Good Evening, Friends! I hope that each one of you has had a wonderfully restful weekend, and that the words of 1 Peter are continually playing through your mind as you live your life. That's our aim. We want God's Word to spontaneously rule our thoughts.
Are you finding 1 Peter 2 to be as challenging as I am? I don't mean difficult, but convicting. Thank you, Terry, Courtney, and Julie for being brave enough to share your hearts with us. I couldn't agree more with all of you. We have the divine privilege of living a life built on Christ, the Cornerstone, but we don't always act as if that's a privilege, do we? Great thoughts!
As I camped out on 1 Peter 2:4-12, I was particularly taken with verses 11 and 12. I read these in The Message paraphrase. Let me share them with you:
"Friends, this world is not your home, so don't make yourselves cozy in it. Don't indulge your ego at the expense of your soul. Live an exemplary life among the natives so that your actions will refute their prejudices. Then they'll be won over to God's side and be there to join in celebration when he arrives."
Did you catch that one part --> Don't indulge your ego at the expense of your soul.
Those words pretty much stopped me in my tracks. The second that I make this life more about me (my ego) than it is about Christ, then my soul suffers. I'm not living my life in the total submission that the Lord requires.
Just something for me to constantly think and act on.
Okay, remember, as you are studying, you want to constantly be working to summarize, identify the author's purpose, and discover the main idea. I'm regularly asking, "Okay, why did he write this and why is it important?" The answers to those questions are the key to meaningful Bible study. We want to pull out God's commands, instructions, promises, etc as we read.
Keep those things in mind as you work through Day 4.
Day 4
- Pray - "God, thank you for the truth of your Word. Thank you for your power to transform my life through the study of your truth. Help me to focus only on You and your transformational power today.
- Read 1 Peter 2 - You know the drill. By now, you should take some ownership with this passage. You should be making it your own and claiming its promises as your own.
- Reread 1 Peter 2:13-25 - How do these verses about submission strike you? Do you have an easy time submitting to authority? Have you ever been persecuted for doing good? How can God use this experience in your life? How do you measure up against Jesus, who was the ultimate model of doing good in the heat of persecuted?
- Apply - How can God use this passage to impact your life? Are you in a situation of persecution? Are you living as a free, servant of Christ? How can you do this? What does this look like to you?
- Comment - If you feel comfortable, let us know how God is using this passage in your life.
May God richly bless you and keep you and may His favor be on you as you submit your mind to His Word!
I'm praying for God's Word to be so real in your life that you crave it with an insatiable hunger.
I love you, each one.
It is definitely true that the more you study scripture the more desire you have to study. I am loving this 1 Peter study. Thanks for doing this, Lindsey.
ReplyDeleteTwo thoughts stood out to me today.
1. The command to love the brotherhood, our spiritual family: That is so easy to do with the ones in the family that we are naturally drawn to, our friends, those who are like us. Sometimes I think if I am loving the ones in the family that I naturally love I am fulfilling this instruction. What about those family members that are difficult to love? Or the ones that are different from me? I need to treat them with special love as well.
2. "You are free, but still you are God's servants, and you must not use your freedom as an excuse for doing wrong." Because of a situation in my life this seemed to perfectly dovetail with the "loving the spiritual family" command. The Lord is prompting me to approach a friend who is part of the body but is wandering into dangerous territory. I think it is no coincidence that these verses made an impact on me this morning. Pray for me to deal with her in love.
I have a few thoughts going on immediately but my little man is awake now so I will spend more time meditating on them, writting them out and plan to share them later this afternoon when he's snoozing again. I love how faithful the Lord is to reveal something new to us when we ask Him to. His Word is alive!
ReplyDeleteOkay, well I have thought about the questions you asked and re-read verses and all, but nothing "new" so-to-speak really stood out to me in verses 13-25 BUT my initital few thoughts that started coming to me were from verses 4-5...
ReplyDelete"Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being BUILT UP a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrafices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."
Okay, being "built up" totally leaped out to me. It reminded me that our being transformed into His like-ness is not an overnight instantaneous occurance. Definately no such thing a a spiritual drive through where we can order a #1 with a side of patience or a #4 super sized with a large order of GRACE! Nope. It's a long process of knowing Him, walking with Him, submitting oursleves to Him... and the consistancy in that "building process" is where the transformation occurs from our former sinful ways into freedom to live Holy and blameless as Christ commands us to. I tend to be all or nothing and would love to just have it all figured out and be able to really make a difference for Him as greatly as possible without myself in the way but it doesn't work that way. We're being BUILT up. No building appears overnight, not even on extreme home makeover! It takes time. Work. Committment. No way though am I saying we should just take a back seat to ridding ourselves of our sinful patterns that so easily separate us from Him. No way! I'm just saying that this verse encouraged me that the sanctification process is just that... a process. And a process with HOPE! Nothing is built downward. It always goes upward. It is so encouraging to know He is along side each of us, building us up to be the strong, Holy towers that shine brightly for Him.
And these thoughts just echoed as I read the rest of 2 Peter. The area of submission to authority, attitude towards others when persecuted wrongly, etc were all being taken in with encouragement echoing from verses 4-5. Each time we humble ourselves and confess these attitudes for what they are, which is nothing other then sin, we are then being "built up" just a little bit higher and we are "offering up spiritual sacrafices" that are, I have no doubt, a sweet, sweet sound to our Lord's ears.
Hope this isn't too far off here, but just wanted to share!
Thank you again Lindsey for your faithfulness to this. You are shining brightly for Him and helping others grow!
I find this whole section extremely challenging in a good way of course. I think the thing that stands out most to me is that we are to respect those in authority over us. I know that in my own life if the person in authority is a Godly person then I don't have issues, but when it's someone that is not Godly I often don't respect them. As a matter of a fact I can be downright disrespectful and feel justified in my actions. I should be praying instead. I could go on forever because these few verses have so much in them, but it's time for bed.
ReplyDelete