READ: 2Peter 3

BACKGROUND: Peter is specifically addressing the fact that many early Christians expected Jesus to come right back but he didn’t. He is telling them that it will happen in God’s time and not ours, but it could happen at any moment so we should be ready and have hope.
By Verse:
2 – New Testament apostles have the same authority as Old Testament prophets.
5 – Peter criticizes those who doubt Christ’s return by demonstrating the reliability of the Bible.
8 – Time is something God created. He isn’t bound by it like we are. We need to understand this in order to be patient and trust him.
16 – This is a cool verse because Peter clearly sees Paul’s letters (which make up a huge chunk of the New Testament) as having equal weight with the Old Testament.
18 – Always be growing! Martin Luther put it best when he said, “A Christian is never in a state of being but always in a state of becoming.”

THINK: The biggest volcanic explosion in modern history occurred in 1883 when Krakatoa, a volcanic island in Indonesia, erupted. The eruption sent 6 cubic miles worth of debris over 20 miles high into the atmosphere. It caused a shockwave that traveled around the entire globe 7 times and some of the rubble landed in places over 2,000 miles away from Krakatoa. When the volcano erupted, the British ship Norham Castle was fairly close and its captain wrote, “ I am writing this blind in pitch darkness. We are under continual rain of pumice-stone and dust. So violent are the explosions that the ear-drums of over half my crew have been shattered…I am convinced that the Day of Judgment has come.” The eruption of Krakatoa didn’t bring about the end of the world, but 2Peter 3 serves as a solemn reminder that Christ is coming back and the world as we know it is coming to an end. His return will come like a thief, suddenly and unexpectedly. And not only this, but life is fragile, and even if he doesn’t return soon any one of us could die at any moment. Are we ready?

The awesome news for believers is that death has no victory and no sting. It is not the end, but rather the beginning of the eternal life in perfect relationship with God and with one another that we were created for! All of the brokenness and hurt and pain of this world will be set right and God promises us that one day there will be a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. What an awesome promise! What an awesome hope we have! This hope ought to affect the way we live. It has to. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of living for the things of this world. Wealth. Popularity. Possessions. Power. They may all have their appeal, but we know that they’re all going to fade away. Are we living for what really matters? Alexander the Great once saw Diogenes looking attentively at a pile of human bones, and he asked the philosopher what he was looking for. Diogenes’ replied, “That which I cannot find – the difference between your father’s bones and those of his slaves.” At the end of it all our bones will all be the same no matter how much money or influence we had. Only 2 things will matter then: 1. Whether or not we placed our faith in Jesus, & 2. What we did for HIM during the time we had on this earth.

ASK: Am I being diligent to found by God in peace, living a spotless & blameless life (2Peter 3:14)? Am I giving my life to the things that really matter? What does it look like to live my life in view of my death…and my eternal life?

PRAY: Ask God to transform your perspective. Ask him to help you live this life through the lens of the incredible hope that you have in eternal life with him. Confess the times when you haven’t been diligent about living spotlessly & blamelessly, and ask God to give you the courage to give your life to what really matters.

READ: 2Peter 2

BACKGROUND: Peter warns that false teachers and leaders will come around and preach a brand of Christianity where everyone claims faith but then goes out and lives however they want.
By Verse:
1 – Our forgiveness and our very life is purchased by the blood of Jesus.
7 – See Genesis 19 for the story.
10 – Peter is talking specifically about sexual perversion and sin here.
15 – See Numbers 22 for the story.
17 – I love the imagery of springs without water. False teachers promise something that they absolutely cannot deliver.
19 – There is great temptation in the promise that freedom can be found outside of God’s commands. People who go in that direction end up totally enslaved to sin. The only real freedom is found in God.

THINK: I never really liked working in groups when I was in school. I preferred just doing things on my own. And, if I’m honest, when I was forced to work in groups I was usually more than willing to sit back and let others shoulder the bulk of the work. But my perspective on that changed after one group project. It was for a history class. My group did a decent presentation, nothing earthshattering, and then we got our grades. But there was a problem. I was under the impression that it was going to be a group grade, but everyone else in my group got a higher grade than me. The rest of the group got an A-. I got a B-. Confused and kind of angry, I went to the teacher and explained the error. Then he explained to me that it wasn’t an error. He told me that for the rest of my group the presentation was decent work, A- work. But for me it was mediocre. He wasn’t going to give me the same grade because I could have done better, because I should have done better, & because I should have lifted the quality of those around me instead of just coasting. I didn’t think that seemed fair. He thought it was perfectly fair. And that forced me to really think about the situation and I realized something that I should have learned from Spiderman’s Uncle Ben, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Or rather, being a history nerd, I should have learned it from Voltaire who used it first. That or Luke 12:48 which says “from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” History was my favorite subject and one that I was good at. I should have done better and my teacher held me accountable.

Peter issues a powerful warning in this chapter to all Christians that we will be held accountable for our actions. He observes that there are a number of people who accept Jesus and say that they have faith and go to church and learn a lot about him, but then walk outside the doors of the church and live lives that are completely indistinguishable from the culture around them. He warns us that it is really easy to slip into a place where our faith is insincere. We say that we believe, but we live just like everybody else. And he lays it out pretty plainly in verse 21, “It would be better for [such people] not to ever have known the way of righteousness, instead of having known it and turning away from the holy commandment handed on to them.” He basically says that people who know Jesus and know the truth will be held to a higher standard than those who don’t. And we should. We’ve tasted the real thing and we know the truth, and if we don’t follow it and live with sincere faith then we not only act foolishly but we also offer up a terrible witness to an unbelieving world that turns them away from God rather than towards him. And living like that has eternal consequences for our friends and neighbors. Living like that is acting like a dog that returns to its own vomit!

ASK: Is my life noticeably different than the lives of the people around me? Am I living a half-hearted life of faith or a sold-out one? If God gave me a grade for being a Christian, what grade would he give me?

PRAY: Tell God about all the times when your faith hasn’t been sincere. Tell him about all the places where your life doesn’t look any different than the lives of your nonbelieving friends and neighbors. Ask him to forgive you. Ask him to give you the strength and the wisdom to live out the truth that you know with reckless abandon.

READ: 2Peter 1

BACKGROUND: Peter is talking about the importance of grounding our faith on Jesus and our being intentional about growing it.

By Verse:

4 – Partakers of the divine nature is describing the way in which believers are invited to share in the life of God by becoming more like Jesus.

9 – Without the qualities listed the life of a believer is useless.

13 – This earthly dwelling refers to Peter’s human body.

16 – Peter is saying that all of this stuff about Jesus isn’t just made up fairytales. He saw it with his own eyes. He is specifically referencing the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-8) in verses 16-19.

THINK: When Clayton Kendrick-Holmes became the head football coach at Maritime College in New York City the school hadn’t had a winning record for over 2 decades. He decided that the only way to change things around was to completely reinvent the identity of his team, and he identified the integrity of his players as his primary target. So Coach Kendrick-Holmes came up with the acronym WAR FACE, with each letter standing for a character trait he wanted his players to be defined by. Work ethic, Accountability, Respect, Family, Character, & Enthusiasm. What he did next was unprecedented. Not only did he affix a logo that spelled out WAR FACE – in the shape of a cross with the A shared between the 2 words – but he removed his players’ last names from the backs of their jerseys and replaced them with one of the 6 words instead. And it changed the direction of the program.

When we put our faith in Jesus Christ it means completely reinventing our identity as individuals. We are no longer slaves to sin, and our new identity is found in the process of sanctification – that is being transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit into people who are more like Jesus. In 2Peter 1 we get a picture of the character traits that this process brings about in us. Moral excellence. Knowledge. Self-control. Perseverance. Christ-likeness. Kindness. Love. These are the things that, above all else, we ought to be pursuing. These are the things that ought to define our lives and our character.

ASK: Am I pursuing moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, Christ-likeness, kindness, & love? What are the things in my life that might be preventing the Holy Spirit from fully transforming me into the person God is calling me to be?

PRAY: Invite God in. (Don’t take this invitation lightly because he’ll take you up on it). Ask him to come in and transform you. Ask him to help you see the things you need to get rid of so that you can become the person he is calling you to be. Ask him to sanctify you.

READ: 1Peter 5

BACKGROUND: Receiving God’s grace means that we ought to humbly serve one another and give our entire lives to him.

By Verse:

1 – Elders or pastors/leaders in the church have the primary function of serving their people, not being served by them or ruling over them.

5 – From Proverbs 3:34

7 – This is continuation of verse 6. Casting all your anxiety is a subordinate clause to the command to humble yourselves which means that part of humbling ourselves before God is trusting him with all of our worries and fears.

8 – Devour also means drown out or swallow. Satan wants to totally drown out and swallow up our testimony.

13 – Babylon was a code word among Christians for Rome – the place where Peter was writing this – that helped them avoid detection and persecution from Roman authorities.

THINK: On October 5^th, 1877 Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce realized that his people were vastly outnumbered, outgunned, & undersupplied. They had been on the run, trying to escape to Canada after being informed that they had to move out of their home in the Wallowa Valley in northeastern Oregon to a reservation in Idaho or be forcibly driven out by the Army. The 800 Nez Perce had successfully evaded and fought off the 2,000 man U.S. Cavalry that was pursuing them for some time on a journey that covered over 1,000 miles across parts of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, & Montana. Finally though, after a major 5-day skirmish in freezing conditions, they could neither fight nor run any longer. Realizing this, Chief Joseph said, “I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Too-hul-hul-sote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are, perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

Have you ever felt like Chief Joseph? In no way do I mean to minimize his struggle or his situation, but I think that sometimes we all reach points of hopelessness. We all feel so overwhelmed by the stress and the struggles and the brokenness of life that we just want to surrender. And the reality of our broken world, as Peter reminds us in this passage, is that the devil prowls around like a lion looking to devour us. We are locked in a spiritual battle every day, and we need to be aware of that. And we cannot handle it on our own. We are outmanned, outgunned, & undersupplied. Ultimately we all have to surrender. But there is good news! We don’t have to surrender to the world or the roaring lion. Instead we can surrender to God. We can cast all of our anxieties upon him. And we can have great hope in that because he loves us and he has the strength to win victory over all of our troubles and trials. Surrender to God means victory not defeat!

ASK: What keeps me from surrendering all of my worries and anxieties to God? How might life be different if I gave that all up to him?

PRAY: Ask God to help you be humble and get rid of the pride and the lack of faith that keeps you from casting all your cares upon him. Praise him for being trustworthy and loving; thank him for his willingness to carry your burdens.

READ: 1Peter 4

BACKGROUND: No matter what our situation in life, we should serve and love others and trust in God.

By Verse:

1 – Jesus is our perfect example of how to live and what attitude we should have.

6 – Those who are dead is specifically referring to deceased Christians here.

8 – Love covers a multitude of sins doesn’t mean that love makes up for them or makes them okay, but rather that love forgives over and over and over again.

15-16 – Peter is saying that we may suffer for our faith and that’s okay. But we should be careful that we don’t suffer in this life because of our sin.

THINK: Have you ever been driving on the interstate and found yourself stuck behind two semis that are taking up both lanes of traffic and going really slow? My guess is that even asking that question brings about feelings of frustration and rage in most of us as we mutter to ourselves, “I hate that!” It can be really irritating to drive when the road is crowded with other vehicles, particularly semis because they don’t usually travel as fast as the rest of us. But recently, while feeling frustrated by some slow-moving semis, a thought occurred to me: I am so thankful for what they accomplish! Semis are loaded up with all kinds of products that we need to use on a daily basis. Everything from our clothes to our food to our gasoline arrives via semi. And the men and women who drive the semis have a very simple mission. They must deliver the product. They are responsible for taking care of something that doesn’t belong to them and delivering to others. They are stewards of our shampoo, t-shirts, bananas, chairs, and more.

As believers, we are stewards of the grace of God and of the gospel message that he loved the world so much that he came to die for it. We have all been called to deliver this product to our world. And each of us has been uniquely designed and gifted with special abilities that God wants us to use as a blessing to those around us. He has entrusted us with the talents we have so that we might use them to show his love and grace to everyone we meet. It’s so easy to forget this or ignore it and use our gifts for selfish purposes. But God is calling us to look at life through a different lens. He is calling us to do everything we do for his glory – to see ourselves as stewards of his grace – so that the world might see him through us.

ASK: Have I been a good steward of God’s grace and of the gospel message? What are some specific ways in which I can use my gifts to serve others so that they might see God shining through me?

PRAY: Ask God for forgiveness for all of the times you’ve used the gifts he gave you to serve yourself rather than serving the world. Ask him to open up doors so that you might be able to use your unique wiring to bless other people and point them towards him.

READ: 1Peter 3

BACKGROUND: Peter encourages us to be humble and to put the needs of others above our own.

By Verse:

3 – It’s easy to get caught up in externals and the way we appear on the outside, but God cares about the heart.

7 – Weaker physically. Peter implores men to treat women as equals in Christ. This seems like a “no duh” statement to us, but it was counter-cultural at the time.

10-12 – From Psalm 34:12-16

15 – Sanctify Christ in your hearts means set Jesus apart as your only master.

21 – It isn’t the act baptism that saves, but the faith which it symbolizes.

THINK: I think that my brother James really needs to read 1Peter 3 and take it to heart. Last weekend as we were at the church getting dressed for my little sister’s wedding I noticed that the vests and shirts – which had recently been dry-cleaned and ironed – were on those super-thin wire hangers. And after I put on my vest I noticed that James had his back turned to me and was looking the other way. So naturally I grabbed one of the wire hangers, got a running start, and whipped him in the back of the leg with it as hard as I could it. He fell over screaming. I fell over laughing. But what he did next is the part that really concerns me, the reason that I think he needs to read this passage: He proceeded to get a running start and hit me in the leg with a wire hanger. This might seem like a pretty normal response, but Peter tells us, “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult.” So the moral of this story is that James is a sinner. 🙂

I use that story as a tongue-in-cheek example because my brother and I were just having fun and we get along incredibly well, but I challenge you to think about the real implications of choosing not to repay evil with evil. All of us have been hurt. Lied to. Cheated. Lied about. Insulted. Every single one of us can remember a time when someone wronged us and did so maliciously. And our natural response is to do two things: 1. Defend ourselves, & 2. Get revenge. But God calls us, instead, to be sympathetic, loving, and humble and to repay the evil by blessing the person who hurt us. This requires an incredible amount of humility and trust in God – to put aside our own pride and our own rights in order to show the incredible love of God to someone else. But we can do it! How? Because it’s exactly what Jesus did for us. Though we sinned and rejected him and turned our backs on him, he endured suffering on our behalf out of an unimaginably huge and deep love. We will suffer in this world. People will reject and make fun of us for our faith. But in those moments we have a unique opportunity to be more like Jesus than James. We have a change to demonstrate God’s love in a compelling way that our world doesn’t understand – by repaying evil with blessing.

ASK: What is my natural reaction when somebody hurts or wrongs me? How would people around me react if the next time somebody wronged me I treated them with love, compassion, and humility?

PRAY: Ask God to give you the strength to be like Jesus, to humble yourself enough to show God’s love to the world even when they don’t deserve it. Turn your pride over to God, and ask him to help you trust him completely with your life.

READ: 1Peter 2

BACKGROUND: In this chapter Peter talks about what it looks like to be obedient.

By Verse:

2 – A proper diet of God’s Word allows Christians to put aside all of the things listed in verse 1.

5 – Living stones seems like an odd phrase, but Peter is saying that we are all parts of the church – we’re the stones that build it – but we aren’t designed to just sit there as thought we are a part of a wall. We’re meant – as the church – to go out and be God’s witnesses.

6 – From Isaiah 28:16

7 – From Psalm 118:22

9 – From Isaiah 43:20, Isaiah 61:6, & Exodus 19:5-6

10 – From Hosea 1:10

12 – If we live the way God calls us to it will serve as a powerful witness to an unbelieving world, even if they don’t want to live the same way.

16 – I love this verse. The Cross sets us free! But we shouldn’t use that freedom to sin. Instead we should use it to be bondslaves of God!

22 – From Isaiah 59:3

THINK: “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk so that by it you may grow up in your salvation…” – 1Peter 2:2

The imagery of a baby wanting milk is a really cool illustration by Peter, but it’s easy to miss the full weight of it. Babies are so cute and little that when we read these words – at least when I do – the first image that comes to mind is a cute little sleeping newborn baby. But Peter isn’t telling us to sleep like babies. He is telling us to crave milk like babies. And I can tell you as the parent of a 6 month-old baby that this is an entirely different image. It isn’t a precious sleeping baby. It is a red-faced, screaming at the top of the lungs, inconsolable, little bundle of anger that will not stop or be satisfied until it has milk. Babies, even if it’s unconscious, know that they need milk to survive. And they crave it with such a deep desire that absolutely nothing else in the world will satisfy them. And they use every resource available to them – namely screaming – to get it.

Do we long for the Word of God like that? That’s a rhetorical question. But here’s the thing: WE SHOULD! Just like a baby needs milk to survive and to grow, we need God’s Word and teaching and fellowship – pure spiritual milk – so that our faith can survive and grow. 1Peter 2 tells us that we are a chosen people and a royal priesthood, and it is very clear that if we are going to be the people whom God has designed and called us to be then we need to be intentional about feeding our souls so that we can grow. We cannot be indifferent to it any longer. We can’t push it down the priority list any longer. That simply isn’t an option! Peter observes that some people rest in their salvation, that they take it lightly and use it as a license to live half-hearted lives of faith where they sin. He urges us instead to commit to being bondslaves of God – submitted completely to his will – whose very lives are defined by pursuing him with every resource available to us.

ASK: If I’m honest, where does God fit in on my priority list? What might my life look like if I craved pure spiritual milk, if I pursued God with everything I had? What changes do I need to make in order for that to happen?

PRAY:  Confess that God hasn’t always been at the top of your priority list. Ask his forgiveness for taking your salvation and your faith lightly. Commit yourself to pursuing God, and ask him to provide you with the spiritual milk you need to grow.

The next eight days of devotions will be based on the theme of “grace.” Grace is a word with a pretty broad meaning in the Bible, but specifically we’re going to be defining grace as the free and undeserved love, favor, and salvation that God extends to us. And we’re going to be digging into what exactly it means for our lives that we have received God’s grace by looking at 2 letters written by Peter, 1 Peter & 2 Peter.

1 Peter was written from Rome as a letter to the many Christian believers scattered throughout the world at the time. Peter wrote it specifically to address the “true grace of God” and what it means in our lives (5:12). When this letter was written Christians were in the minority and they had to undergo trials and suffering for their faith. This suffering, though, wasn’t widespread persecution and murder. Instead it consisted more of social ostracism, slander, and some incidents of violence. 2 Peter was written from Rome just before Peter was killed for his faith. It has some strong cautions about false teaching, and concludes with an awesome picture of what God’s grace ultimately means to us.

I am excited to see God shape all of us as we journey through Peter’s letters together!

READ: 1Peter 1

BACKGROUND: Peter kicks off his letter with a reminder of the gospel and the kind of hope that it brings to us.

By Verse:

1 – Peter calls his readers aliens to remind them that their permanent citizenship is in Heaven, not wherever they currently reside.

2 – We see the Trinity clearly in this verse. God the Father, Jesus Christ, & the Holy Spirit working as 1 God in 3 persons.

13 – Prepare your minds for action is actually a Greek figure of speech that translates “gird up the loins of your mind.” Girding loins means fastening up your garments so that you could move quickly and freely without obstruction. Peter is telling us to clear out the hindrances from our minds.

15 – Being holy means being set apart from sin to God.

16 – From Leviticus 11:44

24-25 – From Isaiah 40:6-8

THINK: As hard as it is to believe, in 2003 my beloved Chicago Cubs were one of the best teams in baseball. They had great young pitching talent in Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, a number of hitters who could really mash the ball, and an experienced manager named Dusty Baker. All of us who bleed Cubbie blue were convinced that with our talent and with Dusty’s knowledge of the game it was finally our year. The sidewalks outside of Wrigley field were littered with vendors selling t-shirts that said, “In Dusty, We Trusty!” I almost bought one because I totally bought in. I put my hope in Dusty to lead us to the promised land. Those of you who know anything about baseball are well aware that he didn’t. In fact, with the Cubs only a few outs from making it to the World Series for the first time in nearly half a century, Dusty made some major managerial mistakes and they flamed out in fantastic fashion. Then I jumped off a roof. It hurt. Bad.

A big part of the hurt wasn’t the physical pain of the bleeding elbow, twisted ankle, & bruised tailbone. It was the emotional pain of knowing that I put my trust and my hope in someone who didn’t deliver. I never should have put my trusty in Dusty. Even though most of you – I hope – have never been dumb enough to put your hope in the Cubs, we’ve all put our hope in people or things that have failed us. But Peter tells us to fix our hope COMPLETELY on God’s grace. Do we do that? If you’re honest, where is your hope? I think a lot of us put our hope in earthly things – the type of things that Peter goes on to describe as perishable. We put our hope in money, success, popularity, good grades, possessions…the list goes on. Even those of us who put our hope in God’s grace don’t always do so completely. We put some hope in God, but still put some of it in our finances or our achievement. In the end, though, only God’s grace is worth hoping in. Everything else fades away and pales in comparison. Putting our hope completely in God sets us free to live completely for God!

ASK: What are the things that I put my hope in? What would it look like and how would my life be different if my hope was completely in God?

PRAY: Thank God for his incredible grace extended to us. Ask him to help you put your hope completely in him so that you can be set free to live completely for him.