Matthew 26:73-75
And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech bewrayeth thee. Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the cock crew. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and wept bitterly.

Finally Peter’s bravado and pride crumbles in a heap within him. He has nothing left of himself to stand on. He is, in this moment, completely broken. He weeps bitterly at this reality—he had just denied his Lord three times, as Jesus had said he would do but he had never believed that he would or could do. He had failed a test, as it were. He’d made a mistake. He had done something he didn’t ever want to do.

But a humbling place is a good place to be. These kinds of experiences teach us to rely less on ourselves and more on God. These moments of brokenness show us more clearly the mercy and grace of God. Coming to the end of ourselves, gaining these insights into what we are truly made of deep down in our hearts, sets us on the path of letting go of the old and embracing the new that Jesus wants to build up in us. With Peter’s self and pride out of the way, he could start to become that man, that church leader, that Gospel preacher that Jesus wanted him to be.

They are not comfortable or pleasant, but we all need these pride-breaking moments, or else we just go on the same as we were before, depending on ourselves, our strength, our ideas, our abilities. But when we are humbled under the mighty hand of God, when we’ve wept bitterly over our faults and failures, then we can go forward into being moldable, conformable people, easily shaped by Christ and His mercy to become all that He wants us to be, equipped to do as He would have us do, surrendered to His will instead of our own.