This shall NEVER happen to you!

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Never Lord!


"... Jesus began to explain to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the 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 concerns of God, but merely human concerns."


"Then Jesus said to His disciples, "Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny himself and take up their cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in His Father's glory with His angels, and then He will reward each person according to what they have done." ~ Matt 16:21-23 (emphasis mine)


How often have we thought that about ourselves, or said that to someone else that we cared about, "This shall NEVER happen to you!" This thing, this whatever thing this is, we'll never let it happen to you! We'll pound on the doors of Heaven, we'll plead at the foot of our Savior, we'll bow before the Throne of Grace, we'll ask... and it will be given!... Never! There is no way that God will ever allow this to happen to you!


How often do we say that or think that WHEN... it was the very plan that our Creator, that the Author of our stories, put together in the first place! It's what we've been prepared for! What we've been called to. It's in the Sovereign plan of God and was laid out before we were ever born..... Perhaps it's the very instrument that God will use in our lives to take Jesus Christ to another in?! What makes us think that we won't suffer.... even after He's told us that we'll share in His sufferings?! Do we truly "have in mind the concerns of God"? Or rather is what's in our minds, "merely human concerns"? Do we consider God's plan? Or only see it our way and consider our own? Will we truly deny ourselves, take up our crosses and lose our lives seeking only our Savior's? Do we "follow" Him and live and die as He did? Or do we try to save our lives in order to gain something else (health, wealth, and prosperity, etc) in this temporary world?


I wonder if just perhaps this "this"-thing that happened to you that you never thought that should have.... happened for a reason, happened for a bigger purpose..... perhaps it happened because it was really supposed to?!


[To ponder upon the thought of it more, click here to read this post (Oh Lord, You are NOT to be my servant.... I am to be Yours!).]
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