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Month: September 2016

That’s Not Fair.

1 Peter 2:19,20 When, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly…if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. My sense of justice is usually most overactive when I am applying it to everyone but me. It does not matter how…
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Live Free

1 Peter 2:16 Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. In my defective thinking, as God has forgiven me, I am now free to do whatever I want. Living in God’s grace means no consequences, so I am free to do…
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War-torn

2 Peter 2:11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. We live, torn in two by a continual war. Our flesh life fights constantly with the spirit life in us. God, in his infinite wisdom, allows us to pursue either our…
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Who Am I?

1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen…. people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light… once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. In Alcoholics Anonymous, the alcoholic is encouraged to identify himself or herself…
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When I Have No Idea What God Is Talking About

  1 Peter 2:4,5 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house… I have to admit; sometimes I have no idea what God is saying to me through a certain…
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The Stuff I Am Made Of

1 Peter 2:2,3 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. I recently joked with a pregnant friend, suggesting that she had it easy as she only had to carry that extra weight around for…
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Stuff That Needs to Go

1 Peter 2:1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. When I was in fifth or sixth grade I had a favorite shirt that I thought was pretty cool (it was not) and when I wore it, I thought I was pretty cool (I was not). I…
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Death, Decay and Eternity

1 Peter 1:24,25 All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. I learned, two days ago, of a fellow struggler’s death, presumably by overdose. I am ashamed to admit (but I am going to…
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Perfectly Hopeless

1 Peter 1:14,16 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance… be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” I have never been fond of this passage as it makes me feel a little hopeless. Peter not only says…
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Choosing Joy

1 Peter 1:8,9 Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. It would seem to me at times, that God really does not care about whether or not I am…
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