A dead man’s switch is a safety device on all trains which has to be held continuously in place or it will cause the train to put on it’s emergency brakes. It is meant to be a fail safe way of stopping a train. Boy I wish I had a personal dead man’s switch which would automatically trigger once I start falling off the spiritual rails! I bet Peter did too.
“Then seizing him (Jesus), they led him away and took him into the house of the high priest. Peter followed at a distance. And when some there had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter sat down with them. A servant girl saw him seated there in the firelight. She looked closely at him and said, “This man was with him.” But he denied it. “Woman, I don’t know him,” he said. A little later someone else saw him and said, “You also are one of them.” “Man, I am not!” Peter replied. About an hour later another asserted, “Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean.” Peter replied, “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: “Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.” And he went outside and wept bitterly.” — Luke 22:54-62
What gets lost in this familiar story is the means of Peter’s denials. Did you catch it? It’s in v54—He followed at a distance.
Avoid Distance |
After years journeying closely and personally with Jesus, even vowing “to go with Him to prison and to death” just hours prior (v31-34), Jesus lets Satan sift him creating separation between the two and that little crack spiritually is all it takes for sin to take root. Sifting requires vigorous shaking to separate wheat kernels from debris. The evil one wanted to shake Peter’s faith hard in hopes that he’d fall away from Jesus like chaff…. and it did work for a while. This process creates both physical & spiritual distance between him and Jesus and when there is any kind of spiritual space existing between you & the King of Kings rarely anything good happens. You see Peter is close enough to see Jesus but far enough away not to hear him. The danger in Peter following at a distance is that it actually blinds him into thinking nothing has changed because he can see Him reassuring himself that everything is OK. But this distance actually weakens their relationship and ultimately minimizes its effectiveness to influence his life. Thus Peter fulfills the bold prediction of denying his Master three times.
That’s kinda how my relationship with God is– The closer (eyes & ears) I am to Him (reading the Bible, studying His Word, etc), the more clearly I hear Him and the easier it is to understand His will for me. The easier it is to understand His will, the better chance I have of accomplishing it. But when I slip and start following Jesus at a distance, I can’t clearly discern His will and when that happens, it’s easier for me to sin.
So how is your distance to the King of Kings right now? After graduating from college, I worked at PepsiCo and quickly climbed the corporate ladder being promoted three times within 18 months. At 23, I was leading their largest sales team & territory, my career was on the fast track, and I had one eye on Jesus so I thought my spiritual journey was going well too. At a large gala reception receiving a prestigious Pepsi leadership award, God opened my spiritual eyes to see that the entire senior leadership team was either divorced, far from pursuing God, and/or had drinking problems dealing with the sales pressures and I was going to be just like them. That award served as my spiritual dead man’s switch as it was then that I realized that I was following Jesus at a distance and not intimately. Just two months later I surrender my career and headed to graduate school to the shock of many.
Question |
What is your dead man’s switch that triggers keeping you from following Him at a distance?
Awesome, thanks Michael!!!