He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by elders, the chief priests, and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. But when Jesus turned and looked at His disciples, He rebuked Peter. “Get behind me satan!” He said, “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
-Mark 8:31-33 (NIV)
For years, part of my Christian faith was believing God wanted to bless my life here on earth, and being a Christian meant I would avoid certain hardships if I applied biblical teaching and lived it out. Not that my whole focus was on these things, because my heart genuinely desired to honor God and live for Him, but there was a subtle belief that “the best was yet to come,” and that faith was believing for the turnaround in the hard.
I believed that God only had good for me because He loved me and that I would get to a certain point where the hardships would be less and the floodgates of heaven were going to pour over my life until blessings were overflowing. You know — the promised land that I was going to obtain as soon as I crossed over from my wilderness — I was believing, declaring, and waiting upon the Lord for the “promises to come to pass.”
I thought learning to pray a specific way and binding the devil from interfering with what God had for me was standing firm in my faith.
I believed with everything in me that God would show up and make all things right!
What I didn’t realize was that so much of the “right” I was believing for was according to my ideas, not His.
I do believe God turns things around.
I believe in the miraculous — I’ve experienced more miracles than I can count!
But I’ve learned that so much of what I was taught was “merely human concerns.”
And those concerns that are not the mind of God can so easily lead to discouragement when life doesn’t line up with our ideas or when it falls apart instead of stepping into the perceived promised land.
My small little world has been met with pain and hardship from an abusive marriage to poverty, older children struggling, not walking with God, and a whole lot more I’d prefer to keep private. And because life continued to blindside me, there were a lot of mindsets and beliefs I had to wrestle with. Each time the heat of life would get turned up, rather than deciding what God should do and praying for the breakthroughs, I went to the Word and was reminded over and over again that living by faith means believing that God in Me is my strength and no matter what I face here on earth, He will never leave me nor forsake me. That in Him, I can go through the fires of life and come out looking more like Him as I yield to His perfect plan.
Early in my walk, I decided to follow Him no matter what — I wasn’t living for me anymore; I was living for Him. I have a purpose here on earth: to trust Him with everything, become more like Him, and shine every step of the way. These revelations began to sync deep into my heart, and I found myself with the ability to see life from a greater lens. A lens that was beyond my human comprehension. I started to understand what it truly means to die to self so I can live Christ. I began to see God at work in the most challenging seasons of life and how He works all things together for the good of those He loves according to HIS purposes.
And when I say, “for good,” I do not mean He works things out by fixing everything, so the outcome makes us comfortable. I learned through the storms that God is not actually interested in making our lives comfortable; He’s our Comfort. We will never find true comfort on earth. Life here is broken, but we bring the Kingdom of Heaven into lives around us when we allow the Holy Spirit to shape and mold us into His image — this is His good and perfect plan!
His perspective showed me what it means to pick up my cross and wholeheartedly follow Him.
I had to let go of my perceived ideas about what my life should look like from every aspect until I had the mind of Christ.
I’m still on this journey.
I haven’t arrived at the fullness of what God wants to do in and through me, but my eyes are fixed on Him.
Why am I sharing this, and how does it pertain to the passage above?
Jesus’ words to Peter hit me deeply several years ago and they’ve continued to speak to my heart since. I believe the Holy Spirit wants to speak to us individually and personally through Jesus’ reply to Peter.
Living with human concerns blocks us from having the ability to see the concerns of God.
We, like Peter, get so hung up on our human understanding, believing that we know what should happen for things to be right in our eyes, and we miss partnering with God in many ways. Not only do we miss partnering with God, but it’s actually demonic to live this way as a Christian. We should all be paying attention to belief systems and mindsets that are not the way of God’s Kingdom.
God wants us to see life through a greater lens, no longer interpreting ideologies based on what we think life on any scale should look like, and make sure our full attention is on Him at all times so we can accomplish the good and perfect plans He
established in advance for us. If we continue to live with belief systems based on our human understanding, even interpreting scripture to fit our level of comfort, we can’t run our race. That way of living is earthly-minded, and our path gets distorted.
When we live from a humanistic standpoint, our faith is not in the things of God but in the things we want, and if we’re honest, we’re living for ourselves, not for Him.
Like Peter, we’ve been deceived in a lot of ways, creating ideas in our minds, and even listening to messages in the church that are taking us away from seeing life through our Father’s eyes.
Jesus’ conversation with Peter is for all of us. It’s a strong warning that our human concerns open us up to the enemy and his lies. Peter truly believed he was honoring Jesus with His protective response. He was ready to fight for Him. He was a passionate and devoted follower of Christ. But He was blinded by his humanist way of thinking, blocking him from seeing what God was doing.
Consider that you might be living with human concerns in one form or another, and those ideas are costing you the ability to see what God wants to do in and through you.
When we stepped into a life-changing relationship with God, we became enlisted into the Kingdom of Heaven. This means we are about our Father’s business with the ability to see life here on earth in proper perspective.
Soldiers don’t get tied up in the affairs of civilian life, for then they cannot please the officer who enlisted them.
-2 Timothy 2:4 (NLT)
To please God, we have to make sure our ideas are in agreement with His.
Let’s stop deciding what things need to look and feel like based on our human concerns and invite the Holy Spirit to speak into every situation and every area of life until we have the mind of Christ.
Let’s tune out the voices that could be potentially causing us to stumble and lose sight of the purposes of God and become unshakable for the kingdom of heaven.
We are on assignment.
Let’s be sure we are concerned with what matters to God.
Pray with me:
Father, I’m not sure if what I’m thinking and believing is lined up with your heart. I feel pretty passionate in a lot of ways, and I truly believe my passion is for the greater purpose, but I don’t want to get so caught up in my ideas that I become blind to what concerns you. Holy Spirit, open my eyes to see what you’re doing so I can partner with your will and your way. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen
