Scripture Scribbles: September 3, 2023

the Gospel

Matthew 16:21-27

Jesus began to show his disciples
that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly
from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed and on the third day be raised.
Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him,
"God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you."
He turned and said to Peter,
"Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me.
You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."

Then Jesus said to his disciples,
"Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world
and forfeit his life?
Or what can one give in exchange for his life?
For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father's glory,
and then he will repay all according to his conduct."

the devotion

“You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."

How many times a day do you think our guardian angels try to tell us this?
How often do we go about our day, our life, seeking things of this world and not of the next?
Seeing things the way we think they should be rather than accepting and trusting God with our plans, moment to moment?

Oh, the unending mercy of God.
Thank you, Lord, for knowing us, for understanding us, and for meeting us right where we are.
To let us keep trying again. Over and over.

I see so much of myself in Peter today, as he tells the Lord to His face that God’s plans are not as good as Peter’s plans.

Here is Jesus, the Son of God, in the flesh, openly sharing and spelling out God’s plan of salvation for all of mankind to Peter.

And what is his response?
“God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you."

How many times do we respond to our life circumstances in this same exact way?

This life is full of suffering. Often it seems meaningless. Even cruel.
Some ask how a good and loving God could exist if such awful things occur in this life.

And yet, this completely misses the heart of Christianity.
The truth of the crucifixion.

Jesus’s response:
“You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."

The truth is, the crucifixion is necessary in order to experience the resurrection.
The redemption of the human race came about through Christ’s self-denial and complete surrender to God’s will. Even unto death.

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).

To our human eyes, it makes zero sense.
It is why our initial response is to stop it.
God forbid!

And yet, it is exactly what is needed in order to save us.

While suffering was not part of God’s original plan for us or for this world, it is the reality that we live in after sin entered the picture. Thankfully, God can bring incredible good out of even the darkest of suffering, as the crucifixion demonstrates for us.

It goes to show how different God’s ways are than our own.

The question is: Do we trust Him?

When His ways seem to make zero sense, is our response to try to make it stop?
Or do we allow Him to enter into our suffering, to walk with us as we carry our cross, so that He can redeem it and make us new in the process, on our way to the resurrection?

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

(Isaiah 55:7-9)

Today, I invite you to surrender all of your current circumstances to Him.
Hand them over freely.
Let Him know how scary it is.
Let Him know how much it hurts.
But that you trust Him in bringing about a resurrection:
in your life, in your heart, in your loved ones,
through it all.

Today’s devotion is written by Rachel Smith