I am speaking this morning to someone who needs to come to Jesus for the first time. But I am also speaking to someone this morning who needs to "come back" to Jesus. You are a backslider. You are moving sideways in your Christian faith. If you are not moving forward, you are losing ground.

You know that you are no longer experiencing the joy that you once had in your Christian life. Your soul is in the process of decaying. You have lost your first love. You are experiencing what Peter experienced as he got away from his Savior, close to the fire with those people who were the emissaries of the high priests and those who had captured Jesus.

Perhaps you have moved away from your home church, your Christian friends, and that which was such an important part of a spiritual support system. You bought into the anonymity of the fast life, to an environment where not that many people know you that well, where our cities blur one into another and the accountability structures of more traditional living are gone.

For some reason you are here this morning. God is speaking to you. The truth is that God's children are never happy when they leave the Father. Peter wasn't. He wept, and he wept bitterly. It is at this moment that we must remind ourselves of what Jesus said to him prior to his denial. Jesus said, "But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back ..."

Do you catch that? "... when you have turned back." Peter did what Judas didn't. Judas wept bitterly, but he misdirected his repentance in suicidal despair, whereas Peter turned back to the Savior. He heard the rumor that the women had seen the Risen Christ in the garden. He ran to the tomb. He saw the strips of linen. He went away wondering what had happened (Luke 24:9-12).

Next we see him, he is there in Jerusalem in the room with the eleven disciples, Judas missing. Apparently Jesus had already appeared to him individually and now appears to them all. Peter humbled himself to come back to the One who offers true life.

Truth five: Others can learn from you.

Jesus said, "And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." There is no greater witness than someone who humbly has come back to the Lord. Peter just didn't come back; he devoted his life to the serving of others in the Name of his Lord, the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Tradition has it that he ended his life as a martyr. Peter, the betrayer, now truly "rock-man." That same tradition says that at his request he was crucified upside down in a sense of unworthiness.

You and I, like Peter, can sound the warning of what happens when you drift away from Jesus. You and I can express our gratitude to God for all He has done by helping others, realizing that grace neither begins nor ends with oneself. You and I can describe the joy of restoration with the Father who is a waiting Father, who yearns to welcome the prodigal home.

A concluding question. What will it be for you? You have met Judas. You have met Peter. Both were on a downward spiral. One was left hanging between heaven and hell in suicidal despair, "the son of perdition." The other turned from his bitter weeping and returned to the Savior's side and is now "rock-man," and upon a faith like his Jesus Christ is building His Church.

Which will you be? Judas? Or Peter?