Rooster’s Crow Moment

Gut-wrenching pain. Blistering conscience. A piercing, eyes-locked moment that made history. This is how I imagine the scene of Peter’s betrayal of Jesus as found in Luke 22.

Peter, Jesus’s disciple. And more than that, His friend. Peter, someone that Jesus poured His life into literally day in and day out for three years. Peter, who had left everything and made bold proclamations that he would give up even more. Peter, one of the three disciples that received exclusive invitations from Jesus, invitations that the other disciples did not get. Peter, one of Jesus’s “inner circle,” this Peter, was now drenched with grief and, I imagine, shame from how easily and repeatedly he denied knowing the person he had spent three years radically changing his life for.

How could three years of devotion go down the denial drain so quickly? What did Peter see in Jesus’s eyes that day? Could the relationship be repaired? Could Peter’s soul be restored from such deep wounding? Could Jesus’s? Would Jesus want that? Would Peter?

Of course, we have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight vision and written accounts of how Jesus came to Jesus and restored Peter who wound up becoming an incredible early church leader, building upon the foundation that Jesus laid. But how did this happen? How did Peter go from weeping bitterly in private, returning to his fisherman lifestyle, to a world-changing church leader? Peter’s story could have ended up so differently; it could have ended in despair and/or destruction.

I believe it can be summed up in one word: grace. Short of a revelation from God or a Q&A session in heaven, I cannot answer for certainty what Peter saw in Jesus’s eyes that day. But what we do know is that Jesus was the embodiment of grace and truth (see John 1:14), so it stands to reason that Peter received not only a revelation of his shortcomings and a realization that Jesus already knew he was going to fail that day, but that Peter also received a revelation of grace, a grace that not only remained steadfast and unchanging in the decision to forgive him after the betrayal, but a grace that actually made that before it even happened. Undeserved. Lavish. Amazing, beautiful grace.

I wonder if seeing the grace exude from Jesus’s eyes in the moment of his biggest defeat made Peter’s tears even more bitter that day. I wonder if he had thoughts like I can’t possibly accept His forgiveness, I don’t deserve it. That’s just the thing about grace—we don’t deserve it! It’s a gift, a gift more precious than we often truly realize. The gift of grace has the power to work miracles when we accept it, just look at Peter’s life.

But what if we’re on the other side of that story? What if, instead of accepting the gift of grace, we are asked to give it? It may be easy at times, but what about when it’s hard? What about times such as prolonged defiance by a child? Betrayals? Personal attacks to your face, or maybe worse—behind your back—that you felt were unwarranted? Sure, we want grace when we’re in Peter’s position, the offender, but what about if we are the one who was offended? What if it’s someone who was more than just a casual acquaintance? What if that person was someone you considered a friend? What if that person was a family member or someone you poured yourself into sacrificially?

It’s hard! Can we be like Jesus when we are faced with a rooster’s crow moment? Can we fully, from the deepest parts of who we are, truly release grace to the other person? Well, according to the Bible, we can, but, from my experience, not in and of ourselves.

John 14:15 says, “If ye love Me, keep My commandments.” What are His commandments? Those are found in Mark 12:30-31:

Love the Lord Your God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength…[and] thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

There it is. Love. How does love express itself when wronged? It forgives (and doesn’t hold grudges), it endures patiently, it hopes, it bears all things, it doesn’t look for its own benefit or gain, and it is humble (see 1 Corinthians 13). God’s kind of love doesn’t change, it just is. And it’s powerful, powerful enough to change the world, powerful enough to heal wounds, powerful enough to enable us to release His love, God’s love, to those around us even when it’s hard and feels impossible. We can because He can, and He is in us empowering us. We just need to lean in to Him, trust Him, and breathe His love, expressed in His grace, in and out. But in order to do that, we first need to experience a rooster’s crow moment from Peter’s perspective. We need to receive a revelation of His grace in our lives. And I mean truly receive all the way to our guts and let it become woven into the fabric of our beings. We can’t give what we don’t have. It’s as simple as that. If we are going to freely release His grace to others, we need to learn to freely receive it first. And I’m not talking about freely receiving it so we can continue to “freely” sin (I put that in quotation marks because there is no “free sin,” sin comes at a cost); I’m talking about freely receiving His grace in a way that empowers us to change and to become a living, breathing demonstration of His grace.

We need to live in the revelation of His grace every day; we need to become dependent upon His grace so our lives are dependent upon His life; we need to let His grace fill our lungs so it is His fragrance that others pick up when we’re around; living His grace needs to become so second-nature to us so when those rooster’s crow moments come, we’re ready. We’re ready for that piercing, eyes-locked moment, a moment that can shift the future one way or another. Which way will it shift? Toward God and His grace or toward destruction?

God, I pray that You would release in me a deeper and greater revelation of Your grace. I pray that You would teach me how to release Your grace to those around me and prepare my heart for those rooster’s crow moments, those moments when I have the opportunity to become a living demonstration of Your undeniable grace.