Luke 22:31-35: in context

At the table, Jesus turns to Peter with a warning and a promise. Simon, Simon, he says, Satan has demanded to have you all, to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers. Peter protests that he is ready to go to prison and death; Jesus tells him that before the rooster crows, he will deny three times that he even knows him. And then, gently, he reminds them that when he sent them out with nothing, they lacked nothing.

There is deep comfort hidden in what Jesus says to Peter. He knows Peter is about to fail, and fail badly, denying him three times within hours. And yet, before the fall, he says: I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail. Peter would stumble, but he would not be lost, because Christ had prayed for him, and Christ's prayer held him through the very failure Jesus foresaw. The sifting was permitted; Peter would be shaken hard; but under the shaking was the intercession of his Lord, keeping his faith from finally failing. This is a window onto how Christ holds his own. He does not promise that we will never stumble; Peter did, grievously. But he prays for us in our testing, and his prayer is what keeps our faith from collapsing altogether, so that the fall, real as it is, is not the end. When we are sifted, when we are shaken and even fall, it is not our grip on Christ that finally saves us but his grip on us, held fast by his intercession. And notice what Jesus tells Peter to do afterward: when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers. The failure was not the end of Peter's usefulness but, in a way, the making of it; the man who fell and was restored would be the one to strengthen others. Our failures, brought back to Christ, become the very things that equip us to help others who stumble. Christ prayed Peter through his denial, restored him, and made him a strengthener of the weak. He does the same with us: holding us through our testing by his prayer, and turning even our failures, once we have turned back, into the means of strengthening others.

When I am sifted and shaken, even to the point of failing, can I rest not in my own grip on Christ but in his grip on me, held by his prayer that my faith may not finally fail, and will I let my failures, once I have turned back, become the means by which I strengthen others who stumble?