April 29th, 20

APRIL 29,  AVOID THE TRAP

Our readings today are II Sam 4 -5, Psalm 139, and Matthew 16.  We are reading through the New Living Translation.

A dangerous trap, that’s what Jesus calls it.  To see things only from your own point of view and your own perspective, is a dangerous trap.  Jesus rebukes Peter and says,

Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s. (Matt 16:23)

It’s a dangerous trap to see things from your point of view and not Gods’.  It’s dangerous trap to hold on to your life and agenda,  apart from God.  Jesus says,

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. (Matt 16:25)

If you demand to hold onto our own way, to make this life a project all about you, your ego, your comfort, your ambition, position, or pleasure, then you’ve fallen into a trap, and you will ultimately lose your life. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? (Matt 16:26) You may gain all that is temporal and immediate but it will be at the expense of the eternal.  

But Jesus gives us a way out.  He tells us how to free ourselves of the trap of our own perspective and our own way.  He says that in order to live free of the trap, we must live in light of the Cross.   The way to be free, from a dangerous trap, ironically, is through the most dangerous symbol imaginable, the cross.  An instrument of death, brings life.  The Cross is a declaration of how broken this world, and the human soul and condition are. Jesus is imploring us to see this, through this most dramatic of symbols, the Cross.

If you want to be my follower, pick up your own cross and follow me.  Lose your life and find it.  Accept the fact that there is no life and wholeness for you apart from Me. Die to yourself, and find my Life.

If we look at our life through the Cross, we will be free.  We will find the Eternal, we will find Him.  He will be with us.  On the Cross, Jesus taught us to serve others and to lay our life down for Him.  When we do that we become fully alive, through the life that Christ won for us.

Exchange the trap of your own human and short-sighted perspective, for God’s perspective.  Exchange your life for His.  Pick up your cross and follow Him. Die to yourself and find His life.  Live in view of the Cross

You are loved!