A few weeks ago, our pastor's sermon title was, "Who do you say I am?" from Matthew 16:15. In that passage, Peter is quick to answer, in verse 16, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God."

Jesus calls him blessed, immediately saying ". . . .because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven."

Having known Peter as Jesus did, he concluded that this had been revealed by the Holy Spirit. And yet, with those "Spirit-led" words barely out of Peter's mouth, his "humanness" now says, in verse 22, ". . .God forbid it Lord! This shall never happen to You.

Blam!, Jesus calls him Satan. One comment and Peter goes from blessed to Satan, why?

The answer, for all of us to see, is there at the end of verse 23, “. . .for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests but man’s.”

In my reading notebook I titled that page, Peter’s rollercoaster, and that’s not the end of the ride. In verse 35, he says, “Even if I have to die with you , I will not deny you.”

Blam! From verse 69 to 75, he denys Christ three times, “.. . .for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests but man’s.”

How can I know I would ever deny Jesus? I was led to re-start the reading of Foxe’s Christian Martyrs, and not many chapters along, I found a variety of reasons these people were martyred. Some by Roman, because these Christians refused to worship man’s idols, setting their minds on God’s interest not man’s. Many more were martyred for refusing to deny their beliefs, setting their minds on God’s interests not man’s.

As we continue to study, Walking as Jesus Walked, we remember to follow rabbi Jesus we must “Have this attitude in ourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who although existed in the form of God, did not regard quality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond servant, and being made in the likeness of man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross.”

God’s interests first, 1 Chronicles 28:9-10, “And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.”

Let us SEEK and not forsake,