Hearing Aids

I've only heard the voice of the Lord physically once, with these two ears I've got on the sides of my head. 

I am constantly listening for Him, and I hear His voice in my spirit, true. I'll note that I hear Him more clearly when I take the time to listen. If I'm too busy for Him, I'm really good at drowning Him out. But that's a blog post for another day.

The time I heard Him physically was an ordinary day, and the reason I heard Him was for what seemed like a trifling reason. But the event had a lifelong (thus far) impact.

I stood in my brother's bedroom amid a rising storm of controversy, your typical he-said, she-said sibling rivalry. It was swiftly escalating into a shouting match, and I came up with a really good insult to hurl. It was pretty amazing. I couldn't believe I'd thought of it. And boy, I was gonna use it; there would be no come-back. He'd have to admit defeat, and I'd be the glorious winner of... well, whatever this thing was we were fighting.

I gathered that insult into my lungs, ready to throw it into the mix like so much napalm. But before I could release it, I heard a quiet voice from inside my head, but just as audible as if someone were standing right next to me. "Tammi." (It was what I was called then; I go by Tamara now.)

The spoken voice wasn't like mine when I'm trying to make myself heard over my children's shouting matches. It was quiet and firm, and I heard rebuke in it, but mixed into that one word, threaded through it, was the same love I heard in my mom's voice when she tucked me in at night, the same love in my dad's voice when he would come into my room to tell me stories.

It completely undid me. I froze, my lungs still full of the air I'd gathered for the insult. I dropped onto my brother's bed and stared at him. He blinked at me. I'm sure he thought I'd spaced out for a second. I thought I'd better double-check. I pulled a Samuel (1 Samuel 3:5) and ran out into the kitchen: "Mom? Did you call me?"

Negative. And it had been a male voice. "Dad?" Again, negative.

And so I settled on the only possible conclusion. The Lord had stopped me from saying what I was going to say -- what I considered a triviality in the grand scheme of things -- for a reason only He knew, and which I have never found out, even now thirty some years later.

I have no idea why the Lord chose to let me audibly hear His voice that time. Maybe what I had to say would have broken something between my brother and I that could not have been mended. Maybe He did it just so I could use it as an example on this blog post years into the future. I don't know.

I do know that there was an arrest of movement, a reversal of my trajectory from one course of action to another that needed to happen. And maybe the only way to stop that steaming train heading down that particular track was to hear God's voice speak to me.

John 18:15-18 and 18:25-27 is this Gospel's account of Peter's three-time denial of knowing Jesus. There's a small section sandwiched between these denials that I think I'll save for tomorrow, since this is what I want to focus on today.

Jesus has been arrested and taken to the house of Annas, Caiaphas-the-high-priest's father-in-law. The disciples have scattered and fled. Peter, though, has regrouped with at least one other disciple, and they've followed Jesus to his destination. So here's where we pick up the story.

"Simon Peter and another disciple..." Who was the other disciple, I wonder? My footnotes say it was possibly John, since John likes to refer to himself as "the disciple Jesus loved" or "the other disciple" in quite a few places. 

Anyway, "Simon Peter and another disciple were following Jesus. Because this disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the high priest's courtyard, but Peter had to wait outside at the door. The other disciple, who was known to the high priest, came back, spoke to the girl on duty there and brought Peter in" (John 18:15-16).

This interesting detail has never really caught my attention before: The unnamed disciple is known to the high priest. The high priest knows who he is. It's on that basis that he is able to get into the interior courtyard of the house. This doesn't prove the fact that this disciple's association with Jesus is a known fact, but it is very likely.

So why is Peter so bent on subterfuge?

"You are not one of His disciples, are you?" the girl at the door asks Peter, when he enters the courtyard, now with permission because of his friend the other disciple, the disciple who is known to the high priest and very likely knows his association with Jesus.

Peter replies, "I am not."

Look at what fear can do to our most earnest wishes to do the right thing!! 

All four gospels have accounts of Peter's three denials, and while there's some variance in the identities of the people confronting Peter on the last two denials, all four agree that the first person to confront Peter is a slave girl.

In that time period, the slave girl would be nearly the lowest person on the social ladder -- the only thing that might have knocked her down a rung further on that ladder would have been if she had been leprous, unclean, or a Samaritan (and perhaps she was; I don't think we can know for sure). As it was, the threat she presented was minimal.

And Peter replies, "I am not."

Peter is present in that courtyard because of a disciple friend who is likely already known for his association with Jesus -- and, notably, from whom we do not hear denials of the Lord -- and he shakes with fear as he looks into the eyes of a slave girl, and says, "I am not."

Jesus is inside Annas' house, undergoing questioning (I'll get to that tomorrow), and Peter crowds with some others around a fiery coal bed to keep warm, since it's a cold night, and he'd stand out like a sore thumb if he stayed away from the fire ring. Fear guides his every action.

Actions like snapping "I am not" to a slave girl. Huddling around a fire for fear of standing out. Fear of arrest. Fear of what they're doing to Jesus inside the building. Fear of the unknown. 

Someone else glances at him, asks him if he is one of Jesus' disciples. Again, he snaps. "I am not."

Once more, someone else challenges him, this one, according to John, a relative of Malchus, the guy whose ear Peter has just cut off that evening before Jesus healed it. He says: "Didn't I see you with [Jesus] in the olive grove?"

"Again, Peter denied it." In the Gospel of Mark, it says: "He began to call down curses on himself, and he swore to them, 'I don't know this Man you're talking about'" (Mark 14:71).

For anyone counting, this is Denial #3. And the rooster crows.

At that moment, according to Luke 22:61, "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 22:62).

Peter gets embroiled in his emotions, doesn't he? Carried away, he allows his fear to dictate his first denial to a slave girl, and then, because a lie is always easier the second time, he tells it again to someone else, and then a third time to the relative of a man he'd badly injured who, no doubt, would take revenge on him then and there if Peter admitted who he was.

Sometimes, I think Peter gets the raw end of the deal. When Jesus predicts Peter's denial in Mark 14:30, "Peter insisted emphatically, 'Even if I have to die with You, I will never disown You.' And all the others said the same" (Mark 14:31).

Yeah, what about them, Jesus? Why does Peter get "the look" at the rooster's crow? Why not them? They're not even there -- they're hiding somewhere outside the courtyard. Peter's in the wolves' den. Surely he should get some credit.

Jesus strips all circumstances away and looks straight into Peter's heart. All those good things Peter has done? He pushes them to one side. All the failures where Peter has fallen flat on his face? Jesus pushes those things aside, too. He wants honesty -- raw, truthful honesty. A heart stripped bare. Peter is forced to stop his trajectory of denial and fear and pain and anger, stop it short, stop it while the breath is still in his lungs...

And reverse course.

The rooster crows. The voice sounds. Everything becomes still, despite the outward commotion of courtyard and soldiers, slave girls and crackling fire.

Jesus exits Annas' house where the guards are preparing to take Him to Caiaphas, and He looks across the courtyard straight at Peter.

And Peter stops everything, reverses course. He turns from the fire, exits the courtyard, and weeps bitterly.

How I feel this! How often I have denied Him in my own circumstances. It's just... easier. The slave girl is looking. The big, angry issue is looming. The eyes are judging. The suspicions are mounting.

And then at some point, I hear His voice, the one that says, "Tamara" with all the reproof and love in the world.

Here's the thing I don't often think of, though. Jesus... looks at Peter like He knows him. He looks past all the other distractions, and He stares into the eyes of His friend. He recognizes Peter's heart.

We get caught up in the fact that Peter denies Jesus. But...

Jesus doesn't deny Peter. Jesus doesn't deny us.

That, my friends, is unmerited favor. That's unmerited grace. When I've denied my Lord, He stops everything, calls my name, calls me His friend.

Carry that thought with you today. Me, I'm gonna cry now for a while.