Armed for what is ahead

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TODAY’S SPECIAL: 1Peter 4:1-19

TO CHEW ON: “Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin” - 1 Peter 4:1.


“So, since Christ suffered in the flesh [for us, for you], arm yourselves with the same thought and purpose [patiently to suffer rather than fail to please God]. For whoever has suffered in the flesh [having the mind of Christ] has done with intentional sin—has stopped pleasing himself and the world and pleases God.” 1 Peter 4:1 AMP

Three ideas hit me as I read this passage today:

1. We need to arm ourselves with thoughts and purpose. 

2. We arm ourselves to suffer. 

3. This suffering comes from fellow citizens.

A little further along from our focus verse in the reading, Peter connects our suffering with those who cause it: "they" (1 Peter 4:4)—the friends, neighbours, colleagues and superiors who we formerly hung out with but don't any more because we now live by different priorities. Their astonishment at our Christ-centred lifestyle plays out in animosity and attempts to get us to join them in their activities of “shameless, insolent wantonness, in lustful desires, drunkenness, reveling, drinking bouts, and abominable, lawless idolatries" - 1 Peter 4:3 AMP.

A few days ago my nephew and his family came to Canada for a short furlough from ministry in Uganda. His Rwandan-born wife told of her experience that sounds a lot like 1 Peter 4.

After a childhood upbringing in a Ugandan orphanage, she enrolled in a large institution to train in the hospitality industry. As a young woman of Christian honesty, integrity, and courage, she quickly rose to become a student leader. This made her a target and someone to be brought down.

Classmates spread lies about her, trying to sully her reputation so she would be expelled. They stole her notes and textbooks so she couldn’t study. Someone even attempted to poison her. When a teacher told her she would fail all her 21 subjects, she said, “Madame, if I fail, the God I serve is not real. But I will not fail any of my subjects, except French.”

Months later she got her results. She passed every subject—except French.

Even still, about seventeen years after these events, her life of faithfulness to her husband and his to her is a source of disbelief and disdain to those around them.

We as Christians in Canada are accustomed to living in sync with our society. However, as it strays from Bible standards of right and wrong, we find ourselves increasingly at odds with it. 

The thought of preparing for this, of arming ourselves with the expectation that we will suffer (with an idea of what it might  actually look like) and the resolve to live the Jesus way no matter what the people in our lives say or do to us, is timely.

PRAYER: Dear Jesus, please help me to live to please You above everyone else, no matter what it costs. Amen.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked AMP are taken from the Amplified® Bible. Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission." (www.Lockman.org)

State of expectation

John in the Wilderness - Alexandre Bida

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Luke 3:1-22

TO CHEW ON: "Now as the people were in expectation…" Luke 3:15

We don't know whether the intense supernatural activity that surrounded Jesus' birth continued on through His growing up years. Both Luke and Matthew gloss over those years to the time He began His public ministry. But the supernatural was clearly present in His introduction to the crowds by the remarkable John the Baptist.

We read about John's beginnings in Luke 1. Now at 30-ish— he was a few months older than Jesus—he was quite the spectacle.  A desert-dweller who dressed in clothes made of camel's hair and lived on locusts and wild honey (Matthew 3:4), he left his life of seclusion to preach repentance and baptize converts in the Jordan River.

He may not have cut as odd a figure to the people of his time as he does to us, though. There was a desert sect called the Essenes who lived in Qumran, a few miles to the south of John's baptism site. There were many similarities between John and the Essenes. Bible commenter Dale G. Robinson compares the two:

• Both John and the Essenes were of a priestly line.

• They both practiced baptism.

• Their teaching had a similar theme with Isaiah 40:3 foundational as a text for both.

• They preached to an audience.

It was in this audience department where Robinson points out one notable difference between John and the Essenes. While their audience was limited "… to an external fringe… John … came to prepare the ordinary person for the end times. He spoke to soldiers, Pharisees, and ordinary people alike" - Dale. G.Robinson, "Was John the Baptist an Essene?"  He even managed to offend the king (Luke 3:19,20)!

John's hearers came out, not to ridicule his oddness but to hear from God. They sensed there was something different and real about his preaching. It was supernatural.  Under it, conviction came leading to changed lives. This led to the spiritual climate described in the verse fragment that is our focus today: "The people were in expectation..."

Fast forward to us today. As we watch world events playing out especially in the Middle East (compare Matthew 24:7), as we experience the accelerating moral slide in our society (cf. Matthew 24:9-12), as the alarm cries about the state of our planet become ear-splitting (cf. Matthew 24:7,29) I feel the expectation rise in me (cf. Matthew 24:30,31). Don't you feel it too?

Let's listen to and heed John's warning to repent and live righteously as we wait in expectation for the curtain to rise on the next act in God's drama for planet Earth.

PRAYER: Dear God, thank You for way-preparers like John the Baptist,  who are unafraid to be Your messengers. Help me to be alert to my times and living prepared and in expectation as Your plans for Earth unfold. Amen.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.