Ring the Rooster’s Neck
By Jon Walker
But he denied it. “Woman, I don’t know him,” he said. Luke 22:57 (NIV)
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He was ready to go to prison, even to death, with Jesus. That’s what Peter said.
But Jesus knew the truth, which was in a few dark hours, Peter would disown him. “I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me” (Luke 22:34 NIV).
And at the exact moment when Peter finished saying, for the third time, “He’s a stranger to me!” the rooster took his cue and started to crow.
Jesus, in chains, looked up and locked eyes with his friend, and for the second time that night, he felt the sting of a friend betraying him. But, this time he wasn’t sold for thirty pieces of silver; this time he was sold for the price of anonymity.
And Peter went out and wept bitterly (Luke 22:62).
He wept because he’d given in to fear when he knew he should have headed into faith. Like you, like me, Peter had followed his instincts for survival.
In his grief, he failed to understand something Jesus had explained at their final supper together. Jesus said he had to go away, so the Counselor would come (John 16:7). The Holy Spirit sent from God would enter the lives of those who loved Jesus, creating a direct and permanent connection between the Creator and the created.
The Holy Spirit was coming to teach and to guide, and in a very real sense, the Holy Spirit would replace instinct inside of Peter, and also in you and me. We need no longer live by impulse or instinct because God has exchanged it with the Holy Spirit.
We may still make mistakes of impulse and instinct, falling back into sinful thoughts and actions, what Corrie Ten Boom refers to as echoes of the past.
But in the present and in the future we are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that [we] may declare the praises of him who called [us] out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9 NIV).
Fitting words from Peter, written years after the night he thought he’d ruined the rest of his life here on earth and for all eternity.
If you’d like to receive these devotionals regularly, you can sign-up at www.gracecreates.com/subscribe/. Jon Walker writes from www.gracecreates.com. He is a Zondervan author, and the former writer/editor of the Purpose Driven Life On-Line Devotionals. This devotional is copyrighted 2009 by Jon Walker. Used by permission.
