Choice Time

"In the span of eternity, how important will this be?"  My mother posed this question often to her teenage daughter demonstrating excessive drama at life's events.  She was making me gain perspective and make choices.

When I read through Mark 8:27- 9:1  I thought Jesus was likewise challenging the disciples to use spiritual perspective to make the right choices.

Jesus asked His disciples who people said He was. The disciples listed John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets.  Then He asked them who they thought He was.  Peter answered "You are the Christ."  Jesus warned them not to tell anyone.

Then He taught them that the Son of Man must suffer and be rejected by the elders, chief priest and teachers of the law.  He must be killed and after 3 days rise again.

Peter took Him aside and rebuked Him.  But Jesus turned, looked at His disciples and rebuked Peter with "Get behind me Satan!  You do not have in mind the things of God but the things of man!"

Then He called the crowd to join them.  He told them that any who would follow Him must deny their own self and take up their own cross.  Whoever would try to save their life, on their own, would lose it.  But if they would give up their life to Him the gospel would save it.  He posed the question, "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?"

Jesus was teaching the disciples and the crowd that it was time to choose.  He presented the two choices, the things of man versus the things of God. 

The Great Divide: Spiritual versus  physical.  As our world becomes more complicated, cluttered and busy, it's difficult to choose a side.  Too often we try to have it all, pretending our quest for stuff will somehow be spiritually rewarding. 

Jesus instructs the disciples that the choice of the spiritual, the things of God, will have eternal rewards.  It will cost them in the physical realm but He reminds them that the stuff of this world will stay in this world.   

Too often we try to make choices thinking we can live on "both sides of the fence."  Jesus fully discloses that choosing the things of God will be costly by the world's standards.  Others will try to shame them.  Jesus reminds us that the world is sinful and fickle. 

The world teaches us to seek the tangible, that which we can see, touch and possess.  Yet it's a lie.  All the tangible stuff of world can be gone in a blink of an eye.  It can be lost, stolen and destroyed.

Jesus offers us intangibles, love, hope, security, eternity.  No one can steal or destroy these things of God.

The world purports to offer the real stuff but the world's stuff is surreal.  The world offers us stuff that is strange and unrealistic.  The things offered by the world are a dreams we chase and never fully capture.  When we think we have achieved, we experience the let down of "is this all there is?"

The real power is in God's kingdom.  The real security is in God's kingdom.  The real life is in  God's kingdom.

I need to get my perspective on! In the span of eternity, how I choose to live my life will have eternal consequence!  Every day, every moment, choose the things of God.