Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 (NIV) 24  Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like

It's good to pray for what you want, but it's better to pray that you'll want what God wants. Read / Listen Listen to passage & devotional: Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 124 Q. What does the third request mean? A. “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” means, Help us and all people to reject our own wills and to obey your will without any back talk. Your will alone is good. Help us one and all to carry out the work we are called to, as willingly and faithfully as the angels in heaven. Summary Jesus explains the discipleship paradox: if you want to be Jesus' disciple, you must deny what you want. He goes on to explain that whoever wants to get what they want will not only not get what they want, but they'll end up getting what they don't want. When viewed on their own, Jesus' words here don't make very much sense. But when we look at the context they come in, in which Peter is trying to make Jesus into the savior that both he the world really wants, rather than one who provides sacrificial obedience, then what Jesus is saying here comes into sharper focus. What Jesus is telling Peter, and us, is that if you want to be His disciple, then you must want what Jesus wants, not what the world wants. He says that following Him requires you to stop wanting worldly things which end up sucking the life out of your soul. Instead, you must want to nail these worldly wants to the cross. Yet even as you follow Him, you'll get what you both truly want and need: eternal reward from the Son of Man. Dig Deeper If all of this talk about what you want seems confusing, Jesus presents this entire concept much more simply when He taught us to pray: "Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." When you pray those very simple words, or ones like them, you're praying for a very profound thing: that God, through the Holy Spirit, will help you to reject your sin-stained will and obey God's holy and perfect will without any hesitation or back talk. This is the simplest definition of what a disciple is: a person who wants to do what God wants done. Make alignment a key element in every prayer that you pray, that you would deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus. AAA Prayer (About) ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, whose Son will come in His Father's glory with His angels to reward each person according to what they have done; ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that you would not want worldly things, but would instead want what your Father wants. ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED: Read the New Testament in a year, a chapter a day - Revelation 4

Matthew 16:13-20 (NIV) 13  When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples

Matthew 18:15-18 (NIV) 15  “If your brother or sister sins [against you], go and point out their fault you have won them over. 16  But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter who would follow Him would often wander away (which is what the parable right before this passage in Matthew But as Jesus explains the process here in Matthew 18, notice who the primary active agent is.

Matthew record of Peter's confession comes in chapter 16, and as soon as Peter exclaims that Jesus "is the whole church, but even as few as a couple of representatives of it - comes into agreement on a matter of discipline, the matter is as settled (bound) in heaven as it is in the Church.

Christ teaches us this in summary in Matthew 22— Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with Simply put, anyone who loves God and their neighbor the way Jesus teaches will not be lacking in matters

we need to know now: that when people say things we instinctively know is wrong, it probably is, no matter You must certainly trust the Lord, but: do not put the Lord your God to the test (Matt. 4:7, Deut 6:16

Summary Matthew’s Gospel closes with Jesus giving the Great Commission to the Disciples.

in you; ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED: Read the New Testament in a year, a chapter a day - 1 Corinthians 6

Ten commandments?? How about 10x10x10? Read / Listen Listen to passage & devotional: Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 93 Q. How are these commandments divided? A. Into two tables. The first has four commandments, teaching us what our relation to God should be. The second has six commandments, teaching us what we owe our neighbor. Summary He started off so well. This rich young man asked Jesus the question that should be everyone's top priority: "what good thing must I do to be saved?" All of us - every person born since Adam - instinctively knows there's a relationship between salvation and doing good things. But this young man is smarter than most, for he can see that not everything that seems to be good actually is. He wants to focus his efforts on what really counts. Jesus didn't need to think about the question for too long. Although it's a profoundly important question to ask, it's not at all hard to answer: if you want salvation, perfectly follow the commands of the One who is good. Here's where things started to go off the rails for the young man. He asked Jesus, "Which ones?" It's moments like this that we really see the patience of our Savior. He would have been totally justified to burst out laughing at the glaring stupidity of the question, or even to have the young man instantly smote with fire from heaven for daring to suggest that some of God's commands are more important than others. But Jesus doesn't do what the rest of us would have done if we were in His position. Jesus continues to engage the man in conversation. Keep the second table of the law, Jesus tells the man. In other words, love your neighbor as yourself. At this, a smile likely came upon the young man's face. After all, he had certainly never murdered, committed adultery, stolen or lied. Or so he thought as he confidently reported this to Jesus, at the same time wondering if there was a detail or two Jesus could suggest he ought to add to the list, just to be really sure. Somehow the man missed the fact that Jesus had said nothing about the first table of the law: those first four commandments that teach us what our relationship ought to be with the One who said, "Be holy, because I am holy." Jesus goes on to tell the man that perfection requires much more than following ten commandments. After all, nowhere does the Bible command a person to give away all that he has. True godliness includes all of the implications of both tables of the law, whether they've been written down or not. Both this rich young man and the disciples are absolutely crushed by Jesus' answer. Who could possibly meet this exponential criteria for salvation? Dig Deeper We understand God's law to have three purposes: It shows us how sinful we are; It provides a general guide for how society should behave; It shows the saved how to live gratefully. The Heidelberg Catechism properly focuses on the third use of the law: gratitude. But don't forget that you will never really be truly grateful unless you first understand your guilt. This is why we read some portion of God's law in our worship services, so that we are regularly convicted by it; so that each week we're forced to ask with the disciples, "who then can be saved?" So when we hear Jesus answer, "with man, [salvation] is impossible, but with God all things are possible," we can look at these two tables of the law as a guide for grateful living in response to God's grace freeing us from our exponential guilt. AAA Prayer (About) ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, the One who is good; ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Thank God for His law, that we've met its conditions in Christ, and pray that we';; use His law as a guide for grateful living. ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED: Read the New Testament in a year, a chapter a day - 1 Corinthians 16