Matthew 16:24 Jesus began speaking about His death and resurrection to His disciples. Peter wanted to ‘fix it’, so it wouldn’t come to pass. Jesus recognized Satan’s plan to keep Him from accomplishing the will of the Father and chastised Peter for speaking out of the flesh. Jesus turns to them all and tells them, ‘if… you desire to be My disciple you must deny yourself, forget your own interests… and yourself, and follow Me.” He was telling them and us, it won’t be easy, you probably won’t fit in, you’ll need to put yourself…last, even if it means losing losing your life for My sake. Choosing to be a disciple of Christ means surrender, sacrifice, selflessness, and loving others as He loves us. “OK, I can do this!” We get the peptalk, we understand the meaning until… the flesh gets jealous, or angry, or falls into the self pity pot, then add to that a bit of Pride, and Fear…and we’ve become a real ‘hot mess’. First, we choose to be His disciples, we surrender. As Christ did, we willingly pick up the cross, not going our own way, but intentionally following His. We choose Him, we choose to imitate Him, denying ourselves, our own interests, we choose to do things His way.
Jesus had openly confirmed, to them only, that earlier Peter was right…He is the Christ, making their desire to surrender, to follow Him all the more powerful. On this side of the cross, we gain more understanding of what carrying the cross means, and we know we need Him to do it. And there’s another choice we have to make after we choose the cross, do we choose to be a disciple of joy and contentment, grateful for the work He’s done and continues to do in our life or are we struggling to find the peace in it? Is the cross we carry supposed to be heavy? Or is it like the burden Matthew speaks of, light? Lord, we’re in our favorite place, at Your feet. We choose to be Your disciple… Every day. Thank you for giving us what it takes to be who You created us to be. Thank You for the strength and courag
