Oh Peter

Ok so my favorite part of this study was from Matthew 16:13-28 when Peter is glorified because of God and humbled because he is, well, Peter. When Jesus asks, "Who do you say I am?" Peter gets the answer right and says, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Jesus then says, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven." In other words, "You are blessed not because you came to this answer on your own, but because this truth was revealed to you by God." Literally sentences later, Jesus is looking at Peter and says, "Get behind me, Satan!" WHAT? Where did that come from? One minute Jesus is giving Peter the keys to the kingdom of Heaven, and the next he is calling him Satan. This is me. I find this passage so uncomfortably humbling. I can't tell you how many times I feel like I get the answer right in life, only to mess up so badly to hear Jesus say, "Get behind me Satan." This is life. Thank you Jesus for being so amazingly perfect in ever way. We worship you. I pray Jesus rebukes us and humbles us time and time again over the summer, to see more and more how beautifully wonderful he is with each wrong answer we give. One time I was talking to a friend about the comparison of life to a multiple choice test. There is no arguing with a teacher about what your grade should be. You either get the answer right, or you get it wrong. I said something about how Jesus' death erases our wrong answers. She said instead that he fills in the right answer but keeps our names on the test. He fills in. He steps in. How lost we would be this summer without Him.