After entrusting Peter to look after his sheep, Jesus tells Peter how he will die. Not in a blaze of glory, but as an old man taken against his will.
Jesus then tells Peter to follow him. Rather than obey his Lord and Saviour, Peter is preoccupied with what John is up to and queries Jesus about him. Jesus sees Peter has missed the whole point and asks Peter “What is that to you? Follow me.”
Even after that response, there were those who missed the point, thinking the crux of the message was about John’s fate, rather than what Jesus was really saying – follow me.
So often instead of concentrating that we’re following Jesus, we can spend time looking around at others and judging their walk. Before we can successfully help others, we need to make sure we’re following Jesus, otherwise instead of shepherding, we’re just interfering busy bodies.
So often we can hear teaching and instead of applying it to ourselves, we think of someone else it could apply to. Now it’s possible that person might need to hear it also, but we must first check to see if it applies to us.
Only by looking first to Jesus can we then look around and help others.