Come, Die with Me...

[Honored to introduce our first guest post in our "Daily reflections for Lent" series, written by Pastor John King- Senior Pastor of Riverside Community Church]


Matthew 16:20-25 
 "Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life." Hearing this, "Peter took [Jesus] aside and began to rebuke him. 'Never, Lord!' he said. 'This shall never happen to you!'"

What Jesus then said in the face of this apparent devotion consistently forces me to define discipleship in terms that I don't think I'd ever get to by my self. The Bible says that "Jesus turned and said to Peter, 'Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.' Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.'"

There were many who would have said yes to Jesus to come dine with me, or come be a part of miracles happening.   But “come die with me”... that brings a different response in most: “Never Lord”.

Yet, the call of Jesus in His passion to win a lost world is often “DIE TO YOURSELF”.

The journey of the Gospel has been written in the blood of people who were willing to say ANY TIME, ANY PLACE, ANY COST.

Most of Christendom will only take the gospel to the safe places of earth. Still a third of the World (the area known as the 10/40 window) lacks real Gospel penetration and gets only a minute percentage of Christian’s resources and probably prayers.

It is said that 87 percent of missions giving goes to the regions of the world that the Gospel has already saturated and hardly any to where the Gospel still needs to go . . .we are willing to go to the safe places and not willing to go where we will need to die to self.




Ask yourself- Where is your safe place?  Are you willing to step outside of it?

God, grant this Lenten season that we will be empowered to say to Jesus “I am willing to take up your cross and willing to die for your cause and the salvation of lost people”. 


John King.
Senior Pastor
Riverside Community Church Peoria IL. 
An Inner City Church with a passion to influence a City toward Jesus.
WWW.RIVERSIDEPEORIA.COM