Monday, August 10, 2009

Today's Passage: Luke 9

There are a lot of great passages in chapter 9 of Luke, but the one I was drawn to this week was Peter's confession of Christ, verses 18-27.

In verses 18-20 Jesus seems to be just having a normal conversation with the disciples about who everyone thinks He is. To me it sounds like Jesus is trying to point out the difference between hearing about Jesus and hearing from Jesus, but then in verse 21 Jesus says something strange. "Don't tell anyone who I really am..." how weird? Especially since everything that they had been doing was drawing attention to the fact that Jesus was the Christ. Then in verse 22, Jesus goes on to reveal to the disciples how His journey must end in His death and resurrection.

Up until this point I can only imagine what the disciples were thinking. I can see them with their mouths wide open shocked at what Jesus is telling them. Then instead of Jesus easing up on the shock and awe routine, He lays out for them one of the clearest descriptions of what God expects from His believers. These verses, 23-27, provide us with a clear challenge and warning of what will happen if we do not rise to meet it.

The most important part of this challenge from God, in my opinion, is found at the very beginning in verse 23. "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." The key word there is daily, we have to choose daily to be a sold out follower of Christ. We can't coast along hoping that we have somehow done enough to get by. No, when Jesus uses the words "loses his life for me" He doesn't just mean death. He means losing every day of the rest of your life to God's plan instead of your own.

Yes it is hard, it wouldn't be a challenge if it wasn't. All we can do is take it one day at a time. Will you heed the challenge?