertainty. A time that the majority of us currently are in during this time of Covid-19. When we sit down to plan out what our summers look like we can only put up question marks. And don’t even ask us what September will look like. Some have been laid off with no idea when they are returning to work or when they will get a new job. Students have been transitioned to online school to part-time in-class with reduced numbers to who knows what in the Fall. Me and my wife Katelyn find ourselves entering a summer of uncertainty as this is my last Sunday on staff here at Jericho with a new ministry starting who knows when and who knows where at this point.

So, how are you really doing during this time of uncertainty? I know for me it is a real rollercoaster. There are days of excitement of what’s next, of what God has in store for us in the next season. But there are also days of restlessness and impatience. Nights awake with anxiety and panic. Conversations of grief about the end of a chapter at a church we love dearly.

These are the common feelings of transition. Particularly the part of transitions that I am sure most of us hate the most: the waiting part. And yet the waiting in the uncertainty of the in-between is probably the most vital part of transitioning well.

Peter Scazzero in the last chapter of his book The Emotionally Healthy Leader speaks about transitioning in a healthy way. He says there are four steps/attitudes required in healthy transitions and these steps all take place in the waiting period.  Let’s look at those steps and how Peter, with the help of Jesus, walked through those steps into the new path Jesus was calling him to. If you have a Bible or a Bible App you can join me in the Book of John chapter 21. You can look in the Table of Contents of your Bible to find it the spot and Chapter 21 is the very last chapter of the book. Make sure you are not in 1 John or 2 John or 3 John but just straight John. We are going to start reading at verse 15 but first to give you some context. Jesus was killed by the Romans on the cross. Three days later the tomb he was laid in was found empty and Jesus had reappeared to his followers on a few different occasions. Jesus had risen from the dead!

The disciples were now back in their home province of Galilee for Jesus had told them to wait there for him. A few of them were hanging out down by the Sea of Galilee when Peter decided he wanted to go fishing. They fish all night without catching a single fish. As the sun is rising someone from the shore calls out to ask if they caught anything. When they tell the man that they had not he tells them to cast their net on the right side of the boat. Begrudgingly they listen and they struggle to pull the net back up because it is so full of fish! 153 fish to be exact and yet the net has not ripped. At this miracle, one of the disciples identifies the man on the shore as Jesus and so Peter jumps into the water and swims to shore, leaving the rest to haul in the fish and bring in the boat. When they arrive at the shore they find a campfire and Jesus has started breakfast for them. John 21:15-19.

The first step in Scazzero’s book is that “We accept that endings are a death.” Moving from the old to the new is a death and often we ignore that fact. We can focus so much on the new thing that is coming up that we can ignore our feelings of grief and loss over the thing we had that is now dying in order for the new change. We do need to spend time coming to terms with the death of the thing we are leaving behind. If we don’t accept that death then there will always be a part of it clinging to us and hindering us from fully entering into the new chapter God has for us.

In a way, during his time of uncertainty Peter returned to his own way of life as a fisherman. Now there is no indication that what Peter did was wrong in going fishing. Peter doesn’t say that he is going to go back to doing it professionally, he just decided to fish. But it does help set up a close of his previous chapter of life. This story shows the death of his life as a fisherman for good. It actually mimics when Peter was first called. In his first calling and now in his second Peter is out fishing all night and catches nothing, Jesus then appears and tells Peter to cast out his net, Peter does and catches an unbelievable amount of fish, and then Jesus calls Peter to follow him. It is re-affirmation that Peter’s life as a fisherman is dead and that his new life as a “fisher of people” is beginning.

The need of this re-affirmation is because of Peter’s mistake when he denied knowing Jesus three times. Jesus re-affirms that it is still upon Peter’s testimony that he would build his church, despite Peter’s denial of that testimony in the courtyard of Jesus’ trial. He did this by asking Peter three times if he loved him, allowing Peter to declare his love for him and erase the rejections of the past. Peter not only needed to accept the death of his previous life but also accept the death of the mistakes he had in the past. For him to transition into the new thing that Jesus had for him he had to accept that the mistake he made was dead and gone. For him to be the rock upon which the church would be built he needed to accept that Jesus forgave him of his denial of him. If he couldn’t accept that and carried it with him into the new life God had for him then his testimony would not be the solid rock it needed to be.

A couple of weeks ago Peter Ash talked about grief and loss. As we sit in a time of uncertainty and reflect, what things do we need to acknowledge we have lost and need to accept that they have died? We also need to see what mistakes we have made in the past that we need to let die as well? What mistakes do we need to seek forgiveness for or maybe even have to accept that we have been forgiven for? Let those die as we move into a new beginning.

The second part of Scazzero’s transition steps is “recognizing that he “in-between” often takes much longer than we think.”  Peter’s waiting in the in-between was certainly longer that he had anticipated. Jesus had entered into Jerusalem with great fanfare and Peter probably suspected that Jesus was going to establish God’s kingdom that week, instead Jesus was arrested and killed. Then Jesus appeared to them three days after he had died, surely now Jesus would appear before the world as God’s Son and establish the kingdom, and yet he did not. Then, Peter has this recommissioning that we just read, surely now Peter would start his ministry and preach God’s Kingdom, and yet he and the rest of Jesus’ followers were told to wait in Jerusalem until the Spirit was sent. It was about fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection before the Holy Spirit came upon the believers and the church began under the leadership of Peter and the disciples of Jesus. Over three years from the time Jesus first called Peter to follow him.

The question for reflection for us is, what are your expectations of how long this period of waiting is going to be? Are you prepared for your period of waiting to be longer that than expectation? How would you feel if that date you have in your mind comes and passes with no more certainty than you have now?

This links with step, or in this case attitude three: Viewing endings and waiting as being linked to our growing in faith in Christ. If we view waiting as actually something producing transformation in us or something maturing us in faith then it helps us be able to wait longer than if we view waiting as sitting and doing nothing until something happens. We need to actively wait, as paradoxical as that sounds. The fifty days before Peter really started his new calling he was spending time with Jesus. The book of Acts tells the story of Jesus ascending into heaven and the establishment of the church. Acts 1 says “during the forty days after his crucifixion, he [Jesus] appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive. And he talked to them about the Kingdom of God.” He spent time listening to God and learning about the message he was to preach. He was preparing himself for the season that was to come.

Now Peter at least had an idea of what was to come, many of us don’t and so we cannot prepare for what God has next after this time of waiting. Despite this, we can still actively wait. Scazerro says, “The central truth that Jesus is risen from the dead is what enables us to affirm that endings are always a gateway to new beginnings – even when we can’t discern that anything redemptive could emerge from our loss. The key is to be willing to wait. And while we wait, we spend extended amounts of time alone with God. We process our thoughts and emotions with others or in a journal. We position ourselves as expectant pilgrims on a journey – we listen and learn, looking for and expecting to see signs of new life.” Actively waiting means purposely spending time with God listening to him and speaking to him.

I started the practice of writing out my prayers back in January and have really upped my practice of it since then. What I have found in spending this time with God is answers to prayers and God’s provision of his peace. And the benefit to writing it down is I can look back on it and see how he has been at work. I will sit down feeling anxious and write about my anxiety about the future to God and then the next day, as I reflect on the day past, I thank God for the peace he gave me. I write to God about how I am feeling discouraged, about how I am not feeling like I am capable for the new thing he is calling me into and a few days later I find myself thanking him for the encouragement I got that week. The months have seen me able to trust God more and more and that is growing my faith.

What steps do we need to take to be actively waiting? Writing might not be for you and that is fine. Maybe you need to find moments of silence to spend with God. Maybe you need to carve out a time to dwell in Scripture. Maybe you need to gather a group of friends and spend time in Scripture and Prayer together. Maybe you can join a small group, like one Brad is starting this summer in Peter Scazzero’s similar book as the one we are talking about, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality.

The final attitude Scazzero presents is “recognizing that endings and the waiting are gateways to that new beginning.” Recognizing that something good comes from the ending and the waiting. While the ending of something is a death, from death comes new life. Jesus’ death shows this: from his death he was able to raise to new life, and thus able to offer us the same new life when we die to our old life. The day Peter first stepped away from his boat and followed Jesus’ call to follow him was the end of Peter’s fishing career and the new beginning of his life as the Apostle Peter, the one whose testimony would help build the church of Jesus. When we have been able to grieve the death of an ending we are able to fully turn and embrace the future of the new life, even in the waiting for that new life to come.

Friends, as we continue to make our way through this time of uncertainty and as we wait for whatever the new beginning may be, let us recognize that what we have left behind is a death and we must properly grieve that to be prepared for what God has next for us. Let us go forward knowing that his uncertainty could last longer than we expect, perhaps it has already lasted longer than we were expecting, but let’s continue to wait but wait actively, listening for God, spending time with him, and growing deeper in trust in him. And in the midst of all this let us get excited for the opportunities that God has for us in the future. Friends, spend time with God, in silence and solitude, in journaling time, in prayer time, in time reading his word, and let him fill you with dreams and visions