March 15, 2024
It's Friday and I am putting out another blog post on 1 Peter. I thought this was two weeks in a row, but then I realized I missed last week. Anyway, as usual my more current comments will be at the bottom. God's blessings.
October 26, 2022
1 Peter 3:10-12
Take Time to Pray
Psalm 103:1-5
1 Praise the LORD, O my soul;
all my inmost being, praise His holy name.
2 Praise the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all His benefits –
3 who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases;
4 who redeems your life from the pit
and crows you with love and compassion.
5 who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed life the eagle’s.
Examine
10 For,
“Whoever would love life
and see good days
must keep his tongue from evil
and his lips from deceitful speech.
11 He must turn from evil and do good;
he must seek peace and pursue it.
12 For the eyes of the LORD are on the righteous
and His ears are attentive to their prayer,
but the face of the LORD is against those who do evil.”
Notice
God
· God listens to prayer.
· God is watching over us.
· God wants us to do good.
Lesson
· God sees us as righteous and treats us thus because of Jesus.
· We seek peace from God.
· We know what is good from God.
Do/Thoughts
Question
· How do we know what is good?
Response
· By reading God’s Word.
· Talking to God in prayer
· Listening to our conscience – God gave it to us for a reason
It seems people don’t really acknowledge the conscience that God gave us. It’s the
part of us that can sort good from bad. We have smothered our consciences with worldly reason and have lost a valuable tool given to us by God.
Do you feel your conscience prick you? Listen to it. It may well be from God.
March 14, 2024
Whenever I read in the Bible about how God treats the righteous and the evil, it gives me pause. I am far from righteous. According to God's standards, I commit evil acts every day when I sin. Then I think of Jesus, my beloved Savior, and I am at peace. Jesus is my righteousness. His suffering and death on the cross washed away my sins - past, present, and future.
This does not mean, however, that I am content with my behavior. Far from it! I do not want to sin against God. Every day I dig into God's Word, wanting to know Him better. The more I learn, the more I want to live according to His Will, taking Jesus as my example. How am I doing? I don't know if there is a measure for that. And it doesn't matter because every day, until I get to Heaven, there is always room for improvement.
I mentioned "peace" above. This passage contains an interesting comment on peace. It says, "let him seek peace and pursue it." I seek peace in prayer and spending time in God's Word, but do I pursue it? What does it mean to "pursue" peace? We don't have to chase it down, although sometimes it might feel like we do. Is our pursuit of peace more of a following than a chase? We want to stay in God's peace and God can use it to guide us. If something disturbs our peace, we should stop and figure out why. Are we going in a direction that could pull us away from our faith? Is our peace disturbed because something is not God-pleasing? Or has something happened that is beyond our control? When our peace is disturbed, it is a good time to turn to God and ask Him to help you find the reason and to get yourself settled back into His peace.
May God's peace go with you always.