From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised on the third day. Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, "Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!" Matthew 16:21-22The disciples followed Jesus around and made valiant attempts at understanding all that he had to teach. However, in a passage like this one, we learn that they were fine with following Jesus, just so long as the mission lined up with their own views.
In the same way, we haven't changed much, nearly two thousand years after the fact. We treat Jesus as if he is our chauffeur, our butler, our servant. Instead, we should be treating Jesus with reverence, remembering that we are here to serve him. Jesus, through his mission, taught us that we are going to have to go through some difficult times in order to achieve all that needs to be done here on earth.
In the Bible, we see that the apostles didn't really get the ball rolling until they had witnessed the Pentecost. They had to wait until they openly received the Holy Spirit in order to start their missionary work.
The lesson is that we don't have to wait to start. We just need to be willing. We need to join each other with one accord so that we can listen to the voice of God, so that we can understand what our mission is, so we can receive the Holy Spirit. God will always provide for the way, but we just need to be willing to stop at the doorway so that God can give us our lunchbox on our way out the door.
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