Our natural tendency as human beings is to try to hold on to our lives. We don’t want to give up control of our lives to anything or anyone. People want to be the captains of their souls. We seek to build our own kingdoms rather than to seek the Kingdom of Christ. The irony is that this pursuit of control is futile because only God is in control of everything that happens in our lives and in the universe.
Jesus asked the question to determine His disciples’ faith in Him. He wanted to know more about who they thought He was than He was interested in what the crowds thought. The question Jesus asked the disciples is the most important question we will ever answer in our lifetimes.
I have a confession to make: I love youth camp. God began calling me to surrender my life to Christ at youth camp. As a youth pastor, I saw my students’ lives transformed while they attended camp.
While deployed as an Army Chaplain on Operation Enduring Freedom in Europe, God taught me some lessons about time management. While my unit was not in a combat area, the deployment made me think about the brevity of my life and how I had spent my time up until that point. I grieved over time I wasted and committed that I would seek to try to make the most of each day, seeing each day as a stewardship God gave me with which to make Kingdom investments. I vowed that I would not waste my time.
