do you love me?

The pastor at my church has been preaching on the third encounter that Christ had with His disciples, found in John 21, and this past Sunday, he talked about the section of scripture where Jesus asks Peter three times "Do you love me?" I was relating to Peter a lot in this quick conversation, because I so often want to say, "Yes, Lord, you know I love you." What I'm slowly realizing, though, is that He is not asking this for His own sake. He is asking for mine. I was also thinking about Jesus' responses when Peter answered. There was trust in the answers. Feed my sheep, feed my lambs...Jesus knew that Peter would play a huge part in the start of the church, and it seems like, this was a bit of a passing of the baton to Peter. Take care of my people, Peter, I know that you can do it, and you can do it BECAUSE you love me.

I can only love others because I love Christ, and I can only love Christ, because He loves me. And, then...feeding can happen. Such simple, gospel truth, and it's amazing how many times a day that we can miss it.

I know that there is more to this passage...let me know what you think.