"If you try to hang on to your life, 

you will lose it.

But

if you give up your life for my sake,

you will save it."

Matthew 16:25 NLT

V21

From then on Jesus began to tell his disciples plainly that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, and that he would suffer...He would be killed, but on the third day... raised from the dead.

But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. 

"Heaven forbid, Lord," he said. 

"This will never happen to you"

Jesus is updating his team on His mission, on what's coming next. 

The life they've had following their Rabbi, their teacher, seeing and participating in miracles, healing, gatherings, the life of being a rabbi's disciple is going to end. 

And Peter doesn't want it to. 

He wants what he's used to to continue. He loves Jesus, doesn't want him to suffer (which are all good things). 

And it seems that Peter thinks he knows better than Jesus what should happen.

Jesus says to Peter, his team, and through the centuries to us, that we might have to give up some of our ideas of what success looks like, give up telling God what to do, give up "knowing better", stop hanging on to some of those things and more simply follow Jesus, and in doing that new Life emerges.

What am I hanging on to?

And what is Jesus inviting me, inviting us, into?

#wordsofJesus 

#redletterBible

#invitation

#Life