Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?This question is found in 1 Peter 3. It is followed by, Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. We are born of the Spirit, we are guided by the Spirit, we are children of God. Why would we be afraid? Jesus has won the battle, He has conquered death.I know its easy to say to someone don't be afraid but to be honest, we really don't have anything to fear.
I have always hated flying, and when I get on a plane I always pray first. I don't think its the thought of crashing, although I'm not keen on that, I think its the thought of being out of control and there being that distance between me and the floor that makes me afraid. However, I know that God is with me, and that He has my life in the palms of His hands, because of this knowledge the fear has no control, it has no power over me.
There is another way of looking at this too. When we are afraid we show that we are not trusting in God. Let's make sure we look fear straight in the eye and tell it to go away. Satan uses our fears to stop us from doing God's work, stop us from trusting in God. Satan is the father of ALL lies so we need to show him that we are the children of the living God and that we have nothing to fear.
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
What can I say about these two verses from 1 Peter chapter 2. What a privilege to know that we are chosen, we are priests, we are possessed by God Himself. We should feel so honoured by these verses, and yet so often we forget who we are in Christ. I can remember being in a service once and the preacher telling the congregation that we were in the top % of privileged people on the planet. We live in a relatively free speaking country; we as a nation are not classed as poverty stricken; many of us live in our own homes; the list is endless, however, the main reason that we are in this position of privilege is because we know Jesus.
I believe that Peter was trying to encourage the readers who they were in Christ, and in doing that he has done the same for us. We must believe these verses and hold onto the promise that without Jesus in our lives our lives would be meaningless.
I can't imagine my life without Jesus, I don't want to imagine my life without Jesus. What about you? Do you know Him? He's only a prayer away. If you are reading my blog today and don't know Jesus as Lord, just ask Him into your heart today. Ask Him to be your Lord and Saviour. You'll never regret it, and you too will become a privileged priest of the Living God.
Make a difference in your life today, so that you can make a difference in the life of someone else too.
1 Peter 1 talks about being Holy. To be Holy we have to be devout or in other words devoted. I believe that Peter is telling us to be devoted to God. We should devote every part of our lives to Him.
This might sound a bit extreme, but that is what being a Christian is about. Every part of our lives should be devoted to God. Everything whether small or large, God should be at the very centre.
We are called to have a relationship with God. That doesn't mean that we only talk to Him on a Sunday, it means that we need to spend time daily with Him. You can't have a relationship with someone if you don't spend time with them. This is the same with God. I have told the children I work with many times that to have a relationship with God means that we have to talk to Him, spend time with Him and share our whole lives with Him.
He gave His life for us, let's hand over our lives to Him and devote ourselves to living a life that is holy and pleasing to God.
James 5:16 The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Do we believe this? As I read this today I questioned whether we actually believe this statement. So often in churches I've heard people pray, "If it's your will Lord" or "If it's your will to heal Lord" What is that about? Jesus didn't pray like that - in fact He said "Be healed!" It says in the above mentioned verse that the prayer of a righteous person IS POWERFUL & EFFECTIVE! This means that we only have to pray and believe and God will do the rest.
I am so sick of hearing wimpy prayers. People praying long winded prayers of nothing. It's about time we stood up and prayed powerful and action packed prayers. God doesn't call us to be wimps, He wants us to make a difference in the Spiritual realms - to do this we have to pray with conviction.
We need to make sure that when we pray we bring God's Kingdom into being on this earth. Let's pray with power and authority, Jesus did. Let's pray with confidence and ask the Lord to send His Holy Spirit in Power so that the people around us will come to know Him as Lord and Saviour today. That's what they did in Acts and look what happened there - And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures
We all want different things in life. We all have dreams and goals that we want to achieve along our life path. BUT, are they just for our own pleasure or is God in the mix? Do we want things that are healthy and glorifying to God, or are we asking God for things that are just about us?It says in Psalm 37, Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart, But that doesn't mean that he will give us all the things that we want. God is not Santa, He's not there for our daily shopping list of wants. He wants to share our lives and give us good things. We have to remember that sometimes the things of life that we want are not the right things for us, and we can become selfish with our requests.
Let's lay our lives before the Lord and ask Him to give us what He wants. After all, God will only give us good things, and He has a plan and a purpose for our lives.
James chapter 3 - what a great chapter of scripture. James talks about the tongue and of how dangerous it is. He says, 'With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness'. This is so true of us all. We go to church and praise and worship our Lord and then we are harsh to one another, sometimes even hurting the other person so much that it destroys friendships.
We need to be so careful how we treat others. We need to make sure that we put our brains into gear before we open our mouths.
In Matthew 5:16 it says, In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven
Let's make sure that we tame our tongues and praise our Father in heaven, whilst also letting our light shine before others so that we show those we meet that Jesus is our Lord.
James continues his letter talking about favouritism. This is a great passage as he describes how we as Christians can favour those that are wealthy over those who are poor.
We live in a world that judges a book by its cover, we live in a society where looks matter. However, I praise God that He doesn't do the same. He doesn't look at what we look like or what we have to determine whether or not He will love us, He loves us no matter what.
One of my favourite passages of scripture talks about this matter. It says in 1 Samuel 16:9 - "People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”
How awesome is our God that He looks at the kind of person we are and not what we have. We are so fickle as human beings, we don't look at people in the same way. It's more important what people do or look like and less important what kind of person they are.We need to follow the Lord's lead on this one. We need to make sure that we give everyone an equal chance to know the Lord. If we only tell those that we like about Jesus then we are limiting the gospel. Jesus tells us to make disciples of ALL men and so that means the ones that we don't like too. Let's make sure that we are not so arrogant to ignore someone that is different. We are called to help the lost - that means wealthy or poor, important or not, friend or foe. No matter what we MUST share the gospel of Jesus.
