Today’s passage: Mark 8:31-9:1
Helpful thoughts:
- After the spiritual high of claiming Jesus as the Christ, Peter now rebukes Jesus for thinking He would be killed and rise again.
- Peter was not possessed, by his thoughts and comments were like Satan’s.
- When we do not think about God’s good design and will and instead care more about our own design and will (Which inevitably will result in our will contradicting God’s), we are mimicking the heart of Satan.
- Our goal must be to delight in the Lord so that His will is our will (Psalm 37:4). Losing “our life” for Christ’s sake and for the sake of the Gospel.
- It is believed that those who did not taste death until they saw the kingdom of God (9:1) would have been the disciples who saw Christ glorified at the Mount of Transfiguration (2 Peter 1:16-18).
Questions to consider:
- Verse 34-38 can be so hard to read and meditate upon. Why is that? What makes these verses so powerful and often so difficult?
- In what way would Peter have needed to repent specifically? How does that event tie in to Jesus’ words in verses 34-38?
- Our response to verse 38 might be a greater boldness, but what are we to be bold about? What are some other things we might be prone to get bold about faster than we would the Gospel of Jesus Christ?