I heard these words from the Lord recently:
"For many of My people, this is a time to walk into a new beginning and a new destiny! Tell them I have meant for them to have a fresh start! Like I did for Peter after he denied Me three times!"
In Luke 22:32-34, Jesus said to Peter, "... I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren." Peter then answered there's no way he would fail, and said he was even ready to go with Jesus, both to prison and to death! Jesus replied, "I tell you, Peter, the rooster shall not crow this day before you will deny three times that you know Me."
True enough, what Jesus said came to pass. Jesus was soon arrested in Gethsemane, and when a certain servant girl saw Peter, she said, "This man was also with Him." Peter denied it, and said, "Woman, I do not know Him." And after a little while, another saw him, and said, "You also are of them." But Peter said, "Man, I am not!" Then about an hour later, another confidently said, "Surely this fellow also was with Him, for he is a Galilean." But Peter said, "Man, I do not know what you are saying!" And guess what? The rooster crowed! Peter remembered what Jesus had said earlier, and he went out and wept bitterly.
People of God, we are all like Peter in one way or another. Maybe you have made a promise to God and you have just broken it. You feel terrible about it, and it seems like what you have done is unforgivable and beyond redemption. It may be a sin that you have promised never to commit again, or a mistake that you have promised never to make again. But it happened. And you feel wretched now. To add insult to injury, the devil comes in and makes you feel so condemned you have no more strength to carry on!
But thank God for His great love for us, and for His heart that has always been to redeem and rescue us (Psalm 103:1-5). He is a God of second chance, or rather, third chance.
Three times Peter denied Jesus, and three times Jesus asked back, "Do you love Me?" (John 21:15-17) By the way, the number '3' in Hebrew is a number for 'divine perfection, or divine completeness'. The symbolic meaning here is that Jesus had meant to restore Peter completely, and you can see that He was re-doing everything for Peter, and He gave him a fresh start. Peter never looked back since then. He went on to become a great apostle of the Lord, and he even preached a sermon that saw three thousand souls saved in one day!
Therefore, whatever your situation may be at the moment, look to Him and allow Him to love you and embrace you all over again. His love for you remains the same, yesterday, today, and forever; and His love for you fails not, even when everything else fails. Because you are His beloved. As you let go of the things that are behind you (Philippians 3:13), let Him also lead you into a new beginning and a new destiny in your life, just as He did for Peter. Amen.
