Keith Battle - Spring Cleaning Pt 1. Emotional Decluttering, Grief and Guilt

Three times God asks Peter, «Do you love me?» He’s getting mad because he doesn’t realize Jesus is blessing him. I’m freaking out! How many times did Peter deny Jesus? You know what Jesus is doing? He’s offsetting every denial with a statement of love. So every time Peter recalls what that girl said, «I think I saw you with him, ” he thinks of her saying, „But don’t you love me?“ He replies, „I love you, Lord; you know I love you.“ When he thinks back to the second man who says, „You look like you were with him, ” he says, „No, I don’t even know him.“ And she asked, „Do you love me?“ He responds, „Don’t you know I love you?“ When the man says, „I can tell you’re a Galilean, ” Peter insists he doesn’t know anything about that man. And Jesus asks, „Do you love me, though?“

See, what you have to understand is that Jesus is trying to show him, „I’m not even holding against you what you did, because I told you you were going to do it before you did it.“ Y’all missed that! He already told him; He already knew Peter was going to mess up. And your one criterion for serving me is love, because every time Peter says, „You know I love you, ” Jesus responds, „Then get back to work! Feed my sheep, feed my lambs.“

„I know you messed up, but I still trust you to shepherd my people.“ The one criterion is, „Do you love me?“ See, some of y’all think the criteria for serving the Lord are having my doctrine right, crossing all my T’s, avoiding fornication, not drinking too much, not getting high, and never having done anything wrong. That’s the wrong criterion! You can do all of that or none of that, but if you don’t love Him, God says, „I want to know: do you love me?“ If you love me, I can work with you. There are fornicators who still love Him. Who am I talking to? There’s somebody who has gotten high but still loves Him. Somebody had a drink but is still loved, then raise your hand.

Here’s the thing: there’s a lot of us imperfect people here, but somebody who will keep it real with me knows the criteria for serving God isn’t all that we did right; it’s that even when we were messing up, we still always loved Him.