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In the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter displays his remarkable ability to act on instinct…and he’s an instinctive fighter. He sees Jesus in danger, and throws himself into battle without a thought for his own safety. At this point, you can’t help but think of Peter as a man of action. A soldier for Christ. But hours later, he’s so frightened that he can’t even admit to knowing Jesus.
In our modern world of science, we’re sometimes tempted to think of prayer, petition, and merit as a mathematic equation. “Pray about X for Y number of hours, fasting for W days, and X will be answered.” We’ve come to expect an immediate answer to our problems…like a simple program that has occasional bug, but generally works well with a few clicks of the mouse.