Know Jesus

Matthew 4:18-20; 14:25-33; John 1:40-42
Related Sunday School Lesson, Family Bible Series, Aug. 1

Robert Hanssen betrayed his country by spying for the Russians. His clandestine career netted him nearly 1.4 million dollars. After evaluating Hanssen, psychiatrist David Charney concluded that Hanssen’s materialistic hunger was fed by a desire to prove to his wife that he was not a failure. Charney commented: “Bonnie [wife] was the one person who brought life into his life. She was the last person he would want to think he was a failure. He reached to prove to her he was a good provider and good husband. So that when she would express wishes for various things, he would always buy them for her. He felt it was necessary to sustain his image in her eyes as successful.” (From SPY: The Inside Story of How the FBI’s Robert Hanssen Betrayed America).

It seems as if everybody wants to be “successful.” But what does the word “success” really mean? Charlie Sheen, star of the TV sitcom “Two and a Half Men” said that in his attempt to be successful he tried to fill the hole in his heart with “people and expensive things and drugs.” That’s how many people define success – with friends, money, and good times.

Pastor Gary K. Odle has a good response to this type of success. He says that “standard of living is not the same as quality of life.” How true. The more you have doesn’t mean the happier you are. Along these same lines, a New Tribe missionary counseled, “Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn’t really matter.”

So what is “success” and what does matter? According to Jesus, success is having a personal relationship with Him. Morris L. West wrote in The Shoes of the Fisherman, if a man is centered upon himself, the smallest risk is too great for him, because both success and failure can destroy him. If he is centered upon God, then no risk is too great, because success is already guaranteed – the successful union of creator and creature, beside which everything else is meaningless. In other words, anything less than union with Christ is failure.

Eugene Peterson has a great insight on how the world views success. He compares the lives of Judas and Peter. Peterson opined that many people in biblical times would have considered Judas a success and Peter a failure. Judas was successful in ways that impress most of us. He was successful both financially and politically. He cleverly arranged to control the money of the disciples. He skillfully manipulated the political forces of the day to accomplish his goal. Peter, on the other hand, was impotent in a crisis, socially inept, cowardly at times, and had a knack for always saying the wrong thing.

But now, thousands of years later, Judas is a villain and Peter is a saint. Judas is the name we use for people like Robert Hanssen, and Peter is an honored name in both the church and the world.

I love how the greek word “cephas” applies to Peter in various times/circumstances in his life. The word has a couple of meanings. One meaning implies strength and stability. Another rendition implies roughness and the lack of stability. Both meanings apply to the account of Peter walking on water (he at least walked “a ways” as my grandmother would say).

Peter stepped out of the boat because of the strength of his faith. He began to sink when he took his eyes off Jesus. Peter serves as a good model for the same kind of portrait that we would paint of ourselves. One minute full of faith, and the next 60 seconds with our attention on the wind and the waves of our circumstances.

As Christians, our lives define the word “paradox.” We are illustrations in irony, yet God uses each experience to build our faith and bolster our confidence in Him. Though Charles Spurgeon did not believe that Peter should have gotten out of the boat, he did agree that “Peter was nearer his Lord when he was sinking than when he was walking.”

Would you be considered a “success” by the definition used above? Are you full of faith? Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus? Have you accepted the call to follow Him? James Montgomery Boice notes that the command to follow Jesus was not only a physical following or even, as it were, an invitation to learn more about him to see if one wanted to be a permanent disciple. It was a turning from sin for salvation, to be healed by God. Have you made this turn? If so, then regardless of your income, popularity, education, or number of friends, you are a success!