"Now Peter was sitting out in the courtyard, and a servant girl came to him. 'You also were with Jesus of Galilee,' she said."

Matthew 26.69 records a servant girl came to Peter and commented that he had been with Jesus. One of the great tragedies of the Scripture is Peter’s denial of Jesus the night before He was crucified. Peter was adamant that Jesus’ prediction of this occurrence was wrong, yet Jesus was right. Peter was not coerced into a confession which he refused to give; he did not have the government threatening to kill him if he admitted his affinity to Jesus. A powerless slave girl merely asked a question to which Peter assumed the worst and so denied his Lord. Things were going badly for the Lord Jesus, and rather than being associated with Him, Peter denied knowing Him to a slave girl who may or may not have had malicious intent. Her question of Peter’s relationship to Jesus could have been an opportunity to tell her about the Messiah, but Peter feared the worst so denied his apostolic duty.

The cause of Peter’s failure was his lack of spiritual strength. Jesus invited him to pray with Him for strength to handle the evening's events for Jesus warned Peter the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Rather than pray, Peter slept and so at his hour of crisis he was left only with the resources of weak flesh which were entirely incapable of doing the right thing.

We are not too different from Peter. Most in the church tell no one about their love for Jesus Christ. God’s means for marketing Himself is through His people who are too afraid to identify with Jesus publicly. We are not prayed full of spiritual strength so when we are with others they encounter our weak flesh leaving us in a constant state of denial of our Lord in both word and deed. Like Peter we need to weep bitterly over our failure and resolve to change beginning with reconciliation and prayer to Jesus.

Mike writes devotionals like these daily for his CBMC Mid-Michigan site and The Spiritual Coach blog.