Category: Faith in the Struggle

  1 Peter 3:3,4 Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit… There are a lot of defects addressed in…
Read more

  1 Peter 3:1 Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands… I have not been looking forward to writing on this passage, as I honestly have had little idea what to say about it. I thought about explaining the biblical model for marriage or perhaps explaining how some cultural norms do not translate to…
Read more

2 Peter 2:24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. I have arthritis in one knee and I know that losing weight would be the best thing for it, but I would rather take…
Read more

1 Peter 2:21-23 Christ also suffered for you… when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. Is it a defect to be a fixer? It took me a while to figure out (and I still struggle with this one) that there is a fine line between fixing…
Read more

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…
Read more

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…
Read more

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…
Read more

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…
Read more

  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…
Read more

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…
Read more