Have you ever been invited to a party where you don’t know anyone at all? Those are awful times, in my opinion. Even if you try to mingle and join in to conversations there are always those moments where those who have history together reference things unknown to you and you smile awkwardly – and if you’re like me, you plot your escape.  Being an outsider is not a comfortable position – and yet that’s the relationship the Bible says we are to have with the world’s broken system in which we live.  When it’s that uncomfortable to experience, why would we want to go along with this challenge?

That’s what Peter is going to address in our study this Sunday as we read 1 Peter 1:17-21; the why of our pilgrim status.

V17 can sound a bit intimidating on the surface. When you see words like “judging” and “deeds” and “fear” sprinkled through the sentence, it can be a little disconcerting. But we have to keep in mind the familial context of this section. Peter called us “obedient children” a few verses back, and now he connects that with our relationship to our Father. The word for “judging” doesn’t mean, in this context, judgement for sin, but carries the connotation of examining or paying attention. Its actually very intimate, picturing God watching over us to guide us and mold our behavior accordingly.

I don’t know what your relationship with your natural father was like. Mine wasn’t that great. I didn’t really even get to know him until I was thirty – and he was very old by then, in his 90’s. Yet just before he passed away, he prayed a blessing on me and told me he was proud of me, and I find myself recalling that very often as I’ve lived since then. How could the father/child relationship become a motivating factor in living the Christian life the Bible calls us to?

Peter moves from the Father to the Son in v18-19, identifying another powerful motivation for being an intentional outsider. In what ways does the cost of your redeemed life impact the way you live?

v20-21 make it clear that Christ’s death and resurrection weren’t an ad-lib of God’s  – this has been the plot all along. Does the fact that this is an ongoing, epic story unfolding have any bearing on how you choose to live – and if so, in what way?

Ok….well, that should give us something to chew on for this Sunday. See you then!

 

Running late again…sorry. This Sunday we’ll be reading 1 Peter 1:10-12

It’s an interesting little passage. Fun to read and contemplate, not so easy to build a 3 point teaching around.  Pete has been encouraging us to live as people who are foreigners to this broken world system…and in v9, he reminded us what’s at stake in this, the salvation of our very souls.  He seems to want to hang on that subject and emphasize it’s importance to us.

The first thing he does is point backwards. This salvation isn’t just something dreamed up out of the blue by Jesus or his followers – this rescue has been announced for a long time. This has always been God’s plan. The fact that all of this orbits around God’s grace being revealed in significant to me. God’s plan has been all about salvation, about rescue. What does that tell us about God and his relationship to man, and does an emphasis on that idea alter the way you perceive of God?

Where Peter lands in v12 is interesting to me too. Who is it that gets entrusted to advance this plan in the world? Hint: it isn’t angels…they seem to be curious inquisitors about this whole drama of redemption. (Which, by the way, is such an odd little concept tacked on to the end of this verse. He drops that as though we should know what he’s talking about…but sheesh, what is he talking about? – it makes me think Pete was a strange dude.)

Hopefully we’ll have this all making some sort of sense by Sunday….hope to see you then!

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you don’t have all the equipment you need to accomplish a goal? Whilst in South Sudan, Matt, Garret and Blake were trying to remove a transmission from a truck and fairly frustrated because all they had for the job were a small set of hand tools from K-Mart. Blake kept making sounds like an air wrench to emphasize how woefully ill-equipped they were for that particular job.

In our study of Peter, we’ve learned that as followers of Christ, we are like foreign travelers through this world’s system.  In our next set of verses this Sunday (1:3-9), we’ll see that God has equipped us with everything we need for the journey.

In vs 3-4, Pete praises God for providing us with a living hope. Read v3-4 in the Message version – I think Peterson provides some real insight as to what a living hope actually means. What do you base your hopes in life on? How does that compare with what Peter is describing as the core of our hope?

Vs 6-7  we find a reiteration of what James reminded us about concerning the value of trials in life – they can prove and refine the faith we have in God. Have you ever had your faith tested like this? How did it effect your hope, and ultimately your attitudes about life?

“You haven’t seen Him, but you love Him.” – that is such a profound verse to me. I love it because it tells me that Peter had seen Jesus, hence he uses the term you. Jesus was real, and when Peter heard that name he associated it with a face and a voice and personality of a real person he had spent personal time with. That’s pretty cool. But I like it that the Bible isn’t just some ancient document about people’s experiences that I have no connection with….Peter was writing to people who experienced exactly what I have, that is, NOT seeing Jesus but still loving Him. I’m connected to a looooong line of “have not seens” who love Christ anyway. For whatever reason, that comforts me.

It also reminds me of another way we’re equipped for traveling…we’ve got the strong motivation of love to keep us going. Ever been away from home, away from a loved one? Can you connect the feelings of love that motivated you to return to your love with our love for Christ?

Anyway, it should prove to be an inspiring study.  Hope you can be there!

Psalm 67

1 May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us–

2 so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.

3 May the peoples praise you, God; may all the peoples praise you.

 4 May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples with equity and guide the nations of the earth.

5 May the peoples praise you, God; may all the peoples praise you.

6 The land yields its harvest; God, our God, blesses us.

7 May God bless us still, so that all the ends of the earth will fear him.

This Sunday we’ll be looking at Psalm 67. It’s a Psalm that lets us know in no uncertain terms from where our blessings come from…as God’s people, even as a nation. The thing we want to examine though, are the two words that get repeated twice in this poem…the words, so that. God is the source of all we count as blessings – and we certainly live in a nation which has seen its share of blessing in the form of supply and comfort – but what is our responsibility that comes with that blessing? So that…two very powerful words that remind us that our lives are not meant to be lived simply for ourselves. When you read this Psalm…how do you understand the “so that”?

See you Sunday!

Where do you most readily see God? I mean…obviously, we’re told that no one really SEES God…but where do you experience the knowledge of his presence most? When do you most actively seek to acknowledge him in your life?  During the good times, or when times are hard? In church, or at the beach….where?

James encourages us to seek God in every circumstance as we come to our next to the last teaching in James. We’ll be reading James 5:13-18 this Sunday.

Whit shared masterfully last week about gaining a proper attitude of patience during difficult times, and James reiterates the need to pray when times are hard. But then he goes to the other side encouraging us to praise when we’re stoked about life. What are some of the things that happen in life that just make you want to whoop it up, or sing a tune? According to James, that’s the stuff we want to praise and thank God for.

Then we’re told to call the church around us if we’re sick…and we get these odd instructions about rubbing people with oil and God saving and raising up the sick. It clearly is something that has had something lost to us in the transmission from that culture to our own. There are a multitude of differing opinions on what James was saying here – we’ll cover a few of them on Sunday. How does what James instructs here jibe with your experiences?  – No matter how we read this part, one thing is for sure, when we’re physically sick and weary, we can look to God for his help in whatever form it takes. That’s a pretty comforting promise I would say.

Confessing our faults to each other – there’s another strange picture. That is, until we contrast it with the practice of putting on an image of having everything together – of being morally superior to our neighbor.  Maybe James was trying to remind us of the common ground of grace we all stand on. When you are acutely aware of your own need for forgiveness, how likely are you to condemn someone else? Maybe that’s the connection between confessing and healing…a community of people who all know they need to be forgiven sounds like a healing community to me. What do you think?

It should be an interesting study – hope to see you Sunday!

Sorry for the lateness of this post. This Sunday we’ll be reading James 5:7-12.

Have you ever been going through very difficult circumstances and been really anxious to see those troubles end? It’s not easy to be patient when times are hard, is it? James gives his suffering readers the counsel to be patient…but patient for what? What sort of solution does James anticipate, and how does that square with what we normally want for a solution?

Starting with v9, James offers practical ways in which we need to demonstrate our patience when faced with difficult times.  Why do you think he talks about how we treat each other during hard times?

James tries to get us to focus on the significance of suffering by mentioning Job. What lessons do we learn from Job about hard times and what’s really at stake?

This should be an encouraging study – hope to see you on Sunday!

Have you ever wished that you were rich? Someone once said “It’s better to be poor and happy and than to be rich and miserable”…but someone else quipped “Couldn’t I just be moderately wealthy and just a little moody?”

The Bible is replete with warnings about the use of money and resources…and our section of James this Sunday is one of them.  We’ll be reading James 5:1-6.

This passage doesn’t take a lot of interpreting.  Why do you think James says what he does about the rich?  What lessons can we learn about how we use the resources we have from this passage? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.