Thy Will Be Done...

“From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ‘Never, Lord!’ he said. ‘This shall never happen to you!’ Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan!’ You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men!’” Matthew 16:21-23

First of all, we cannot get too righteous in reading that Peter ‘rebuked’ Jesus. How many times have the realized something heartbreaking is unfolding before our very eyes? We take Jesus aside in our prayers and say, ‘Wait a minute, here! This shall not happen…You cannot be part of this!’ We are no better than Peter as we explain to God why He shouldn’t do this, cannot do this, and exert our own will upon the situation.

When God’s will in put into motion for a higher purpose, Satan will set up stumbling blocks to detour our thinking and convince us of our rights in our own agenda. He will try to frustrate our part in the will of God. Peter had just gotten out of his mouth the proclamation that ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ (Matthew 16:16) This rebuke from Jesus came upon the heels of a historical blessing. ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah…and I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will be my church’ (v. 17)

Like Peter, we can experience a spiritual high and receive apparent blessings from God only to have Satan rip the moment from under us if we are not careful. We can live our lives testifying that God is our Savior, the Lord of our life, and our faith in Him in complete. But as soon as we realize something horrible that is coming to pass in our lives we sing a different tune. Statements and actions that follow our testimony show contradiction in belief when the fire ignites.

When God has revealed His plan through the unfolding circumstances of our lives we must accept and not reject, embrace and not recoil. We must carry the will of God as our own and not provide Satan a place of spiritual division.

‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven!’