May 13, 2025 • 12 mins
FOMO is a real thing! This "fear of missing out" can distract or even consume our lives, keeping us from doing those things which can glorify Christ. It's important to note that even one of those first disciples who walked with Jesus still failed him. Simon Peter suffered a rather humiliating and public failure and a public restoration, yet this was not enough for him--he had to know what Jesus had in mind for someone else. This unhealthy interest in what the Lord is doing in the lives of others is one in which we struggle with today.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I've been using this quote a lothere lately.
It's been attributed to Teddy Roosevelt.
Comparison is the thief of joy. I like that quote and it's a
good setup to talking about one of these what I would call
another post resurrection experience that one of the
disciples had. This one has to do with with
Simon Peter. And interestingly in this
account Jesus calls him Simon. But more or less I would say
(00:23):
that this is a case when Simon gets FOMO.
FOMO is an acronym. It was added to the Oxford
Dictionary in 2013. It means the fear of missing
out, and there's actually a definition to this.
It's an anxiety that something exciting or interesting may
currently be happening somewhereelse, and it's often incited by
(00:45):
posts seen on social media. It has to do with one of these
situations where you might have been happy about 15 minutes ago
and then you see something happening online with someone
else. It doesn't really have to be
anyone you know, and then suddenly you feel inferior or
that you're being cheated about something.
They did a survey on the impact that social media had on FOMO
(01:06):
and apparently this is a this isa real thing.
And one of the statements that participants were asked asked to
respond to is this. Sometimes I wonder if I spend
too much time keeping up with what's going on with others.
Now, a Sunday or two ago, when Ibrought this before my own
people, I thought more people would know about FOMO than
others. But I did have several people
(01:28):
say I never heard of FOMO before.
Even if you've never heard of the acronym FOMO, which is the
fear of missing out, you may have heard of the phrase keeping
up with the Joneses. I thought it might be a good
idea to take us to the beach, figuratively speaking, of
course. And this is where this situation
unfolds. It's in John chapter 21.
There's this in between time between the resurrection and the
ascension, when Jesus was on theearth for a period of 40 days.
(01:52):
And one of the interesting things that I realized, having
gone back to look at this again,is the number of occasions where
Jesus appears to someone and they don't recognize him.
Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene at the tomb, and she thinks he's
the gardener. He appears twice to the
disciples in that locked room. They thought he was a ghost
until he spoke to them and then he breathed upon them.
(02:13):
There's this encounter on the road to Emmaus when he appears
to two people walking that way, and they were talking about what
had happened, not realizing thatJesus was with them.
Now we find ourselves on the water with with Simon Peter and
he went fishing. Not only he but several others
of the disciples. They were going back to their
previous life after the crucifixion and really not
(02:34):
knowing what to make of the empty tomb.
Peter went back to what he knew before he met Jesus.
He went back to the water and itwas early in the morning that
Jesus appeared as a shadowy figure on the beach.
And he calls out to them and says, have you caught any fish?
And they say no. And Jesus says, cast your net on
the other side. And they do.
And they catch a large number intheir net.
(02:55):
And then John exclaims, it's theLord.
And Peter, in typical Peter fashion, he jumps into the water
and he swims 100 yards to the beach.
It's no coincidence that this ismore or less a repeat of the
call experience when Jesus firstmet Peter and or at Simon at
that time. And they had been fishing and
hadn't caught anything. And Jesus said to cast your net
(03:16):
out again. And he did.
And so in essence, as Simon is going back to his previous life,
Jesus is meeting him there. And they're they're on the
beach. Jesus makes breakfast for them
and they have an uncomfortable conversation.
And really what Simon did, this is one of those situations of a
Facebook post or a tweet that doesn't age well.
The last time that Peter spoke to Jesus was one of these
(03:38):
occasions where Jesus was sayingthat he was going to be
crucified and was going to die. And Peter says, even if everyone
else denies you, I'm never goingto do that, essentially saying
I'm going to, I'm going to standup for you even if these others
fail you. And Jesus predicts his rather
public failure in the in the denials.
And here we find this somewhat familiar experience where Jesus
(03:59):
is asking him several times, do you love me, Simon, son of John,
do you love me? And ask him three times, which
is a humiliating echo of the number of denials that that he
had for a rather public failure.He's having a a public
restoration too. It's encouraging to me as I as I
look at this, because I reflect upon the times that I failed the
(04:22):
Lord. And maybe you have also that
Jesus meets us in the broken places.
You know, Simon Peter is an interesting case study because
he's capable of great faith. When Jesus said, who do you say
that I am? And he says you are the Christ,
the son of the living God. And Jesus renamed Simon Peter
and you're my rock. And upon this rock I will build
(04:42):
my church. And here later on, we find that
Simon Peter denies knowing Jesus.
There's a word that comes from the German.
It's called schaffenrude. It means taking joy in the
misery of others. And maybe a more recent
experience had to do with the NFL draft.
When Shadora Sanders, quarterback for the University
of Colorado, he was expected to be a first round draft choice,
(05:02):
but in the end, he ended up being drafted in the fifth round
and that the drop in the draft cost him about $40 million.
And there were many commentatorsand fans who took joy in this
result, saying he needed to be humbled.
And without really knowing the young man personally, I don't
know what to make of that. But that's a more recent example
about how people, some of us cantake joy in the humiliation of
(05:24):
other people. I wondered about the other
disciples as they were watching all of this unfold and perhaps
listening to how Peter would say, I'm not going to deny you
even if all these others deny you.
The truth of the matter is that the other disciples, they all
failed Jesus too. I mean, they were all guilty of
wanting to know who would be thegreatest.
And on more than one occasion they would ask that question,
(05:45):
maybe secretly or the word got out.
They wanted to know which one could sit on the right hand of
Jesus and which could sit on thethe left hand side.
Some failures are more public than others.
And that was true then and that's true now.
And FOMO can be a serious situation for each and every one
of us. We can be happy one moment and
be unhappy the next. When we see someone else doing
(06:07):
something that we think that we should be doing, or someone has
something that we think should belong to us.
It's this unhealthy obsession tofocus on what someone else has,
and we don't even have to know them to to get FOMO.
One of the verses I've been thinking about here lately comes
from First Thessalonians chapter4.
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life.
(06:28):
You should mind your own business and work with your
hands, just as we told you, and you will win the respect of
outsiders. Simon Peter has FOMO in this
case. Could the cure be as simple as
following Jesus and doing what Jesus has asked him to do?
And this is more than simple curiosity.
When he turns, the very first thing that he does after Jesus
(06:48):
asked him to follow me, after predicting and foreshadowing the
kind of life he's going to have and giving him this opportunity
to glorify Christ with his life and also his death.
The next thing that Simon does after being told to follow me,
he turns and looks at the disciple whom Jesus loved, who
is John. And again, I think this is more
than curiosity based upon the response of Jesus, who says if I
(07:12):
want him to remain until I return, what is that to you?
You must follow me. This is like the old adage when
someone is asking what you're doing and you say nunya and they
say nunya what? And you say none.
Your business pastors and churchleaders can succumb to this
sense of FOMO and Chafermud can be a very real thing.
For those of us in the ministry,we might never admit it, but
(07:34):
when we look at others in our field and other ministry posts
that those that can appear to bea too prideful that there's more
than one occasion. Again, I could give you
examples, but when ministers have moral failures or ethical
failures for those who are outside the church, it's another
demonstration of how everyone ishypocrites.
And if we're not careful, we cansecretly rejoice in the failure
(07:56):
of someone else. And I don't know the heart of
the disciples, and I don't thinkthat that's what they were doing
with Simon. But I do think it's important as
we look back at Simon Peter and what was going on after he was
asked to follow Jesus, he turnedto look at someone else and to
inquire about what is going to happen to this other person.
I got this one from a preaching magazine.
(08:18):
Oscar Wilde once told a fictional story about how the
devil was crossing the Libyan desert and he came upon the spot
where a number of demons were tormenting a holy hermit.
The hermit easily shook off their evil suggestions, and the
devil was watching this as they failed to sway the hermit.
And then he stopped them and stepped in to give them a
lesson. And he said, what you're doing
(08:39):
is too crude. Watch this.
Then he leaned over and he whispered into the hermit's ear.
Your brother has just been made Bishop of Alexandria.
And then suddenly a look of malignant envy clouded the once
serene face of the hermit. Jesus told Simon, you're going
to live a long life. When you get old, you're not
going to be able to go where youwant to go.
When you're young, you can do what you want to do, but when
(09:02):
you get older, you're not going to be able to do that, and
someone else is going to stretchout your hands.
And the Scripture indicates thatthis was a foreshadowing of the
kind of death that Simon was going to have.
And church tradition indicates that Simon Peter was crucified
after a a long life, but at his request and not wanting or
feeling that he was worthy to becrucified in the same manner as
(09:25):
Jesus, he asked to be crucified upside down.
I've read this passage a number of times and it occurs to me
that as Jesus is dealing with Simon, he did not say are you
sorry He didn't ask him three times.
Are you sorry? Because I suspect that Jesus
knew he was sorry because he went out and wept bitterly after
he had denied his Lord three times and he went back to his
(09:47):
old life on on the water. Jesus didn't ask him, are you
sorry? He asked him, do you love me?
And what is noteworthy to point out, as Jesus asked him this
question three times, It was thethird time when Jesus asked him
the third time, do you love me? That Peter was grieved.
This really becomes more noticeable in the Greek that
Jesus uses the word agape the first two times.
Do you agape? Do you love me in this way?
(10:09):
And Simon responds and says, youknow that I love you, Phileo.
He wasn't able to say that he had that complete unself kind of
love for Jesus. And it was on the 3rd occasion
when Jesus said, do you love me?He uses the word phileo.
It's the same word that the Simon Peter was using.
And at that point he was grieved.
He said, yes, Lord, you know that I love you, I phileo you.
(10:33):
And what that simply means is I,I believe that Jesus is, is
rooting out any remaining hubristhat Simon might have.
And he is also meeting Simon where he is in that broken
place. When Simon Peter says you know
all things, you know that I loveyou.
He uses the the reference you know twice, which says Lord you.
(10:53):
At this point, after everything that I have experienced and all
the failure that I have shown tothe world after denying you, I'm
not sure what I know. I'm trusting you to know more
than I know. There's this reassurance that we
can find in this passage when weunderstand that those first
disciples failed and they were walking with Jesus.
But failing doesn't make you a failure.
(11:15):
And forgiveness is possible, butforgiveness is costly.
It was costly to Jesus. There's this cliche that I've
heard. We want to know how do we make
good decisions? We make good decisions by
experience. Well, how do you get experience
bad decisions? There's a process of growth and
maturity that happens to us overtime as we we walk with Jesus
(11:36):
through this process of the the hills and the valleys of life
and the successes and the failures and spiritual growth is
more than head knowledge about the fruit of the Spirit and
those the first two fruit that we find the fruit of the Spirit
is love and joy and peace and soon.
The challenge for myself and maybe for others of us who are
(11:56):
listening to this, maybe you're going through a situation where
you have failed and you don't believe the Lord can forgive
you. I want to reassure you that
forgiveness is possible based upon the example that we find
with Simon Peter in the lengths that Jesus went to, to meet him
in that broken place and to admonish us that we can, in
fact, not look at someone else and what they're going to do and
(12:17):
what they have versus what we don't have.
But let's bloom where we're planted.
Let's simply keep our eyes upon Jesus.
And even as Simon in that momentwas given a clue about his
future, that he was going to live a long life, we're not
promised how many days we're going to have on this earth, but
we can do what Jesus asked SimonPeter to do, which is to glorify
(12:40):
him. What is that to you?
I just need you to follow me. Let's do our best to glorify
Christ in all that we do and notbe overly consumed about what is
happening with someone else. Comparison can be, in fact, the
thief of joy.
I've been using this quote a lothere lately.
It's been attributed to Teddy Roosevelt.
Comparison is the thief of joy. I like that quote and it's a
good setup to talking about one of these what I would call
another post resurrection experience that one of the
disciples had. This one has to do with with
Simon Peter. And interestingly in this
account Jesus calls him Simon. But more or less I would say
(00:23):
that this is a case when Simon gets FOMO.
FOMO is an acronym. It was added to the Oxford
Dictionary in 2013. It means the fear of missing
out, and there's actually a definition to this.
It's an anxiety that something exciting or interesting may
currently be happening somewhereelse, and it's often incited by
(00:45):
posts seen on social media. It has to do with one of these
situations where you might have been happy about 15 minutes ago
and then you see something happening online with someone
else. It doesn't really have to be
anyone you know, and then suddenly you feel inferior or
that you're being cheated about something.
They did a survey on the impact that social media had on FOMO
(01:06):
and apparently this is a this isa real thing.
And one of the statements that participants were asked asked to
respond to is this. Sometimes I wonder if I spend
too much time keeping up with what's going on with others.
Now, a Sunday or two ago, when Ibrought this before my own
people, I thought more people would know about FOMO than
others. But I did have several people
(01:28):
say I never heard of FOMO before.
Even if you've never heard of the acronym FOMO, which is the
fear of missing out, you may have heard of the phrase keeping
up with the Joneses. I thought it might be a good
idea to take us to the beach, figuratively speaking, of
course. And this is where this situation
unfolds. It's in John chapter 21.
There's this in between time between the resurrection and the
ascension, when Jesus was on theearth for a period of 40 days.
(01:52):
And one of the interesting things that I realized, having
gone back to look at this again,is the number of occasions where
Jesus appears to someone and they don't recognize him.
Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene at the tomb, and she thinks he's
the gardener. He appears twice to the
disciples in that locked room. They thought he was a ghost
until he spoke to them and then he breathed upon them.
(02:13):
There's this encounter on the road to Emmaus when he appears
to two people walking that way, and they were talking about what
had happened, not realizing thatJesus was with them.
Now we find ourselves on the water with with Simon Peter and
he went fishing. Not only he but several others
of the disciples. They were going back to their
previous life after the crucifixion and really not
(02:34):
knowing what to make of the empty tomb.
Peter went back to what he knew before he met Jesus.
He went back to the water and itwas early in the morning that
Jesus appeared as a shadowy figure on the beach.
And he calls out to them and says, have you caught any fish?
And they say no. And Jesus says, cast your net on
the other side. And they do.
And they catch a large number intheir net.
(02:55):
And then John exclaims, it's theLord.
And Peter, in typical Peter fashion, he jumps into the water
and he swims 100 yards to the beach.
It's no coincidence that this ismore or less a repeat of the
call experience when Jesus firstmet Peter and or at Simon at
that time. And they had been fishing and
hadn't caught anything. And Jesus said to cast your net
(03:16):
out again. And he did.
And so in essence, as Simon is going back to his previous life,
Jesus is meeting him there. And they're they're on the
beach. Jesus makes breakfast for them
and they have an uncomfortable conversation.
And really what Simon did, this is one of those situations of a
Facebook post or a tweet that doesn't age well.
The last time that Peter spoke to Jesus was one of these
(03:38):
occasions where Jesus was sayingthat he was going to be
crucified and was going to die. And Peter says, even if everyone
else denies you, I'm never goingto do that, essentially saying
I'm going to, I'm going to standup for you even if these others
fail you. And Jesus predicts his rather
public failure in the in the denials.
And here we find this somewhat familiar experience where Jesus
(03:59):
is asking him several times, do you love me, Simon, son of John,
do you love me? And ask him three times, which
is a humiliating echo of the number of denials that that he
had for a rather public failure.He's having a a public
restoration too. It's encouraging to me as I as I
look at this, because I reflect upon the times that I failed the
(04:22):
Lord. And maybe you have also that
Jesus meets us in the broken places.
You know, Simon Peter is an interesting case study because
he's capable of great faith. When Jesus said, who do you say
that I am? And he says you are the Christ,
the son of the living God. And Jesus renamed Simon Peter
and you're my rock. And upon this rock I will build
(04:42):
my church. And here later on, we find that
Simon Peter denies knowing Jesus.
There's a word that comes from the German.
It's called schaffenrude. It means taking joy in the
misery of others. And maybe a more recent
experience had to do with the NFL draft.
When Shadora Sanders, quarterback for the University
of Colorado, he was expected to be a first round draft choice,
(05:02):
but in the end, he ended up being drafted in the fifth round
and that the drop in the draft cost him about $40 million.
And there were many commentatorsand fans who took joy in this
result, saying he needed to be humbled.
And without really knowing the young man personally, I don't
know what to make of that. But that's a more recent example
about how people, some of us cantake joy in the humiliation of
(05:24):
other people. I wondered about the other
disciples as they were watching all of this unfold and perhaps
listening to how Peter would say, I'm not going to deny you
even if all these others deny you.
The truth of the matter is that the other disciples, they all
failed Jesus too. I mean, they were all guilty of
wanting to know who would be thegreatest.
And on more than one occasion they would ask that question,
(05:45):
maybe secretly or the word got out.
They wanted to know which one could sit on the right hand of
Jesus and which could sit on thethe left hand side.
Some failures are more public than others.
And that was true then and that's true now.
And FOMO can be a serious situation for each and every one
of us. We can be happy one moment and
be unhappy the next. When we see someone else doing
(06:07):
something that we think that we should be doing, or someone has
something that we think should belong to us.
It's this unhealthy obsession tofocus on what someone else has,
and we don't even have to know them to to get FOMO.
One of the verses I've been thinking about here lately comes
from First Thessalonians chapter4.
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life.
(06:28):
You should mind your own business and work with your
hands, just as we told you, and you will win the respect of
outsiders. Simon Peter has FOMO in this
case. Could the cure be as simple as
following Jesus and doing what Jesus has asked him to do?
And this is more than simple curiosity.
When he turns, the very first thing that he does after Jesus
(06:48):
asked him to follow me, after predicting and foreshadowing the
kind of life he's going to have and giving him this opportunity
to glorify Christ with his life and also his death.
The next thing that Simon does after being told to follow me,
he turns and looks at the disciple whom Jesus loved, who
is John. And again, I think this is more
than curiosity based upon the response of Jesus, who says if I
(07:12):
want him to remain until I return, what is that to you?
You must follow me. This is like the old adage when
someone is asking what you're doing and you say nunya and they
say nunya what? And you say none.
Your business pastors and churchleaders can succumb to this
sense of FOMO and Chafermud can be a very real thing.
For those of us in the ministry,we might never admit it, but
(07:34):
when we look at others in our field and other ministry posts
that those that can appear to bea too prideful that there's more
than one occasion. Again, I could give you
examples, but when ministers have moral failures or ethical
failures for those who are outside the church, it's another
demonstration of how everyone ishypocrites.
And if we're not careful, we cansecretly rejoice in the failure
(07:56):
of someone else. And I don't know the heart of
the disciples, and I don't thinkthat that's what they were doing
with Simon. But I do think it's important as
we look back at Simon Peter and what was going on after he was
asked to follow Jesus, he turnedto look at someone else and to
inquire about what is going to happen to this other person.
I got this one from a preaching magazine.
(08:18):
Oscar Wilde once told a fictional story about how the
devil was crossing the Libyan desert and he came upon the spot
where a number of demons were tormenting a holy hermit.
The hermit easily shook off their evil suggestions, and the
devil was watching this as they failed to sway the hermit.
And then he stopped them and stepped in to give them a
lesson. And he said, what you're doing
(08:39):
is too crude. Watch this.
Then he leaned over and he whispered into the hermit's ear.
Your brother has just been made Bishop of Alexandria.
And then suddenly a look of malignant envy clouded the once
serene face of the hermit. Jesus told Simon, you're going
to live a long life. When you get old, you're not
going to be able to go where youwant to go.
When you're young, you can do what you want to do, but when
(09:02):
you get older, you're not going to be able to do that, and
someone else is going to stretchout your hands.
And the Scripture indicates thatthis was a foreshadowing of the
kind of death that Simon was going to have.
And church tradition indicates that Simon Peter was crucified
after a a long life, but at his request and not wanting or
feeling that he was worthy to becrucified in the same manner as
(09:25):
Jesus, he asked to be crucified upside down.
I've read this passage a number of times and it occurs to me
that as Jesus is dealing with Simon, he did not say are you
sorry He didn't ask him three times.
Are you sorry? Because I suspect that Jesus
knew he was sorry because he went out and wept bitterly after
he had denied his Lord three times and he went back to his
(09:47):
old life on on the water. Jesus didn't ask him, are you
sorry? He asked him, do you love me?
And what is noteworthy to point out, as Jesus asked him this
question three times, It was thethird time when Jesus asked him
the third time, do you love me? That Peter was grieved.
This really becomes more noticeable in the Greek that
Jesus uses the word agape the first two times.
Do you agape? Do you love me in this way?
(10:09):
And Simon responds and says, youknow that I love you, Phileo.
He wasn't able to say that he had that complete unself kind of
love for Jesus. And it was on the 3rd occasion
when Jesus said, do you love me?He uses the word phileo.
It's the same word that the Simon Peter was using.
And at that point he was grieved.
He said, yes, Lord, you know that I love you, I phileo you.
(10:33):
And what that simply means is I,I believe that Jesus is, is
rooting out any remaining hubristhat Simon might have.
And he is also meeting Simon where he is in that broken
place. When Simon Peter says you know
all things, you know that I loveyou.
He uses the the reference you know twice, which says Lord you.
(10:53):
At this point, after everything that I have experienced and all
the failure that I have shown tothe world after denying you, I'm
not sure what I know. I'm trusting you to know more
than I know. There's this reassurance that we
can find in this passage when weunderstand that those first
disciples failed and they were walking with Jesus.
But failing doesn't make you a failure.
(11:15):
And forgiveness is possible, butforgiveness is costly.
It was costly to Jesus. There's this cliche that I've
heard. We want to know how do we make
good decisions? We make good decisions by
experience. Well, how do you get experience
bad decisions? There's a process of growth and
maturity that happens to us overtime as we we walk with Jesus
(11:36):
through this process of the the hills and the valleys of life
and the successes and the failures and spiritual growth is
more than head knowledge about the fruit of the Spirit and
those the first two fruit that we find the fruit of the Spirit
is love and joy and peace and soon.
The challenge for myself and maybe for others of us who are
(11:56):
listening to this, maybe you're going through a situation where
you have failed and you don't believe the Lord can forgive
you. I want to reassure you that
forgiveness is possible based upon the example that we find
with Simon Peter in the lengths that Jesus went to, to meet him
in that broken place and to admonish us that we can, in
fact, not look at someone else and what they're going to do and
(12:17):
what they have versus what we don't have.
But let's bloom where we're planted.
Let's simply keep our eyes upon Jesus.
And even as Simon in that momentwas given a clue about his
future, that he was going to live a long life, we're not
promised how many days we're going to have on this earth, but
we can do what Jesus asked SimonPeter to do, which is to glorify
(12:40):
him. What is that to you?
I just need you to follow me. Let's do our best to glorify
Christ in all that we do and notbe overly consumed about what is
happening with someone else. Comparison can be, in fact, the
thief of joy.
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