Obedience to Jesus can have many motivations – and rarely, if ever, produces love. However, when we learn to truly love Jesus, that love always produces obedience. This distinction was a central theme of Jesus’ final teaching before his crucifixion, and it’s a lesson that we must learn along with Peter after the resurrection.

After engaging Jesus’ resurrection, our temptation is to go back to life as normal. However, Jesus wants us to see that, while the world is still much the same, everything has changed. The resurrection of Jesus changes the way that we engage the world. We live in a world where there are plenty of fish.

How do we as followers of Jesus believe the unbelievable – that Jesus rose from the dead? John gives us a framework to engage this incredible event – through the impact of the resurrection, the testimony of the resurrection, and the concrete evidence.

The blessing however, isn’t in the proof but in the faith.

A leap of faith is always necessary for apprentices of Jesus.

It’s only when we encounter God in the dark places that we can truly embrace the joy that comes with overcoming the darkness. Jesus’ resurrection was not just the return of a friend, teacher and companion. It marks victory over sin, death and hell, and brings eternal hope into all of our encounters with darkness.

The life of Jesus can be framed in many ways, one of which is a face-off with death itself. The encounters that Jesus had with death show us that He saw death as an evil intruder into God’s good design. However, it was only by facing death head on that He could overcome it.

Hitting “rock bottom” is a term that often gets used for those who are enmeshed in destructive lifestyles that could lead to tragedy, which is a realistic description of all of our lives apart from Jesus. Surrender often happens in layers, but when we finaly surrender all we have, we find that pursuing the will of God is actually best for us.

All of us face times when we doubt. Being a disciple is not about never doubting, but it’s learning where to go when we do.

As we grow in our apprenticeship to Jesus,

we recognize that He is the only place we can really go.

So even in our doubts, we keep returning to Jesus.

The seeming silence of God is one of the most difficult situations we can face as believers. In one of Jesus’ most difficult parables, He calls us to never give up on hearing from God. Persistence in prayer is a direct tie to the quality of our faith.

There are times in life when some aspect of our temporal life becomes so large it is all-consuming. When we encounter God in our sickness, He doesn’t minimize our suffering, but magnifies His glory and Kingdom purposes in the midst of it. Pain and suffering are never easy, but in the Kingdom of God, they are also not ultimate.

Before we can encounter God in the dark places of life, we need to admit that those dark places exist for followers of Jesus. This is a reality from which Jesus never backed away. Instead, He made it perfectly clear that suffering is a part of the world. This is a promise that we never like to claim. However, it’s vital for us to remember the corresponding truth: Jesus has overcome the world!