From the Kitchen Table
Day 31
And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” Mark 8:31-38
I want to say it again, remember that God is more interested in our “will” than our “walk”. Being precedes doing and how we think will determine what we do and how we do it. The Holy Spirit tells us in Romans 8 that the mind set on the flesh is death and the mind set on the spirit is life. We will travel where our thinking takes us. We cannot serve two masters and we cannot work two wills. We end up trying to please those different wills and miss the pleasure of both. I’m sure that there are some people who take pleasure in their own will to their own destruction. They just don’t think about the end or the goal. They don’t worry about God’s will because they don’t believe in God but man, left to his own devices, will find death, disaster and disappointment. We’re just not as smart as God, the creator and giver of life. It doesn’t take smarts, it takes trust but if we trust in Him, He will make us smart for life and give us the pleasure of enjoying His beautiful will today and tomorrow.
From the Kitchen Table 