How Do I Navigate Living in this World?

Welcome to the New Life Ministries podcast. The folks Peter is writing to are experiencing hardship and social exclusion as a result of becoming Christians. How are they to respond? Do they fight the government? Do they prove their views to their neighbors? What should they focus on? Today’s passage gives them guidance. Guidance which also helps us as we navigate living in this world. Today we’re looking at 1 Peter chapter 1, page 18:27, if you have a New Living Translation Giant Print Bible. So, when my buddy and I go backount camping, backcountry canoeing, real good. Uh, we’re basically in the wilderness. Uh, so occasionally we have to portage from one lake to another lake, but there are no markers where the portage is located other than a line on a map. Like on the shore, there’s no sign, there’s no little plastic tape or anything. So when we’re in the middle of the lake, we align what we see on the shore to our paper map and we go, “Well, the portage should be there.” And we paddle towards it. And then eventually, hopefully, we see something like scarring on the landscape, like a boat that’s gone on a beach or a boat that scraped a rock. Um, or we look for a trail into the woods and then we know we’ve arrived. But it’s not uncommon for us to be paddling along the shoreline thinking, “Where is this portage?” You check the map and you circle back. Sometimes you have a little bit of a fight. [laughter] There was one day he’s like, “I think it’s that way.” No, it’s there. I’m pretty sure. [snorts] Anyway, uh what often happens at the particular uh park that we go to in Ontario is that the putin and the takeout where the portage is is a boulder field. There’s just rocks and and boulders just right at the shoreline. Um uh and it’s gotten to the which is awful because it’s hard to paddle over boulders, but it happens so often that now if we look at the map and we can’t make sense of the landscape, we look for a boulder field and we’re like, “That looks like an awful place to put the canoe in. I bet it’s there.” And it almost always is. So, lesson one from my little story, you have to pay attention to where you want to go. Like, you have to look where you’re going if you’re going to get there. So, we approach the portage. My job is to look for rocks and boulders that are just under the water because I’m in the front of the canoe. They can’t be seen from a distance. My buddy can’t see them in the back, but they’re just shallow enough that we might get stuck on one or if it’s sharp, it might damage the boat. So, as we get close, we’re paddling. We start to drift. And I’m looking for obstacles and I’m calling them rock, rock. And I I say that so he knows that there’s something there. and then I quickly navigate out of the way because if he wants us to go there and I’m seeing rocks and trying to get us to go there, he has to know why I’m taking control. So, lesson number two, you have to look where you’re going. Um, and you have to pay attention for obstacles. If you think you’re just going to sail into where you’re going to go, you you might hit a rock and you might cause damage. So this one day we were doing this portage and the boulder field was such that the only way to load the boat was for my buddy to like we put the boat in the water for him to stand in the water in the back me to toss and get him some cargo and then he put the luggage in and then he got in the back of the boat and I got in the front of the boat and then we pulled away from shore going backwards and as we do it there are rocks coming by the front of the boat and I instinctively go rock uh forgetting for a moment that we are going backwards and they’re moving away from me. And my buddy says casually, “Don’t be afraid of what has already happened.” [laughter] And I’m like, “Yes, that’s a profound little statement because they’re not going to hurt you when they’re moving away from you.” Um I’m like, “Yeah, it’s very good.” Although I noticed that neither one of us are looking in the direction the boat’s actually going. So lesson number three, you have to look where you’re going, not where you’ve been. So you pay attention to where you want to go if you want to get there. There might be obstacles and you’ve got to focus where you’re going, not where you’ve been. That’s kind of what we’re going to look at in the book of First Peter today. So 1 Peter chapter 1, remember, these folks are brand new Christians and they’re finding out that more and more they don’t fit in society very well. like they’re starting to feel excluded and the Roman Empire doesn’t know what to make make of this Christian group. So, they’re not helpful. And their question is, now that we’re Christians, how do we do this? Like, how do we live? How do we navigate this journey? Because it’s not clear and there are obstacles everywhere. And Peter’s answer in this passage is going to be, look, look at where you’re going. Look at the destination of this whole story. Pay attention. There’s going to be some obstacles, but live in light of the future, not in light of the past. So, let me offer a prayer and then we’ll read uh this part of First Peter. Father, uh Father, thank you for this morning and the time we’ve taken to just express gratitude. Lord, this passage very much follows from gratitude. Would you teach us uh show us what you want each of us to learn and to take away? Bring our questions to mind and help us to grow as your disciples. May it be May there be peace. May there be gentleness and joy and hope that you have a beautiful plan laid out for us. Amen. So remember last week the first part of chapter 1 talks talked about all that God has done for us. Like he g in his mercy he saved us. He has a future blessing an inheritance prepared for us. He has a purpose for our trials and he protects us when we’re not enough. So from all of that goodness, we now get a passage that says therefore. If all this good stuff’s going on, what do we do? Therefore, verse 13, so or therefore, prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control. Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. So, you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old way of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then, but now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the scriptures say, you must be holy because I am holy. And remember that the heavenly father to whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time here as temporary residents. For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. It was not paid with mere gold or silver which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless lamb of God. God chose him as your ransom long before the world began. But now in these last days, he has been revealed for your sake. Through Christ, you have come to trust in God. And you have placed your faith and hope in God because he raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory. You were cleansed from your sin when you obeyed the truth. So now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart. For you’ve been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal living word of God. As the scriptures say, people are like grass and their beauty is like the flower of a field. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And that word is the good news that was preached to you. So all of this is a response. It’s our response to what God has done for us through Jesus. and it’s a list of instructions and it’s some theology. It’s designed to help us know what to do and how to think about what is going on. And his first point is, your salvation is not complete yet. It’s not all done. There’s more. When Jesus is revealed to the whole world, then the father will complete his work of salvation and renewal. Until then, verse 13, put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you. So, put your focus, put the focus of your attention on the salvation, on salvation when it’s all complete. Like, look where you’re going to go. Pay attention to the result. Live in light of the full salvation you are going to receive. So that means at one level don’t let your primary thinking be how do I get what I want now or how can I get my agenda and my wishes and my want. Not that what you need isn’t important. It’s just there’s something so much bigger. So when God ushers in the next age, what would it be like? And how can you be ready for it? What will the completion of your salvation, what will it include? What’s going to change? How can you move towards that goal now? Kind of to ease the transition. So, by uh by example, you know, uh on this recent canoe trip, I knew there would be a lot of physical work, a lot of lifting, a lot of carrying. Last year when we did a trip, it took a toll on my knees and I came back and my knees were swollen. So last fall after the trip, I thought I’m going to start prepping for this year’s trip and I did a lot of knee exercises to strengthen my legs. And then in January, I stopped for some reason. I don’t know why. I probably got bored. Um, so this time around I was not ready for this trip and my knees swelled up awful and I paid for it in soreness. So Peter is saying be ready for the salvation when it arrives in its fullness. Start to align yourself to what’s coming because that could otherwise be a real hard transition. And he starts with so verse 13. So, prepare your mind for action and exercise self-control. That’s how you’re going to do it. And they’re strong words. Uh, gird the loins of your mind. Like, he’s saying, get your head around this. Go put on some work clothes and get into some work boots. This is going to take some effort. Put your focus on doing what God wants you to be doing in preparation for the completion of your salvation. This is going to take a mindset. This is going to take some self-control. And then the passage begins to lay out what all has to change or what all is going to be involved. So verse 14, you must live as God’s obedient children. That’s what you have to do. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better back then. But now you must be holy in everything you do just as God who chose you is holy. For scriptures say you must be holy because I am holy. So the word holy means to be set apart to be set apart or separate from sin and to be set apart for God and his purposes. So one thing Peter wants to see in Christians is that we model the character of God. And he’s telling us we have to do the work that is our part to do the change. Like some part of it is God’s responsibility, but there’s some work you have to do. So engage in that work in how you respond to situations and how you talk and how you behave and what you value. You want to be conformed to the holiness of God. You want to be conformed to the image of Jesus, which is it’s saying the same thing. So, this passage gets misunderstood and we’ve talked about it before because it’s not saying become holy and then God will save you or become holy and then God will listen to you more. It’s saying now that God has saved you, he wants you to become holy. grace first, then we respond. Um, and we hear that phrase, be holy because I am holy, all through the Old Testament. And it has the same meaning, God saying, as you know me, what you know about me, become like that. Represent me and what I’m like as you live your life.

So now we have to be careful because we don’t want to start creating God’s character and values based on our values. We have to make sure we don’t start defining his goodness based on what we think is good. Right? Oh, God is let’s see. He’s tolerant and nice and friendly and welcoming and he always works to restore the oppressed and he tries to stop bad things from happening when he can. and he has a mint in his pocket for children when they show up. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no. God’s character is not the best cleaned up version of what we think is good in society. Or or to say another way, you can’t take what society says is good and then say that’s what God wants us to be like. That that is goodness. And I realize what I’m saying is a bit offensive because we like to think that we have found in our society the best version of being good. But you know that in a generation or two, they’re going to look back at us and go, “Wow, they were really off on that point. They were really unjust.” Just the way we look back a generation two or two and go, “Wow, they didn’t understand goodness the way we did.” and the way that generation looked back a couple generations and said, “Wow, we’re so much better than they are.” Um, we have to instead look at how God behaves in scripture and uh more so we have to look at Jesus and his teachings and his character to understand that’s what goodness is. That’s what it means to live reflecting God’s character.

So just as an aside, we think of ourselves as basically good people. I’m basically a good person. But there’s there’s two problems here. One, it comes from the idea that I am basically good. If I am basically good, then I have value. And if I’m have if I’m bad, well, then I don’t have value. That’s legalism. That’s self-effort. that my value is somehow based in how good I am and how well I perform. That is not a teaching of scripture. Um that’s exhausting. Um scripture says you are of value and you might do good things and you might do bad things. Your value does not come from your contribution. Your value comes because you were created in God’s image and God says you are value valuable. So you are God wants you to be free from this idea that you somehow have to prove that you’re worthy of being valuable and if you do bad things that somehow you have to defend I’m still a good person. We can be bad people. We are still of value. And the other problem is we think of ourselves as good people but look at how you behave privately or how your family behaves privately when no one’s home but the people you trust the most. your spouse, maybe your kids, uh your good friends, like that kind of thing. What kind of behavior actually comes out at you, comes out from you when things go wrong, you know? And sometimes we see private behavior spilling over into the public arena. And we see yelling and ex, you know, yelling and screaming to express frustration. We see manipulation. We see I’m not listening to another side or the full brunt of someone’s emotion being dumped on somebody else. We see that people don’t often stop and think maybe I’ve made a mistake or maybe I’m not understanding the whole situation. We live privately with this extreme self-p protection that does not show us to be good people. Um and you might say, “Well, I’m just a victim. this is the only way I can protect myself or I’m just giving them what they deserve. You might be doing bad to someone else when you inflict your judgment on them. So there are good things in our core. There are things we value that are good. But we have to acknowledge there is also bad and there is ugly. We are a mix of all of this. So that means we’re not in the best position to decide what is good. We’re not in the best position to tell God this is what your good character should be. Instead, we have to look at God and Jesus to say, “What is good? What how do we do this?” And so God says, “You must be holy because I am holy.” Look, look like come to know who I am and then behave that way.

So last week we looked at uh some of the good things in God’s character and what he gives for us. So like let’s apply this. We learned that God was merciful. God does for us what we cannot do. So if you were to live that out, do you recognize when someone around you needs mercy? That they need you to do something they just cannot do for themselves. It says last week that God has good things stored up for us, but he doesn’t give them to us right away. That he is waiting for the proper time. So, are you able to restrain giving a good gift until its proper time or are you able to wait to receive a good gift even if like you’re giving it to yourself until the proper time? Um, it said last week that God protects us from what overwhelms us and what could destroy us, but he lets us experience trials and difficulties because they’re good for developing our trust and our reliance and our obedience. So, are you willing to let people experience trials and difficulties and hardships, but being willing to step in when they would truly be destroyed? Like, this is a different way of approaching life by approaching goodness by saying, “What is God like? How do I live this?” This morning, I was reading in the Old Testament about a famine in the land in the time of King David. And David approaches one of his prophets and says,”Wh is this here? Like what has happened?” And the prophet said, ‘Oh, your predecessor, King Saul, did this bad thing to this group of people, and until you make it right, you’re going to have a famine. It was like, “Oh, God actually works justice over many, many years.” Like he God doesn’t forget an injustice to somebody. Like, oh, that’s interesting. So, how does that, you know, what injustice did I do 30 years ago? Is it still lingering? Or is there something I need to forgive from 30 years ago? Or or as a nation, certainly we’re asking these questions about our history.

So, God wants us to develop our responses and our thinking to be like him. So, verse 14, you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better back then. I was reflecting on that path, that line, and I thought, you know, when I was younger, I basically tried to live within the moral code that I was taught while going to church as a child. And as soon as I had formulated that thought, I very quickly had the Holy Spirit prompt me and go, “Let me show you what you were like.” Um, because I did not recognize wrong as wrong. So, I didn’t lie, but I exaggerated. And I didn’t lie, but I might change the story of what happened so I didn’t get into trouble. And I might not include all the details if the other person was already angry. But that’s not lying. That’s self-p protection. Yeah. No, Curtis, right? No, Curtis, that’s lying. And I didn’t steal, but I would borrow something and it might take a long time for me to return it or or I might not return it. Even if when I saw it, I felt guilt like, you know, that’s not mine. I should return it, but I wouldn’t return it. Well, that’s not stealing. Well, technically, yeah, it is. Um, and I didn’t work on Sundays. Well, I did homework on Sundays. I had to if I was going to get my work done, but that’s not working. It’s like, “Oh, I I wasn’t as good as perhaps I thought I was.” Um, there Peter is saying, “Roll up your sleeves. There’s going to take some work. It’s going to take some work here to realize that the way we respond isn’t actually the way God wants us to be. And we have a part to play in our the way we behave. We have some character decisions to make to align ourselves to God’s character. So, we look where we’re going. We think about the day of salvation when everything is made complete. And we begin now to get those obstacles out of the way to conform to what’s going to happen. And then the passage offers this unexpected thought. Verse 17. And remember the heavenly father to whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time here as temporary residence. For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. It was not paid with mere gold or silver which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless lamb of God. So what he’s getting at is is if you understand that God is the judge of your life and he doesn’t let people get away with bad behavior even if he really loves them then behave according to what you know like your salvation cost some like someone had to die for our salvation. This is a significant story. Or you could say being forgiven by God’s grace through Jesus doesn’t mean you then get to go live and do whatever you want. You are expected to respond to the grace given to you. And at the end of your life, you’re going to have a conversation with Jesus about how you responded to grace. So living in fear, as the passage says, isn’t about being frightened. It’s about an attentiveness or an alertness to the salvation story we’re in. It’s just keeping our mind aware of where we are. Kind of like um what we were talking about earlier, just being aware of what season we’re in, being thankful, like just there are bigger stories here that we’re part of. So when my buddy and I go back country on a backcountry trip, there is an inherent danger that we have to stay alert to. We’re not panicked about it. We don’t talk about it, but we’re mindful that if anything goes wrong, there’s no one we can call for help. Like help is a fiveday paddle out of this. So if you get cut, that cut gets washed and cleaned and tended to because we cannot afford an infection. Um, you always wear a life jacket because stunning things can happen when wind picks up or there’s a hidden rock or, you know, anything can happen. Um, and if you have to do a portage and slide down a rock or make some steps over boulders and logs, you make sure your footing is as stable as possible because you can’t afford a sprained ankle. Because if one of us sprains an ankle, the other person has to carry everything for five days. and and the canoe. Yeah. [snorts] So, you’re just we’re aware that we’re in the story that has risk. We’re not afraid, but we’re not being stupid either. So, one day we have to give account to God who knows everything about how he responded to the grace he gave us. And we just need to be alert to that story. So imagine at the end of your life standing before the judge and he says you worked on getting control of your outbursts of anger. Well done. Or he says you worked on getting control of your lusts and desires. Hey well done. Actually I think the bigger sentence will be something like I sent my spirit to help you get control of your outbursts of anger and you responded to his teaching and his prompts. Well done. Or I sent my spirit to help you get control of your lusts and your desires and you kept rejecting everything I was trying to teach you. Why?

Right? The opposite of living in reverent fear, being aware of the story we’re in is just an indifference towards God, like an inattentiveness to him. And when we do that, in the end, our character looks nothing like how God wants our character to be. Other people get hurt. God gets misunderstood. God’s pretty serious. Like I when he says, “I want you to be holy like I’m holy.” Kind of serious about that. Now, a question comes up. Does this passage mean a person can lose their salvation if they don’t change or engage with growth enough? And I don’t think that’s what this passage is trying to tell us. It’s trying to say, you still get evaluated at the end of your life. How well did you engage with what God was trying to teach you? It’s just a simple question. So, we are saved by God’s mercy and grace. What happens now? How should we live? Well, look at where you are going. Keep your eyes on that destination. You may have to navigate some obstacles. When Jesus is revealed, God will finish the work of salvation that he began. It’s not done yet. Until then, prepare to do some work. God wants us to do our part in getting control of our character and our values and how we talk and how we behave. Um, all areas of our life might need some work to be the way God is or to be conformed into the image of Jesus. We have to be careful not to project our definition of goodness onto God. We are not that good. We look at scripture. We look at Jesus, his life, and his teachings to really understand God the Father. And I know that’s offensive to us because we think of ourselves as basically good. But that’s legalism. If you’re only of value, if you are good, we are of value and we do bad. Just look at that private behavior when no one’s looking. So, we are to live with a reverent fear, not being afraid. But we still will face a judge at the end of our life and we have to give account for how we responded to his grace. Did you remain attentive to the story you are in? So what catches your attention in this passage? What sparks your thinking or or how is the spirit prompting you speaking to you? That’s a marvelous passage. That idea of holiness, it’s just so big a word and not so popular. A concept that has always helped me is the idea of availability as being available to God’s spirit. And so I’ve been trying to be alert to the things that make me less available. So certainly like being on my phone in my downtime, like I’m rarely on my phone looking at Instagram when I’m at work, for example. But when I’m crashing like after work or on my downtime, boy, a lot of time can be spent just looking at a lot of interesting things. Even like the Nobel prizes were awarded this week. So I was listening about chemistry and medical physics as well as physiology. But a lot of time can be taken up in even very good activities. And I just, you know, found myself as I often do, is it in line with what you’re being called to do even restfully right now? The other thing for me often can be worry. Like worry consumes a lot of time and a lot of energy. And so when I catch myself running on in terms of thoughts that are just worried about stuff, that’s not available to God. So that’s a really good prompt for me to just lay it down. So those are just some practical ways of trying to live a holy life made real to me by just talking about, okay, am I being available? That’s great. I could identify with a lot of what you said, you know, particularly looking at yourself and realizing the good’s not so good. Yeah. I don’t think of myself as good. I know I sometimes do good things, but that doesn’t make me good. Most of the time I’m like what you described of what you saw yourself as. I often can find justification for all kinds of things. I think being good is extremely difficult. Yeah. And often I don’t want to put the effort into being extremely good. We as Canadians see our country as good, but if you look carefully, it we are not so good. Yeah. In a lot of ways, we’re terrible. We don’t seem to be interested in changing that. Yeah. Every day I hear the news things that as a country, as a province, as a city, we’re doing that we’re portraying as good, but they’re not good at all. They’re terrible. I have a hard time keeping the focus on myself. I far too often look at what’s going on outside of myself. Yeah. Yeah. and making judgments, but it’s also exhausting. Like if I am always trying to be good, like like you said, it’s a whole lot of work. Yeah. And yet I think the Christian story is God saying, “You’re actually not your own judge. You don’t decide if you’re good or bad. You, you know, I’ll save you. I’ll make you I will make you righteous. You just make space for me and follow me.” Which is what I Limb’s getting at. Yeah. And it changes the whole equation of of Yeah. Uh, how much effort do I think about being good? In a lot of areas in our faith life, I think we spend too much time tr striving and we’re not meant to, right? Yeah. Oh, nice. I can’t find the CS Lewis quote. He says something about like humiliation. And he’s talking about humiliation or in this case it would be the clear knowledge that you are not actually good and you’re not perfect. Humiliation is like a drink that tastes terrible going down but if you drink it right to the bottom you find it’s actually very nourishing. It’s like okay actually feel that actually feels good. And I would say that I this reminds me of that that that dynamic where if I’m willing to say no actually I I am being really selfish here. It’s always hard to say that to kind of get over that hump, but once you do it, it’s like it’s weirdly relaxing because you’re like, “Okay, now we’re just on level ground and now we can talk about what’s actually going on and what needs to happen and I’m willing to have this uncomfortable conversation, but at least where we can have it in a relaxed way.” Whereas it seems like people who are committed to never admitting that they’re wrong or that they’ve done anything wrong, that is that is a lot of work. That’s an exhausting amount of work for the person, but honestly for the people around them, too. I mean, my mom is very committed to never admitting that she’s wrong. And it is exhausting for everybody, especially her. And it’s also sad and lonely for her, honestly. You can see it. Sometimes you learn as much what not to do from watching other people as you can learn from a book or from somebody telling you a rule. It’s kind of like, okay, don’t be like that. That is frightening. So, but she spends a lot of time and I don’t want to be I don’t want to I got only so much time and only so much energy. I don’t want to spend it all doing that. What a waste. Anyway, yeah, there’s enough stuff to do in life. I don’t need to spend it keeping walls up. Like Barry, a lot of things uh sparked in my mind today from throughout the passage and I just want to share a couple of them. So, this idea that our salvation is not complete yet, right? So you have justification, sanctification, but glorification is part of salvation. It’s not yet. So put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. So a couple great things there. Jesus is actually going to be revealed to the world. That that sounds fantastic to me. I guess my assumption here is that that last step happens after I physically die. So after I physically die, I can’t take anything temporal or material with me. So if I’m aligning myself with what life will be or my perception of what life will be afterwards, but I don’t have any stuff, then what are my priorities here? Like what should be important? Obviously, I still have a physical life here and part of that is important now, but in a attitude-wise or prioritywise or heartwise, how do I do that alignment? And so, that caught my attention. So, thinking about that and what that means, you talk about one of the ways that we doing that is responding to what God’s trying to teach us. now because if if scripture is talking about this, God is interested in this. And if God’s interested in this and he’s trying to teach me certain things now because part of my salvation is his grace is preparing me for that part of salvation. So then how I respond becomes important and that can be very hard. And so that prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control. Like you actually got to introduce your will as being compliant to the salvation. Okay, so that caught my attention for sure. The other thing that caught my attention was this is interesting verse 18. For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. So we can understand that in terms of the Roman Jewish context. We could also understand that as being generally applicable. Lesley Newbigan talks about things that we’re loyal to. So 50 years ago, you you might be loyal to the Elks, you’re loyal to your country, your family, you’re you’re loyal to whatever the going to the Legion, like whatever your The Elks was a community group, not a herd of animals.

but you know kind of the the community organizations, right? And he says the only two that are actually remaining more currently is family and the flag. And so that’s really interesting. Where do our loyalties lie and how high are those priorities? So we inherit certain culture from our families, from our ancestors. And sometimes that is actually we’re more loyal to that than we are to God. Well, it’s family. Blood is thicker than water or whatever these little phrases that we have. One of the few places where lots of people sing in our culture is national anthems. Then before a sports game, right? You go to a Jets game and you sing O Canada and Right. and you face the flag and take your hat off, right? Sometimes we don’t even take our hats off coming into church. So, what where are we loyal to? And so, just that that’s an interesting phrase that our ancestors and I’ll add our country should not have our highest loyalty. Jesus talks very sharply about divisions in families for those who are actually wanting to follow Jesus and around the world especially those who are leaving a Islamic faith and becoming Christians that often involves physical and bodily harm to those who are doing that in the majority of the world. And so just that really caught my attention. This is serious stuff. Yes, we appreciate where we come from, but we also have a new loyalty. We also have a new loyalty in Christ. And uh I thought I’d share that this morning. That’s great, Charles. Oh my gosh, this passage you could preach on it for years. Uh yes, there was like half the stuff I’m like, well, it’s going to have to be another week. Exactly. I love that phrase. Prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control. And the first questions that came to my mind were, how do I prepare my mind for action? How do I exercise self-control? And obviously, God draws us back to him. Prayer, reading the scriptures, exercising. Now, exercising, that one’s an interesting one. He’s talking about exercising self-control. That means actually going out and doing it as opposed to just thinking about it or talking about it. So you’re talking about things like delaying gratification. There is a beauty in that delay in that waiting for the right time. And God says at the right time this will happen. Society right now is so much I need it now. We weren’t satisfied with waiting for the post. So now we have fleets and fleets of delivery trucks that bring it right to your door in a day or sometimes in an hour. We’ve forgotten the beauty of learning how to be patient for something to arrive, for something to happen in our lives. There’s a million different ways, but this is for me was really a call back to I need to do the exercises to get that inner strength in order to be able to say not yet. God will tell me when. That’s great. Yeah, it’s great. Uh let me offer a prayer and uh and we’ll close the service.

Father, you really are good to us in so many ways and my mind is drawn to the passage that says you bring you rain righteousness down on the good and the wicked. You are always doing good here. Thank you um for calling us to know you. Thank you for doing what we could not do ourselves. And also, Lord, thank you for this passage and the reminder, the call that salvation’s not completed and there’s still more to go and there’s stuff we have to engage with. Um, Father, thank you for your forgiveness. And I I giggle and laugh as I look back at my own um, let’s call it foolishness that I thought was being good and that you must just have rolled your eyes. I’m like, well, we’ll teach you later what it means to actually be good. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your faithful involvement in all of our lives. Um, you are good to us and we praise you and we love you. Amen. Thank you for listening to our podcast today. New Life Ministries is located in Winnipeg, Manitoba. You are invited to join our service in person or over Zoom. Please use the contact us link to send an email to the church office and request the address or zoom link. If you would like to use these podcasts as part of your home church or local church gathering, you are free to do so. We do request that you let us know. If there is any other way that we can help you in your ministry, please send us an email.