Tuesday 1 May 2012

Tuesday Reading: 1 Peter 4:1-2

Key Verse: 1 Peter 4:2
2  That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.

Devotion:
No matter how many times we read it, it is still a hard thing to accept – that we should have to suffer for anyone or anything else. It is not something that most of us would cherish in any form, but we have to be aware of the fact that we may well have to face ‘a bit of uphill’ or ‘a spot of bother’ as we may prefer to say. When we give our lives to The Lord and say that we are willing to follow Him, we do have to face up to the fact that we will come to grips with others who will reject us or may seek harm on us just because we say that we do love our God!

It does not mean that we will all have to face up to having our heads chopped off or to be hanged for Christ. It may just mean that we are laughed at because we dare to say that we believe the Bible as the whole truth. But we can be sure that there will be someone who does reject us in thought or in deed when we tell them that we believe and trust in our Lord Jesus Christ. When we are given the title of ‘new men’ it is not that we are turned overnight into the latest ‘Spiderman’ or ‘Captain America’ but rather that we no longer are trapped by our sin; we no longer have to give in to that sin because we now know different!

As humans we will have to face up to many things in our lives that we do not call for or desire (floods, earthquakes, diseases but to name a few) but we will have to face those things just as the people around us have to face them. There are also a whole lot more temptations that we face that we do not ask for either, but we certainly do not have to give in to those temptations just as the people around us do! Christ is the one who has paid for our sins and has set us free from those temptations. It does not mean that we will no longer face them, just that we should not have to think that we should give in to them any longer – because we now know the difference between what God wants and what man wants.

God’s will in our lives is going to be very different to the life that the people around us want us to live. There are going to be people we call friends who will still try to lead us away from doing God’s will because they have not yet been released from their sinful ways. We are able to petition God for help to get us through those temptations so that we can glorify Him and allow others to see that there is a choice for them too!

Points to Ponder:
Do you roll over and accept everything others do to you?

How often do you ask God for help to stand tall in His will?