You're a Good, Good Father--1 Peter 1:3-5 (1 Peter Series)

            When people in our country think about Christians, they might think of the phrase “family values,” that familiar phrase from the world of politics. More or less, that phrase basically means that we think the traditional family structure is very important, and we want to see it protected and strengthened.

            I think that’s a pretty fair assessment of conservative Christians. We believe that the family structure was laid out by God and that he would want to see this structure strong and healthy. That belief of ours is one of the reasons why it’s very odd for us to read words like this from Jesus: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household (Matthew 10:34-36).”

            That sounds like a strange way to support family values, doesn’t it? Now please understand that Jesus spoke these words as part of a larger conversation in which he was telling his disciples that they would face opposition from other people because of their relationship with him. With these words about family members, I think Jesus was not describing his desire, but rather what the actual result of his ministry would sometimes be – even something as tightknit as a family could become divided as individuals made their choice of whether to accept him or reject him.

            The Christians to whom Peter wrote in the book of 1 Peter had almost certainly experienced the kind of division within their families that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 10. It is never a fun thing to find yourselves at odds with your family members, but in that day and age, being cut off from your family had some even more serious implications than what we might experience today.

            And so, as Peter begins the body of his letter in 1 Peter 1:3-5, he highlights for his audience—and for us!—the fact that:

God has caused us to be born again into a new family, with all of the blessings that family can bring.

            As we get into the body of Peter’s letter in verse three, we actually encounter one very long sentence in Greek that stretches all the way to verse nine. We can’t really reproduce that same sentence structure very well in English, so our translations have to break it up into several sentences. But it’s helpful to note that all of the grand theology and beautiful truths that were going to encounter in these verses flow out of this first, foundational exclamation in verse three: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!”

            That declaration is truly the long and short of the Christian life, all wrapped up into one statement. Are you enjoying the bright sunshine of life today or are you in its raging storms? Either way, the same declaration can be yours – Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Are you traversing the grand hills of life, it’s pleasant meadows, or its deepest valleys? No matter – the cry of your heart can be the same. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ!

            This exclamation rings with the echo of Job’s declaration after that great man had suffered such great loss all at once. He said, “the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21).”

            This declaration is not some head-in-the-sand mentality, where we’re just ignoring all of the ups and downs of life. Rather, it is based on everything that God has accomplished for us in the past that has set us up for such a glorious future. Let’s take a closer look now at these truths.

1. We’ve been born again into a new setting in life (v. 3)

            Since these Jewish believers had embraced Jesus Christ, they had likely lost any advantages that they may have had from being born into their respective biological families. So Peter reminds them of one of the blessings that we have from our new birth in Christ [READ v. 3]. That past event of Jesus resurrection – which is a certain as the fact that George Washington walked the earth – has placed us into this wonderful new setting in life that Peter calls “a living hope.” Here he is talking about the glorious expectations that we have for our future destiny with Christ.

            Now please don’t think that hope is some kind of wimpy expectation. When I was a kid, for some reason my friends and I thought that hoping for something was a rather weak attitude. If I said something like, “I hope Susie talks to me on the playground today,” we thought that was about the same as saying, “That’s never going to happen!” Sure, I wanted it to happen, but I really didn’t expect it to.

            The idea of hope in the Bible is precisely the opposite. Hope is a very confident expectation of something that you don’t have your hands on quite yet. The reason that biblical hope incorporates such a high degree of confidence is that the things we are expecting to see in the future are based on the things that were already accomplished in the past.

            So even though the present day reality for Peter’s audience was difficult, their new birth through Christ gave them a confident expectation of glory to come. And notice that Peter calls this hope a “living” hope. Now, what is one of the characteristics of living things? They grow, right? Now is it not true that so often when you observe an older saint who has been walking with the Lord for many years, they exude hope, don’t they? Their confidence in the life to come is so certain that it characterizes their whole lives! You probably don’t have to think very long before you can think of someone who is a perfect example of the way that Christian hope grows and multiplies. As we walk with the Lord, hopefulness becomes the very air that we breathe.

2. We have a better inheritance in store for us (v. 4)

            When these ethnically Jewish people became Christians, they were likely cut out of the will in their families. Any inheritance that they stood to receive was probably taken from them, which may have left them rather uneasy about the future.

            So Peter reminds them here that as children of God, they stand to receive a much better inheritance than their earthly family could have ever given to them. Verse four is to be tied in with the thought of being born again, and so Peter states that we have been born again “to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.”

            At a minimum, I suspect Peter is thinking about our home in heaven with God. As God’s adopted children, we now have the right and the expectation to one day be with him where he is. Parents and children are supposed to live together, and that is the promise we have from God for our destiny after this stage of life.

            Notice how Peter makes a big point to stress the lasting and enduring nature of our inheritance with God. He says it is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.” Our heavenly inheritance is not subject to any of the factors that might devalue our earthly inheritance.

            I don’t know what kind of inheritance you might stand to receive from your parents. Perhaps they have already passed and so you already have your inheritance, or perhaps they are still living and you stand to receive something from them when they do pass away. Whatever that inheritance might consist of, it is subject to decay, loss, theft, and just a general deterioration. If they pass on cash, that money will likely lose some of its value to inflation. If they pass on stock, it will be subject to the fluctuations of the market. If they give you a home, it will have to be maintained or it will deteriorate. If they give you land, it has to be managed and cared for somehow. And all of those things I just mentioned are subject to complete loss. Through various circumstances, you could wind up losing any of those things completely.

            But our heavenly inheritance is much different. It is not subject to decay or loss or theft. And Peter says that this inheritance is kept in heaven for you. The word picture is of something that has been tucked away for safekeeping, as you might put something in a safe deposit box until you need to retrieve it later.

            So even if we should lose an earthly inheritance because of our faith in Christ, our new reception into God’s family gives us a much better and much greater inheritance to look forward to. And as Peter mentioned that this inheritance is “kept,” he goes on in verse five to stress how we ourselves are guarded by God our father.

3. We have a new source of protection (v. 5)

            In ancient times, your family was your primary source of protection from all kinds of hardships and calamities. Remember that Peter was living and writing in a day in which there were no such things as insurance policies. So what would you do if your house burn down or your crops failed or you were injured? You wouldn’t sing the State Farm jingle and expect your insurance agent to magically show up! You would turn to your family before anyone else to find help and assistance.

            Likewise, how would you take care of yourself and your old age? To our knowledge, there were no such things as retirement homes. There was no Medicare, no Social Security, so once again, you would rely on your family to help. That’s one reason why barrenness was viewed as such a sad condition in biblical times. It’s a sad thing for couples today to deal with infertility, but that situation doesn’t necessarily put us into jeopardy as far as our own well-being is concerned. But at that time, it did.

            Given a cultural context like that, you can imagine how uneasy and afraid Peter’s audience may have felt if they had been kicked out of their families because of their faith – and again, I think it is likely that they were. They didn’t just suffer an emotional and perhaps financial loss – they had lost their main source of protection as well.

            But lest they think that they were now without any protection, Peter reminds them in verse five that they are those “who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” In the same way that their heavenly inheritance was under guard for safekeeping, these believers were themselves under the guardianship and protection of God. That fact did not rule out the possibility that they might face continued persecution for their faith, but it did mean that God’s plan for them would never be thwarted. His destiny for them would not fail to be realized.

            Notice again how the stress in this whole passage today is on the future. Peter wrote that they were guarded “for us salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” That might sound a bit strange to us, because we are so accustomed to talking about salvation in the past tense. We say things like, “I was saved back at such and such a time when I placed my faith in Christ.” That’s true of course, but I know I don’t have to tell you that God’s whole plan of salvation has not yet been realized.

            It’s the ultimate fulfillment and completion of our salvation that Peter has in view here, and notice how Peter stresses that it is all ready. There’s no doubt here about whether it’s going to happen – Peter says it’s ready to go right now! There’s nothing that remains to be done in order for your salvation to be established or acquired because Jesus completed all of that through his death and resurrection. So the full and final enactment of your salvation is ready to go – it waits only for the word of God to give the go-ahead for this stage of human history to come to an end.

            I know that some of you here might be able to sympathize with the situation of these believers in a very personal way. I know that some of you have faced at least a degree of exclusion from your own families because of your faith. Perhaps your convictions about how to serve God did not line up in every detail with their convictions, and as a result, you have faced exclusion and rejection to one degree or another.

            To those of you who fit this description, I hope the new realities that are yours in the family of God can be a great comfort to you. If your earthly family has turned from you, know that God never will. You have been born again and adopted and his family, and now you face a certain and secure future, within in perishable inheritance that is waiting for you, reserved for you, and you are protected by the very power of God so that you will receive it.

            And to those of us who have never faced this kind of situation with our earthly families, we need to remember that our greatest hope and confidence and security for the future comes not from those biological relationships but from the Lord. If we receive in earthly inheritance that’s fine, but let’s not put all our eggs in that basket! Let’s not tie all of our hopes and dreams and something like that – something that is still only subject to decay and loss. Let’s build our greatest dreams upon the living hope that we have through God, not the slowly dying hope that characterizes all of the goods and values of this world.

            May we all rejoice today, and make it our heart’s cry in every situation to say, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!”

Rejected by Men, Chosen by God: 1 Peter 1:1-2 (1 Peter Series)

            It’s never fun to be in a setting in which you feel like you don’t fit in. In some settings, no one may have any ill will toward you and they may not tell you that you don’t fit in, but you just can’t get that vibe – like me at a Jamberry party. At other times, you may not fit in because the other people don’t like you. They may resent the fact that you are there, and they might let you know about it in a variety of ways.

            The Christians who received this letter from Peter that we now call 1 Peter lived in a setting in which they didn’t quite fit in. Several important details about them made them different from the people around them, and for that reason they were facing some persecution. And so, in the very first words of his letter, the apostle Peter wanted to remind them of a very significant truth:

You may be rejected by men, but you are chosen by God.

Let’s read the apostles opening words to these persecuted believers [READ v. 1].

            Let me clarify a few details about this opening verse. First of all, the locations that Peter mentions are not cities, but rather regions of the area that is now modern-day Turkey. These regions were administrative districts of the government of the Roman Empire. You can think of it as if Peter had written, “to those who are in Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas.” So Peter was writing to believers in a fairly large geographical area.

            Peter also writes that they are “exiles of the dispersion.” That phrase tells us that these Christians were ethnic Jews. The title “the dispersion” was a technical title that referred to Jewish people who lived outside the land of Israel. So the recipients of this letter were ethnic Jews living in predominantly Gentile areas, but nevertheless, religiously they were Christians.

            As you can imagine, that fact made them outsiders to both the Jews and the Gentiles around them. Gentiles were familiar with Jews and had come to tolerate them fairly well, but these Christians were a new movement, and many people really struggled to understand them. Records from the early church tell us that Christians were sometimes accused of cannibalism because they talked about the body and blood of Christ when they celebrated the Lord’s Supper. Some people even called them atheists because they didn’t have a physical statue of their God that you could see and touch. And of course, their moral standards were considerably out of sync with the Gentiles around them.

            In addition, these believers almost certainly would have faced rejection from their Jewish friends and relatives. The Jewish people regarded Jesus as a false teacher who was leading their brethren to betray their forefathers and the Law of Moses. So these Christians really would have been on the outs with everyone around them.

            So, before Peter goes any further, he wants to remind them that even if they are rejected by men, they are chosen by God. In the ESV translation here Peter calls them “elect,” which simply means chosen. We are in an election season in our country right now, and that simply means we are going through the process of choosing our next president out of a pool of candidates who are running for the office.

            Now if you’ve studied much theology, you know that the doctrine of election – or “predestination,” as its sometimes called – is very much a hot-button issue in the world of theology. That fact is really quite sad, because the doctrine of election in the Bible is meant to be a great comfort to believers. It should be very encouraging for us to realize that our inclusion in the family of God is no accident, but rather, it is part of the outworking of a plan that God had for us before time began.

            It’s worth noting that every variety of Christian theology agrees that believers have been chosen by God for that status. Calvinism, Arminianism, Lutheran theology, Anglican theology, Catholic theology – we all agree that Christians have been chosen by God for that status because that’s what the Bible plainly says in passages just like this.

            The disagreement and all the heat arises when we talk about what the doctrine of election means for unbelievers. If we are chosen, doesn’t that mean that unbelievers are not chosen? And if they are not chosen, how did that situation come to be? Did God simply not choose them even though he could have, or did he take some kind of factor into account when he made his choice, like knowledge about whether they would choose him during their lives? Those are the questions that generate disagreement – and in some cases, passionate disagreement for some people.

            Now at the risk of disappointing some of you, I’m not going to tackle those questions today, and that is simply because Peter doesn’t address any of those questions in this passage. He emphasizes what election means for believers, and so that needs to be our emphasis as well. In verse two, Peter goes on to talk about how the fact of our election relates to each member of the Trinity.

1. "according to the foreknowledge of God the Father…"

            We might paraphrase this by saying that the fact of our election was part of God’s plan for this world before time began. The Bible presents God’s foreknowledge as being an active thing. In other words, he knows about the future because he has planned the future. A passive foreknowledge, on the other hand, would be like if you found out about a surprise birthday party that was being planned for you. You didn’t have a hand in planning it, but nevertheless you know about it ahead of time because somehow you found out about it.

            God’s foreknowledge isn’t passive, it is active because he planned the future. It would be wrong to think, however, that the fact that God has a plan means that we are like puppets or robots who don’t have any true free will. The Bible doesn’t describe us that way, so we should not think of ourselves or others that way. The great mystery is that God’s plan for the ages was set before time began, yet it incorporates the choices that we make today and choices that we haven’t even made yet.

            But Peter’s point here is to remind his readers about the sovereignty of God. He is in control; he has a plan. Even if other people don’t want these Christians, God has chosen them to have a special role in his plan as his own children. That fact is a very comforting truth that we should remember during times of persecution. You may be rejected by men, but you are chosen by God.

2. "in the sanctification of the Spirit…"

            This phrase describes how God’s overall plan has actually come to be played out in our lives – it is through the work of the Holy Spirit to set us apart and give us the unique status of being children of God. That’s what the word “sanctification” means – to give something a special status that sets it apart from other things.

            Think of it like the fine China you may have in your home. You probably have a wide variety of dishes and serving utensils in your home, but that fine China has a special status. In fact, you probably even keep it in a special place away from all of the other dishes because of its special status.

            In our lives, the Holy Spirit has given us a special status among mankind by making us children of God. First, he drew us in and brought us to the Lord, and then he gave us new life and made us born again. Then he placed us into the body of Christ so that we are now part of God’s family. So through all of these activities of the Holy Spirit, God’s decision to choose us to be his children has actually become a reality now in our lives.

3. "for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood."

            This phrase outlines the purpose for which God chose us. He chose us so that the Holy Spirit might lead us to obey Christ’s call to repent and be forgiven, so that we might receive forgiveness through the shed blood of Christ.

            This phrase “sprinkling with his blood” would have been very significant for these ethnically Jewish Christians. They were very familiar with the Law of Moses, and they knew the history of their own people, so they knew the important message that was sent by the symbolic act of someone or something being sprinkled with the blood of a sacrifice.

            The author of Hebrews gave us a very helpful summary of this symbolism in Hebrews 9:18-22. Why don’t you turn there with me and follow along as I read these verses [READ]? We can see in these verses that sprinkling with blood was like God’s seal of approval on something, so to speak. It was a sign of God’s acceptance and commissioning for his own use.

            This declaration by Peter that they had been sprinkled with the blood of Christ would have been another moving reminder for these believers that they were approved by God and accepted by him. The Gentiles around them may have rejected them and their own Jewish brethren may have rejected them, but they had been chosen and accepted by God and commissioned for his use.

            I cannot stress to you enough how important it is for you to allow these truths to frame the way that you think about yourself at all times. When other people reject you – for any reason – their actions communicate lies about you. Their actions say, “You are not loved,” or “You are worthless.” But God says, “I chose you to be my own child before you were even born. I caused my Holy Spirit to set you apart from the crowd and make you clean from your sins through the blood of Christ, so that now you are mine, and I have a special purpose in store for you.”

            Those truths are so easy to forget when we are rejected by men, so remind yourself of this truth – you may be rejected by men, but you are chosen by God.

            Peter closes his greeting with a distinctively Christian twist on the greeting that the Jewish people had been using for hundreds of years. He writes, “May grace and peace be multiplied to you.” The typical Jewish greeting was the word shalom, which means peace. Even to this day, Jewish people continue to greet each other with wishes for peace.

            But the distinctly Christian message for this world is that there is no peace to be found without grace. Grace is perhaps of the defining idea of the Christian faith. The apostle John wrote in John 1:16 that from Christ’s fullness we have all received grace upon grace. That’s a beautiful word picture! We haven’t just received grace – we’ve been given grace that’s piled on top of more grace and still more grace until we’ve received a heaping helping of grace!

            We’ve had grace poured out on us the way that your grandma pours hot fudge over your ice cream. Parents are kinda stingy with things like hot fudge, because we know we have to pay the dental bills, and we have to deal with the fallout of a kid who’s had too much sugar. But grandma doesn’t care about that, does she? She gets to send you home after you’ve had too much sugar, so she just pours that hot fudge on there until it’s overflowing.

            That’s the way that we’ve been given grace, and that grace is multiplied to us not only when we’ve sinned, but also when we are weak and weary, and also when we face rejection from others because of our identification with Jesus Christ.

            So never forget this my friends – you may be rejected by men, but you are chosen by God! You have always been in his plans for his family, and he has made that a reality through his Holy Spirit, who has applied to your life the forgiveness that was purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ. So stand fast in the acceptance of the Lord, especially when you find yourself rejected by others for your faith.

Living in Hopeful Holiness: The Message of 1 Peter--1 Peter Series

            During our recent trip to Israel, one of the most fascinating sites that Carmen and I got to see was the Bell Caves in the ancient town of Maresha. The soft, chalky rock of the area was able to be carved and dug out by hand, and the ancient inhabitants of the town took full advantage of that fact by carving caves for a variety of uses. Some of them housed olive oil presses, others were made as homes and breeding areas for pigeons, and some were hewn as cisterns to collect and hold water.

            This site was a fascinating place to visit, but it also became very sobering when our tour guide told us about some events that had transpired there. During the turbulent time when Christian settlement and influence over the land of Israel was coming to an end, and Islamic settlement and control were taking over, Christians used those caves as a place to hide and worship in order to avoid persecution. But ultimately, a group of nearly 700 Christians were cornered in these caves and executed because of their faith in Christ. That was a very sobering reminder of the persecution that Christians have frequently faced since the very days when Jesus walked the earth.

            Today, we’re going to begin a series of sermons that will take us through the book of 1 Peter. This letter from the apostle Peter is all about how to remain faithful to Christ during times of persecution and opposition because of our faith. I think this focus is fully appropriate for us right now, given the current state and the likely future of our nation.

            I don’t want to sound like an alarmist today. It is certainly true that you and I may never face the tip of a sword or the barrel of a gun because of our faith in Christ. I pray that we never will! But it seems almost certain that our country will, at the very least, continue to go down the path of places like Western Europe, where Christian influence in society is minimal at best and Christians have very little assurance that they will be free to live by the convictions of their consciences.

            I probably don’t have to remind you about Aaron and Melissa Klein, the owners of a bakery in Oregon who recently paid a $144,000 fine simply because they did not want to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. But you may not have heard about Robert and Cynthia Gifford, who were fined $13,000 by the state of New York because they did not want to host a same-sex wedding at the wedding chapel on their farm. And I’m almost certain that you’ve never heard of Paul Church, a doctor who was fired from his job at a Boston-area hospital because he did not want to participate in activities like the hospital’s endorsement of the Boston Gay Pride Parade. All of this despite the fact that he had never had a complaint filed against him by a patient in 30 years of medical practice!

            Whether it be formal or informal, it seems certain that we will only continue to face opposition from our society because of our Christian convictions. How desperately, then, do we need a message of hope and instruction and encouragement from the word of God! And hope is precisely what we find in the words of the apostle Peter, who penned this letter to Christians who were facing insults and mockery and many other forms of opposition because of their faith.

            I think what we will learn above all else in this series is that times of opposition are not times for despair or cowardice, but times in which we should continue to do good in light of the future glory of Christ’s return. Such days are difficult, but they are not days of defeat. Rather, they are days in which we can still celebrate and savor the glorious joy that is ours through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Theme Verse

            If I were to select one verse from this book that I think captures most of what Peter was trying to say, I think it would be 1 Peter 4:19 – “Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.” I would encourage you to memorize this verse as we go through this series, because it really does capture the theme of the letter quite well.

            Now, it may seem that there is one phrase in this verse that’s a bit of a party crasher – it snuck in uninvited and threatens to ruin the whole thing! That phrase would be the statement about suffering “according to God’s will.” This idea is, without a doubt, the most perplexing claim that the Bible makes about persecution. How could it ever be God’s will – or in other words, God’s choice or decision – for his children to suffer from persecution? Why would He allow something like this? Let me offer a couple of thoughts that I believe will give us some helpful perspective.

Why does God allow His children to suffer persecution?

1. Remember what evil is and what it would take to get rid of it

            We often ask ourselves the question, “Why doesn’t God just put an end to evil right now? Why doesn’t he just take it all out of the world right now so that we don’t have to deal with it anymore?” Well, we first have to remember what evil actually is.

            It’s easy for us to think of evil as being something like air pollution. Air pollution exists in the atmosphere around us, and if we could somehow get rid of all of it instantly, that move would have nothing but benefits for everyone.

            But evil is not something that just floats around in the atmosphere around us. Evil is something that is inside of us; it is bound up in the hearts of every man, woman, and child on the planet – including you and me! The Lord Jesus said in Matthew 15:19, “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.”

            What we must remember, then, is that we are not only victims of evil at times, but we are producers of evil. When British author and Christian G.K. Chesterton was asked to write an essay about what’s wrong with the world today, his entire essay was only two words – “I am.” He said, “I am what’s wrong with the world today,” because he remembered this somber truth – that evil comes from the hearts of all mankind.

            So if we are the source of evil in this world, then for God to remove evil from this world, he would simply have to remove all of us from the world! He would have to wrap up human history in this world and put an end to it. Now, at first, we might feel like saying, “That sounds great! I would love to just be done with this world, because I know I’m going to heaven!” So we might want to say, “Go for it, God!” But as the saying goes, we should be careful what we wish for.

            According to the Bible, we are living through a stretch of history right now that we could simply call, “the patience of God.” According to 2 Peter 3:9, God is patiently waiting to close the final chapter of this stage of history in order to give all people plenty of time to repent and come to Christ. This patience is an expression of God’s love for all mankind—even the members of Boko Haram in Nigeria, and the members of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. It is certainly appropriate for us to long for the day when God will put the finishing touches on this stage of history, but if we callously call for God to knock it off already and wrap it all up, we demonstrate that we still have a long way to go to understand the depth and breadth of God’s love. His thoughts are indeed higher than our thoughts, and his ways higher than our ways!

2. Remember God’s plan for Jesus

            There’s an old saying that says, “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.” In other words, if something is appropriate for one person, then it’s also appropriate for similar people. That’s an idea that we should keep in mind for this discussion.

            When we reflect on the plan that God the Father had for his natural son, the Lord Jesus Christ, we see very clearly that it involved persecution and opposition. Now, if that was the plan that God chose for his natural son, why would we think that he would not consider a similar plan for his adopted sons and daughters? If there was good to come out of such a plan for Jesus, could there not also be good to come out of such a plan for us? I think the answer is most certainly yes!

            Now we should keep in mind that God’s plan for Jesus did not involve only persecution and rejection – not by any means! The Lord Jesus has now been highly exalted, and one day his exultation will be on full display in this world. The apostle Peter captured this thought well in 1 Peter 1:11 when he wrote that the Old Testament prophets “[inquired] what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.” Yes, there was suffering, but it was followed by glory.

            And so it is for us! I can promise you, my friends, that there will not be one moment of persecution that you will endure that will not be amply repaid to you in the next life. Jesus himself said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matthew 5:11-12).”

And so, it may be in God’s plan for us to face persecution – and perhaps increasingly so in the days ahead in our country. If we should find ourselves in that position, what should be our response? The message of Peter is quite clear – we should do good in light of the glory that is to come. Let me quickly trace the theme of those two concepts.

The Theme of Goodness

Our Lord is good (2:3), and He's given us Good News through the Gospel (1:12, 1:25)…

            These are important truths for us to remember, because during times of persecution, the goodness of God is one of the very things that we may be tempted to question. And so for these persecuted believers, Peter called them right back to these truths, encouraging them to lift their eyes beyond the horizon of their present circumstances to remember the goodness of God in the past and to look again at the goodness that God has promised for the future.

…so we should do good (2:12, 2:15, 2:20, 3:6, 3:11, 3:13, 4:10, 4:19) even to those who do not do good to us (2:18, 3:17).

            During a time of persecution, I would imagine that it would be tempting for all of our thoughts to turn inward: How am I going to look out for myself? How am I going to protect myself? But Peter encourages us to continue to do good for others in the name of Christ. That call to action extends even to those who do not do good to us. This response is one of the weapons that we have in our arsenal to push back against persecution. By continuing to do good, we can show everyone who may be watching us that we are not a threat or a danger to others, but a source of help for others. Thus, we can extinguish some of the fires of hatred that may flare-up against us.

This will give us a good conscience (3:16, 3:21) and put us in the best position to enjoy good days (3:10, 3:13).

            If we continue to do good despite persecution, we can live before God with a clear conscience. We will also put ourselves in the best position to avoid persecution, since we will not be giving other people any legitimate reason to oppose us.

The Theme of Glory

Though Jesus is not here on Earth today, through our faith in Him we can have a glorious joy (1:8) because His glory will be on full display at His return (4:13).

            Glorious, radiant joy is one of the ways in which the future seeps back into today. We do not enjoy the company of Jesus today as the disciples did when he walked this earth, but we know that one day we will! We receive a foretaste of that even now through the Holy Spirit, and one day, our lives will erupt in unbridled joy as we celebrate Christ in all his glory. And so, our foretaste of glory can sweeten and enrich our lives even today.

He has called us to share in that glory (5:10), which we will do to an even greater degree if we live for His glory today (4:11, 5:1, 5:4) and allow our faith to be strengthened through testing (1:7).

            In my opinion, this teaching of Scripture is one that is so fantastic and incredible that it borders on being scandalous! Nevertheless, it is true – we will reign over all things with Christ upon his return, and thus we will share in his glory and exaltation! Our exact position of service will be a reward for our faithful obedience today, and so we should not turn against the Lord during seasons in which he is seeking to strengthen our faith through testing. Rather, we should persevere in light of this glorious truth of sharing in the glory of Christ.

Therefore, we don't need to mourn if we lose out on the fading glory of this world (1:24) for the sake of Christ, because if we do lose any such glory through persecution, we know that the Spirit of glory rests upon us (4:14).

            Glory and honor in this life are such fleeting and fickle things. I get a chuckle sometimes when I read about historical figures who had titles like “the Great” attached to their names. You can pull out a history book and read about so and so the great, or so and so the magnificent, or so and so the lion-hearted or the gallant or the illustrious. But for virtually all of these people, you have to read about them just to know who they are, because they have long since been forgotten. There really is a reason why we talk about someone’s “15 minutes” of fame!

            If you miss out on praise and honor from this world because of your faith in Christ, you really haven’t lost much. In fact, that experience should remind us of all that we have. Suffering for Christ is a clear reminder that we are his. If the world hates us, it’s only because they hated him first. If the world lumps us together with him, what better company could we have? And so if those times of persecution come our way, let us continue to do good in light of glory.

Shining Light on the Main Application--Twisters Series

Introduction

            Certain things in life can suffer from being overshadowed. For example, certain plants and grasses need direct sunlight in order to thrive. If they are overshadowed by other things, they suffer because of it. Or, when a family has a child with significant special needs, other children in the family can feel like their needs are overshadowed and somewhat overlooked. That is one challenge that can come along in a situation like that.

            In the world of Bible study, Scriptural lessons can sometimes suffer when their primary application to our lives is overshadowed by a secondary application. Applications can sometimes take on a life of their own, and when they do, they may grow to overshadow the main lesson that we should take from the passage.

            Today, we’re going to take a look at 3 passages that have a secondary application that has grown to overshadow the primary application. Its not that we’ve necessarily misunderstood these verses—rather, we’ve just allowed the spotlight to shift a bit away from where it should truly be fixed. Let’s dive into these verses and I’ll show you what I mean.

1 Corinthians 6:19

            In this verse, we have the well-known statement, “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you.” Frequently, when this statement comes up, its in the context of a discussion about diet and exercise. Since our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, we say, then we need to take good care of them and do what we can to maintain our health.

            That encouragement is certainly true, and it’s a fine application of this verse, but would you be surprised to learn that diet and exercise weren’t the main thing on Paul’s mind? He had a rather different concern that led him to pen these words [READ 6:18-20].

            You can see that Paul’s main concern was with our sexual behavior. That area of life is the first place to which we need to apply this idea. The danger here is that by placing more emphasis on a secondary application, we might end up spending more time thinking about how to avoid saturated fat than how to avoid sexual sin! We might have a detailed plan to get a flat stomach, but no plan for remaining sexually pure. Such an oversight would be terribly negligent in light of the main point of this passage.

1 Corinthians 10:31

            This well-known verse states, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” The point of this verse is clear enough—whatever you do in life should be done for the glory of God. But have you ever stopped to ask, “Why did Paul mention eating and drinking?” Why did he choose to mention those activities? And just how do you drink something to the glory of God?

            I asked that question once to an audience of teenagers, and you could just see the gears in one boy’s mind come grinding to a halt! He had never thought about that question before, but now that he’d heard it, he couldn’t get past it.

            It turns out that Paul had been discussing eating and drinking in the context of this verse, which is why he chose to highlight those activities in this command. You may remember that last week, I described how questions about food and drink were a very sticky subject in the early church as Jewish believers and non-Jewish believers were trying to come together as followers of Christ. In this passage, Paul was encouraging the Corinthians to put their own personal freedom on the backburner in order to promote God’s glory in every context [READ 10:23-33].

            We can see from the context, then, that Paul’s command wasn’t simply to glorify God. Rather, it was to choose to glorify God rather than choosing something else—namely, choosing to flaunt our personal freedom in Christ.

            The danger in this case is that we might become very faithful in small matters, but unfaithful in more important matters. You might perform a volunteer cleaning job here at church with all your might, but meanwhile, your relationships are strained because you’re very inconsiderate of others in the way you make decisions. It’s the same danger about which Jesus warned the Pharisees when he said, “you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others (Matthew 23:23).”

Philippians 4:8

            This verse is often said to be a helpful guide to follow when you make entertainment choices—when you’re deciding what to watch on TV, for example. And it certainly is! If you follow this list as a guide, you’ll make some pretty good choices in that area.

            There’s only one problem with that application—it certainly couldn’t have been the application that Paul had in mind, since TV’s didn’t exist back then! Let’s see what his concerns were in the context [READ Phil 4:1-9].

            From the context, we can see that Paul’s main desires were for the Philippians to trade anxiety for joy, and that they could live in peace with each other. The main application of verse 8, then, would be along those lines. By focusing on thoughts of this kind rather than their worries or fears, the Philippians could enjoy peace of mind and know joy in their lives. They could also find peace with each other to be much more attainable if they would think about each other along these lines.

Arriving at the Primary Application

            The problem we’ve seen in all of these examples is that the main or primary application of the verse has been overshadowed by a secondary application—an application that may be true and good, but that might nevertheless take the spotlight away from the primary application.

            So when we’re studying a passage, how do we arrive at the primary application? How do we come to know the main thing that the Lord wants us to do? The essence of the process is this—after we’ve understood the application for the original readers, we then want to extract a universal principle from that application, which we can then apply to our own lives. Let’s look at the steps of this process in a bit more detail.

1. Determine what the author wanted the original readers to do

            This step is the most important step in the whole process because it sets the trajectory for everything else that follows. This step is like putting an address into your GPS. If you enter the address incorrectly, it doesn’t matter how closely you follow the turn-by-turn directions—you’re going to end up in the wrong place, because you made a mistake in the very first step.

            Even though this step is the most important one, it is the step that we so often rush through. After all, our main concern is our own lives, right? We’re not as concerned about people who lived so long ago. But we cannot ignore or neglect this step if we want to get it right.

2. Broaden the original application into a principle

            At this point, we can now look beyond the application for the original readers to the principle on which that application was based. Why did the original author want them to do that specific thing? What larger principle is at work?

3. Look for points of contact with your own life

            Once you’ve deciphered the principle behind the original application, then you’re ready to apply that principle to your own life. And you can do so with great confidence that you’ve gotten it right!

A Test Case—Philippians 4:2-3

            Let me walk you through this process using some verses that we just read—Philippians 4:2-3. These verses are helpful to use for this exercise because as Paul writes them, he’s referring to a very specific situation involving some very specific people. Nevertheless, we can use this process to discern an application for ourselves today. Let’s read these verses again to jog our memories [READ Phil 4:2-3].

So how do we use this process with these verses? Let me lay out the steps again, and we’ll talk through it.

1. Determine what the author wanted the original readers to do

            For this step, I would encourage you to write out the original application in a statement like this: “Paul wants Euodia and Syntyche to live in peace with one another, and he wants the ‘true companion’ to help them.” Its helpful to name any people who are named in the verses because it keeps our thinking back in that time, which helps us avoid rushing forward too quickly.

2. Broaden the original application into a principle

            What we then want to do with our application statement is take any words that are highly specific and replace them with words that are more general. This step will move us toward the underlying principle behind the application. In this case, we will end up with a statement like this: “God wants believers to live in peace with one another and He wants other believers to help them.”

            This application is now general enough to allow us to apply it to any context. It is just as applicable today as it was back then, and its applicable right now in any culture or country or setting. With this kind of flexibility, then, we can apply the principle to our own lives.

3. Look for points of contact with your own life

            Now that we have our general principle in mind, we can look at how this principle should play out in our own lives. Be as specific as possible when you assess your life! With this principle, rather than remind myself to live at peace with believers in general, I should consider if I specific relationships where the peace has been broken. So I can write out the statement like this: “God wants me to live at peace with Brother Bob and He wants me to be willing to receive help in doing this.” Or in this case, we might also think of situations in which we have a real opportunity to help others live at peace. In that case, we might write the statement like this: “God wants my siblings to live in peace, and he wants me to help them do this.”

            So now we have a very specific way to apply these verses to our own lives. We can be very confident that it is based on the same principle that Paul was drawing on way back then in order to give his instructions. With that confidence to spur us on, we will be well-positioned to keep the main application in the spotlight.

"PEACE-ing Together a Decision? Colossians 3:15--Twisters Series

Introduction

            I imagine we’ve all done some pretty silly things in our lives as we’ve sought guidance from God about our decisions. I can remember using some rather silly ways to ask God whether I should ask out girls when I was in 5^th grade (which is WAY too young, as I see it now!). When I was thinking about asking a girl to be my girlfriend, I wanted to get some guidance from God—because that’s a huge decision in 5^th grade! You might spend the next two weeks of your life dating this girl, so you don’t want to mess up that decision!

            Normally, as I would prepare to call the girl, I would say something to myself like, “Okay, if someone answers the phone after the 3^rd ring, I’ll take that as a sign that I’m supposed to ask her out. If the phone keeps ringing for a 4^th ring, I’ll just hang up, because that’s my sign that I’m not supposed to ask her out.”

            Now don’t laugh too hard at me—you know you’ve done things like that, too! We all want guidance from the Lord about our decisions. But one thing’s for certain—we better be careful in how we go about it. We don’t want to seek guidance from God through some method that He never intended to use for that purpose. Otherwise, we may end up making a poor decision, yet all the while we’ll be thinking that God told us to do it!

            Today, we’re going to take a look at a statement from Scripture that often comes up in the context of decision making. It comes from Colossians 3:15, and it says, “let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”

A Common Interpretation

            A fairly common interpretation of this verse relates it to the process of decision making, and it argues that a sense of inner peace is the defining influence that God uses to lead us in making decisions. The idea is that as you consider your options, God will give you a remarkable sense of peace about the option that He wants you choose. That feeling of peace is thus seen as His “seal of approval” on the choice that He wants you to make.

            This interpretation puts a lot of weight on the word picture that is painted by the verb “rule.” In the original Greek wording behind this translation, the verb used is the word for serving as a judge or an umpire at a sporting event. If we could paraphrase this statement then, we might say, “let the peace of Christ be the umpire (or referee) in your hearts.”

            Now, the referee in a sporting event is, of course, the one who determines if a player commits a foul or if he’s stepped out of bounds or broken a rule. In a sport like figure skating, the judges are the ones who determine who wins. They look over all the details of each performance, and then they decide who gets the gold.

            When this metaphor is applied to decision making, the “peace of Christ”—or a sense of inner peace—is said to act in this role of a judge. As you consider all the details of each option, it is said that you should choose the option about which you feel the greatest peace, because that feeling is said to be God’s way of showing you which choice to make.

But is this phrase “the peace of Christ” talking about a remarkable sense of inner peace? Is this whole phrase even talking about making decisions concerning things like a job offer or a move to a new town? Let’s take a closer look at the context to see what this statement means.

The Correct Interpretation

            In Colossians 2, we discover that this congregation was apparently divided over questions of Christian practice. Was it okay to eat certain foods or drink certain drinks, or should they avoid them? Were they required to worship on a certain day, or was there more freedom in this matter?

            These questions were very common in the early church, because the Holy Spirit was merging together two very different groups of people—Jews and non-Jews, or Gentiles. The Jewish people had very distinct lifestyle traditions based on the Law of Moses that dated back over 1,000 years. The various non-Jewish people in all of these cities also had their own traditions, so as you can imagine, as these people started to join together through their shared faith in Jesus, there was bound to be a clash of cultures—and we read about that quite often in the New Testament.

            Now again, in Colossians 2, we read that some people in the church were looking down on others who didn’t hold the same opinions as they did about some of these lifestyle questions. So Paul tells them, in a very godly, mature sort of way, to knock it off! He reminds them that their union with Christ by faith is far more important than regulations about things like food and drink that perish as they are used (to use Paul’s language from 2:20-22).

            He then encourages them instead to focus on the attitudes and actions that will foster unity among them. Let’s read a bit of this, starting at 3:12 [READ 3:12-17].

            From this context, we can see that when Paul talks about peace in v. 15, he’s not talking about a sense of inner peace in your heart—he’s talking about the peace that they should have in their relationships with each other. When he says, “let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,” I believe he’s saying that they should prioritize peace with each other over their personal opinions on lifestyle questions. Rather than berate others who thought differently about matters of food and drink and when to worship, they were to befriend them as fellow Christians.

            So rather than saying that we should allow inner peace to guide the way when we’re trying to decide who to date, Paul is saying that our unity in Christ should lead us to live at peace with other Christians.

What’s the Danger?

            So what’s the danger of embracing the misinterpretation of this verse? To put it simply, we could end up using a poor or even unbiblical process of decision making, and yet think we are actually following God’s will! That misunderstanding could lead to tragic decisions.

            Perhaps you’ve known a Christian young person in your life who has chosen to marry an unbeliever, and their rationale was, “Why would God give me such a peace about this if its wrong?” Or maybe you’ve known someone who has walked away from their marriage during a difficult time, and in explaining their actions, they simply said, “Doesn’t God want us to be happy? This marriage simply doesn’t make me happy anymore.”

            But I imagine the more likely danger for most of us is failing to obey a biblical command because it requires something unpleasant, and we feel unsettled because of that unpleasantness. So instead of obeying the command, we fall back on whatever makes us feel more at ease. We can find ourselves in that situation quite often—when we need to ask someone to forgive us for a sin, when we need to have a difficult conversation with someone whose sin is hurting themselves and others, when we are called to show kindness to someone who is not kind to us, when we consider an extraordinary act of generosity that will require us to make a personal sacrifice.

            In all of those situations, we’re likely to feel very unsettled about the task at hand. I don’t know anyone who feels totally at peace when they have to ask someone to forgive them! And yet, in those situations, we have to push through our feelings in order to do what’s right.

            Now, when we’re faced with a decision, should we recklessly go forward with a certain course of action even if we aren’t at peace about it? No—of course not! We should certainly ask ourselves why we feel uneasy about a certain choice or a certain opportunity. There is some truth to what we call a “hunch” or a “gut feeling.” Life experience can teach us that certain choices probably aren’t going to work out well, even if we can’t explain specifically why we feel that way.

            The warning that I’m trying to give you today is to avoid elevating a feeling of peace from simply being a factor in your decision to being the factor in your decision—the factor that trumps all others. When you’re faced with a decision, you should consider your feelings about it along with any Scriptural commands on the issue, and advice that you should solicit from mature believers. We just simply want to avoid letting our feelings override the wise council of God and others.

Interpretive Error

            So where did we go wrong to arrive at the wrong interpretation of this verse? Essentially, by taking this statement out of context. We’ve seen this error before in this series, haven’t we? And we’ll see it again, because this error is the cardinal sin of Bible study. It is the Bible study equivalent of leaving your starting pitcher in the game to face the Royals in the 9^th inning! It will come back to haunt you every time!

            When you take a biblical statement out of its context, you lose the resources of the context to help you answer the questions you have about the statement. When that happens, you’re most likely then going to supply answers for your questions from some other context—maybe your own personal opinions, maybe the popular thinking of your culture. It could come from anywhere, because you’ve lost the controlling influence of the original context.

            Context is to a statement what rails are to a train. It is not at all likely that a train will veer off toward the right if the rails are veering off toward the left. The rails guide the train and keeping it pointed in the right direction.

            Likewise, it is much less likely that you’ll misinterpret a verse if you read it in its context. The context will keep you pointed in the right direction, so as long as there isn’t some other interpretive malfunction along the way.

            Last week, we received an e-mail update from Brad and Maddie Fox, our missionaries in Alaska. An 11-year-old girl that they’ve been ministering to has recently committed to read through the Bible. Her name is Elizabeth, and her comment about her decision was this: “Is there a better way to understand the Bible than to read it all?” She’s on to something, isn’t she? There is no better way to understand the Bible than to just keep reading more of it, and more of it, and more of it! Don’t just pick out small phrases here and there—read it in large servings, saturate your mind with it. As you fill your mind with the Word of God, your understanding of it will grow accordingly.

Pray for One Another--Ephesians 6:18--Being the Body Series

            Her heart must have been pounding inside her chest as she stepped into that room—that room where no one was welcome without an invitation, that room where coming uninvited could get a person killed. But as the king heard her footsteps and lifted his eyes to see who had dared to come into that room, his heart was filled with compassion. When he saw the face of the one he loved, he raised his scepter to indicate that she was welcome.

            The story of Esther reminds us how difficult it has always been to get an audience with people in positions of high authority. Just imagine if you wanted to have a conversation with the President. For the average person, it would be practically impossible.

            And yet, as Christians, we have free and ready access to the highest authority of all—God himself! At any moment we choose, no matter where we are, we can simply turn our thoughts toward God and express our thoughts to Him, and He will hear us. Isn’t that amazing?

            With such an amazing privilege at our disposal, we should ask ourselves, “How am I using this opportunity?” Am I making the most of this incredible gift? Am I perhaps using it in a merely selfish way? I heard a great question recently that I think really helps put things in perspective—if all of my prayers were answered tomorrow, would only my life be different, or would the whole world be different?

            Today, we’re going to take a look at a scriptural command for us to pray for one another. It is no hollow cliché to say that the best thing we can do for each other is pray for each other. We’ll find out a bit more about how to do that in Ephesians 6:18.

            Beginning in Ephesians 6:10, the Apostle Paul uses the metaphor of warfare to discuss the battles that we face against the schemes of the devil. He makes a vital point in v. 12 when he writes, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” The titles “rulers” and “authorities” refer to the spiritual beings—the demonic beings—who are working with Satan to do battle against us.

            So our struggle is against spiritual beings and their powers, and as the old saying goes, you have to fight fire with fire. You’re not going to win a modern-day war with bows and arrows, and likewise, you’re not going to win a struggle against spiritual beings with merely human resources. This is one reason why prayer is such a vital tool in our spiritual arsenal, and it is why we need to employ it on behalf of others.

            In vv. 13-17, then, Paul calls upon us to embrace certain attitudes and behaviors, and he memorably compares them to different pieces of armor that were worn by Roman soldiers at that time. Then in v. 18, he ties it all together with this instruction about prayer—“praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.”

Let’s dig deeper into this verse with a few simple questions.

When Should We Pray?

            According to this verse, we should pray “at all times.” If we were to ask the Bible whether we should pray in the morning, the afternoon, or the evening, it would simply say, “Yes!” Every time of day is a good time for prayer!

            Recall that in John 15, Jesus said (and I paraphrase), “I am like a vine, and you are like the branches coming out of the vine. Apart from me, you can do nothing!” He meant, of course, nothing of spiritual value. We can do plenty of sinning on our own, but to do anything good, the guidance and strength of Christ are absolutely essential.

            If that’s true, then as people who need Jesus like a branch needs its vine, we should never be very far removed from our last prayer, and we should never be very far away from our next prayer. Texting conversations provide a great illustration of what that might look like. You can carry on a texting conversation with someone all day if you want, and yet at the same time, you can take care of the business you need to attend to that day. But that conversation is always in the back of your mind, and every so often you fire off another text to that person.

            That’s a great model for what it might look like to pray at all times. In the back of our minds, we should have an ongoing conversation with God about our day, and then every little bit, we bring that conversation to the front of our minds, and we pray a prayer to God.

            So think about your typical day and ask yourself, “Do I have some pretty long stretches of prayerlessness?” Or ask yourself this—“If I ate only as often as I pray, what would my physical health be like? Would I be well-fed or malnourished?” Well, if you endure long stretches without prayer, don’t you think your spiritual health suffers? So, we must pray at all times.

How Should We Pray?

1. In the Spirit

            When you hear this phrase, don’t picture yourself going into a trance or some kind of altered state of mind. The idea is to pray with the resources that the Holy Spirit provides. What kind of resources does He provide for our prayers?

            The first resource we should mention is confidence. The Holy Spirit reminds us that we are children of God, and as such, we have the right to come to God in prayer. Romans 8:16 says, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” Thus, we don’t have to wonder, like Esther did, whether the king is going to lower His scepter to us when we approach his throne. We can thus pray with confidence.

            That same chapter—Romans 8—mentions another activity of the Spirit to help us in prayer. Verses 26-27 state, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

            Notice how the Holy Spirit steps in for us. We don’t always know the right thing to pray for, do we? Sometimes, life is so complicated, we don’t even know what the best thing to ask for is. So as we wrestle with what to even say, the Holy Spirit assists us in the process. It may not be far off to think of Him acting like a translator—as I’m stumbling over my words, He can step in and say, “Father, what Tim really meant to say was…” And so, the Holy Spirit can give us great confidence for prayer.

            Second, He can also give us content for our prayers. Notice that Ephesians 6:17 says that the sword of the Spirit is the word of God. God’s Word is a powerful tool that the Holy Spirit uses to shape our lives—to give us teaching, reproof, correction and training in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16). As the Spirit teaches us the promises of God, we can use them to inform our prayers. As He convicts us of sin, we can find the remedy in Scripture, and pray over it. A Scripture-saturated prayer is a powerful prayer indeed, and the Holy Spirit can impress those Scriptures upon our hearts.

2. With all prayer and supplication

            Think of this directive as a goal to make your prayers a “well-balanced diet.” The word “prayer” is a more general term that could encompass anything you might say to God—whether you’re thanking Him or praising Him or confessing sin. The word “supplication” is a more specific term that refers to making requests.

            Taken together, these terms describe a well-rounded prayer life. If anything, I’ll bet we’re tempted to go heavy on making requests, and perhaps go a bit light on everything else. Or maybe your prayers are like a form letter—you always end up saying the same things, and the only section that ever gets an update is the request section.

            This statement from Paul instructs us not to neglect any aspect of prayer. Reflecting on The Lord’s Prayer is a good way to find some balance in your prayer life, because Jesus uttered that prayer in order to teach the disciples how to pray. It can teach us, too, if we’ll reflect on it a bit and learn what the Lord was saying.

3. With alertness and perseverance

            This phrase may surprise us a bit, because I think it paints prayer in a different light than the light in which we’re used to seeing it. Paul’s language here is perfectly suited to the context, since he’s been using this metaphor of warfare. A soldier in battle must always remain alert and must persevere through difficulty.

            And remember—a soldier in battle is precisely how Paul envisions you and me in this passage. That observation puts the practice of prayer into an important context. I believe we are often tempted to think of prayer as being like a perk or a fringe benefit of being a Christian—kind of like a bonus that God tossed into the gift of salvation.

            But prayer is no fringe benefit in the Christian life—it is much more like the communication that occurs in a time of battle. If you’re a soldier, communicating with your commander isn’t a bonus or something optional—it is absolutely crucial to the success of the mission and to your own safety and well-being.

            In his book Desiring God, John Piper suggested that many of our problems in prayer and much of our weakness in prayer come from the fact that we have taken a wartime walkie-talkie and turned it in to a civilian intercom. Rather than use prayer to go on active duty for God, he says, we use it to try to call the servants to bring another cushion into the den. We’ve turned it into something like a call button for an airline stewardess—something we can just use to call for another Coke whenever we’re thirsty.

            We must never forget that we are constantly under attack by the schemes of Satan. It is in that light that we must pray—as if our very survival depended on it. We must not let Satan catch us during a season of drought in our prayer lives. If we truly are at war with the Evil One, why would we cut our own line of communication with our commander by not praying? Or why would we render it moot and useless by trying to use it for the wrong purpose?

For Whom Should We Pray?

            At the end of this verse, Paul states that we should make supplication for all the saints. At a minimum, I’m sure Paul was telling these Christians in Ephesus to pray for all the other Christians there in their local church. To that, we could add other believers with whom they had personal contact, like the Apostle Paul, and then beyond that, we could add other Christians as they came to hear about them.

            Here is where we really get to the heart of the command to pray for one another. Our prayers should not be all about ourselves and our own concerns. Other people should have the starring role in our prayers—then, we can just bring ourselves in for a cameo appearance!

            That balance may ebb and flow with different prayers. A prayer to confess sin will, of course, be intensely personal, and it will focus on yourself. In other prayers, you may have a very urgent personal need that receives most of the focus. But in the bulk of your prayers overall, other people should be blessed by being the focus of your prayers.

            I would encourage you not to simply rely on your memory to help you pray for others and their needs. Use other tools to help faithfully pray for others. We supply several different tools through our own church—our recurring prayer list that we now print once a month, our urgent prayer list that we print in the bulletin, the selected family to pray for each week. If you will make use of these tools, they will provide you with a systematic way to pray for all of your brothers and sisters in this church.

            Praying for each other is a great privilege and a necessary tool in our battle against Satan. It also reminds us of the unity that we have as a result of our Lord’s sacrifice for our sins. Whenever we celebrate The Lord’s Supper together, we are reminded that we all have a stake in the sacrificial death of Christ; we all have been washed clean by His shed blood. May we partake of it today with our unity in the forefront of our minds!