You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40 ESV)
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:12 ESV)
The main theme I pulled out of this is to live genuinely to ourselves and to our identity as sons of the Living God. We are to be true to what we love and what we should love, namely our Creator and each other. This in turn is reflected in our behavior, and we are told to put off things from the past that are not representative of our calling. Yet, to be transparent, I do not always find this so easy or intuitive. In fact, sometimes I think back on habits and behaviors that I have left behind and miss them in a way. Crazy, huh? Overall, I am glad to have put it all behind me, but it doesn't extinguish some of my human tendencies perhaps. The exhortation to pray, love, offer hospitality, and use our gifts well gives me ways to practice the new life and continue the pursuit of righteousness. My hope is the further that I move away from such things, the easier it will be.
ReplyDeleteAbove all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8
ReplyDeleteThis verse was so simple that I almost skipped right over it without a second thought. Love one another. Similar to my post about last chapter, this is the golden rule. It's simple, to the point, and I've heard it more times than I can count. And yet I never think about why I hear it so much. After getting some meaning out of it, I rarely take interest to dig into it further. But tonight, this verse reminded me how utterly important love is. It's what saved our souls, and has the ability to heal this broken world. The all-powerful God if the universe claims that he "is love." Everything Jesus did was out of love. This is such a central fact that it bears repeating more than anything else.
Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.
ReplyDelete1 Peter 4:19
That last verse really spoke to me and I think it ends the section very well. It's very easy now to become discouraged or even frightful of persecution. Society now teaches us that religion should be a private affair and to "stop showing it down people's throats." I for one have grown tired of that statement. We do not suffer for our own personal gain but for the glory and the gain of His kingdom. It's also stated in 1 Peter 4: 14 that "If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you."It is in suffering that we can be stewards of God's Grace. Just as Christ suffered so that we might know God, so must we also deny the flesh and live in God's spirit. And we just can't keep it to ourselves.
"Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms." 1 Peter 4:10
ReplyDeleteIts always better to give than receive- I don't usually buy that, mainly since I can't afford to buy gifts for people but in terms of spiritual gifts I think that applies. I think, if you're naturally good at something and that's all you do for your own satisfaction and never share that with others, well congrats you just became that annoying kid that's always saying how awesome he is and has no friends. I mean, Yeah, You could be the greatest, You can be the best, You can be the king kong banging on your chest. You could beat the world, You could beat the war, and You could talk to God, go banging on his door, but what good is all that if its not shared? Our purpose on this Earth is to glorify God and show his love, we can do that best using our gifts through our interactions with people. Even if all you can do is just listen to them, I bet a lot of people just want someone to share their troubles with. Don't focus so much on how your gifts bring you glory and satisfaction but how you can use those to improve someone else's life. I think thats what its all about.
"As each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. Whoever preaches, let it be with the words of God; whoever serves, let it be with the strength that God supplies, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong glory and dominion forever and ever."
ReplyDelete1 Peter 4:10-11
No matter what you do in this life, whether you go into ministry over seas or whether you sit in a cubicle and work as an accountant for the rest of your life, glorify God in all that you do. We all have different gifts, different talents. We can use these different gifts to reach out to those around us in a variety of ways. By glorifying God in all the areas of our lives, we are giving our actions over to God. We are decreasing so that knowledge and love of and for Jesus Christ can grow. We need to let God work through us all the time. We need to let Him be the bearer of stress and let Him be the source of strength. This is not easy by any means, because it means laying down our lives and being subordinate to his will, but the beauty is that he loves us and that he will protect us and the source of all our desires roots in our longing to love and to be loved. God is the source of love and can provide for our longings.