Tonight, post our revival service with Matt Wilkins, I find myself a bit bewildered. While I missed the first part of Matt’s sermon, I did catch the last half.
At one point, Matt used one of the most important verses to me in all of scripture: John 6:68. Let me back up:
Jesus had been teaching hard things. Hard things to understand. Hard things to stomach. Hard things to let soak into the very fiber of his listeners, with the potential to change everything they knew about life as they had lived it to that point.
In what might not be a very surprising move, we see in verse 66 some of his follower’s reactions:
66 fAfter this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.
Jesus then turns to his 12 apostles and asks them: “Do you want to go away as well?”
Peter—quick to speak Peter, first to jump Peter–answers in verse 68: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have hthe words of eternal life,”
What does this have to do with revival? The answer to this question is just beyond my realm of available thinking tonight. I can almost grasp it, but not quite. I’m not sure why. Maybe it is the fact that Peter has come to the realization, the conclusion, that he has no other choice. He has no more plans. His plans are destroyed–where else does he have to go, but to Jesus, who has the words of eternal life?
So maybe that is how John 6:68 is connected to revival. A realization that there is no where else to go. A realization that any other plan apart from Jesus leads to death. An acknowledgement that a reviving to life only comes through Christ’s words that contain eternal life.
These are hard things for me to process tonight. Like I said, I find myself a bit bewildered and not thinking as clearly as possible due to some intense pain I am fighting. I pray for sleep, for hope, and honestly for revival to get up again tomorrow morning and try again, knowing that my plans are futile, and where else am I going to go, except to the one who has the words of eternal life?
