(This is an excerpt from Pastor’s book, “How To Stand When Others Fall”)
What helps you to hold steady when you get a negative report from the doctor? What helps you to hold steady when the media is reporting bad news? What keeps you on course? These are very important questions because the Bible says that there were those who “went back” and “walked no more with Jesus.” There were some following Jesus who had been healed by Him, who ate the multiplied loaves and fishes, some whose lives were changed, and yet “. . . many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.”
Think about it. Our text details that this was such a dramatic event that Jesus turned to his inner circle and said, “Are you leaving, too?” Could you ever erase the memory of those eyes looking at you and asking if you were going to desert him? Peter responded so powerfully on that occasion saying, “…thou hast the words of eternal life.”
People often say, “If you make a disciple out of someone they will never go back.” Well, excuse me, right here we have a mass exodus and these people were called disciples. The truth is that loyalty and faithfulness are matters of the heart. I do not wake up every morning and ask myself if I am going to stay with my wife Joy. I have lived with her for many years. I do not wake up each morning and try to make a decision about being faithful to her. I have already made that decision. She is the best wife (and the only wife) I have ever had. I am going to stay with her.
Peter did not always rise to the occasion in the appropriate way, but if there was ever a time in the Scriptures he did, it was at this point. The same Simon Peter that went to sleep in the Garden of Gethsemane, the one who cut off a man’s ear, the disciple who was not at the cross, eventually walked out this confession in John 6:68-69: “Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.”