22A23.    Jeremiah 20:7-9.    Jeremiah, like anyone else, desired to live in peace and tranquility but the Lord imbued him with an irresistible drive to confront the Hebrew authorities with their refusal to be obedient to the Lord.  That led Jeremiah to be forced to live being mocked, laughed at and derided.  Our natural desires often must give way to the will of the Lord.  At times that can be painful and disturbing.

Matthew 16:21-27.   Jesus was preparing his followers for his eventual departure from this world in his human state by placing Peter as the head in his place and informing them of his future suffering and death.  Peter, thinking in ways that came to him naturally, told Jesus that he did not think it made any sense for Jesus to suffer and be killed.  Jesus received Peter’s rebuke as a way in which Satan was trying to get Jesus to reject his Father’s Will.  Jesus said to Peter, “You are thinking not as God does, but as human being do.” To belong to God and not to the ways of this world requires that we live in submission to God and reject or deny belonging to ourselves and our ways of thinking.  Only God can see what is truly good for now and for all eternity.  We can easily delude ourselves and think that we have it right and leave what God thinks out of the picture.  Our life time conduct, the lives we actually live in accord with God’s will or not, declare whether we deserve heaven or hell.

Romans 12:1-2.  In replacing the Mosaic Law instead of offering up animal sacrifices as worship, Paul writes that we now spiritually offer up our “bodies as a living sacrifice,” which is to say, we offer up our lives.  Do not think in the way this world thinks “but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God,” and do only what is pleasing to him.