Hearing God’s Voice from His Word
James 4:8 says, “Come near to God and he will come near to you.”
Take a moment and turn your attention to God. Tell God that you desire to trust and obey Him. Ask God to speak to you from His word.
Psalm of the Day
Psalm 123:1-4 I lift my eyes to you, the one enthroned in heaven.
2 Like a servant’s eyes on his master’s hand, like a servant girl’s eyes on her mistress’s hand,
so our eyes are on the Lord our God until he shows us favor.
3 Show us favor, Lord, show us favor, for we’ve had more than enough contempt.
4 We’ve had more than enough scorn from the arrogant and contempt from the proud.
Servant’s Eyes focused on the master’s hand. Why would a servant’s eyes be trained on a Master’s hand? So that the servant can do his bidding or so that the servant can receive care from the Master. Or so that the servant can find protection in the master’s hand. Lord we lift our eyes to you so that you might guide us, provide, and protect as we train our eyes to carefully watch your hand. When you move, we want to move. Please have mercy and show us favor.
SCRIPTURE READING:
2 Peter 1:1-15 – The Message
1 1-2 I, Simon Peter, am a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. I write this to you whose experience with God is as life-changing as ours, all due to our God’s straight dealing and the intervention of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Grace and peace to you many times over as you deepen in your experience with God and Jesus, our Master.
3-4 Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received! We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you—your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust.
5-9 So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books.
10-11 So, friends, confirm God’s invitation to you, his choice of you. Don’t put it off; do it now. Do this, and you’ll have your life on a firm footing, the streets paved and the way wide open into the eternal kingdom of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ.
12-15 Because the stakes are so high, even though you’re up-to-date on all this truth and practice it inside and out, I’m not going to let up for a minute in calling you to attention before it. This is the post to which I’ve been assigned—keeping you alert with frequent reminders—and I’m sticking to it as long as I live. I know that I’m to die soon; the Master has made that quite clear to me. And so I am especially eager that you have all this down in black and white so that after I die, you’ll have it for ready reference.
Having God’s Ear through Prayer
- Express thanksgiving to God.
- Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal sin to you.
- Confess your sin to Him and receive forgiveness.
(1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sin He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins.”) - Bring your personal requests to God.
(Psalm 62:8 “Pour out your heart before God”) - Pray for someone in your small group.
- Join with others from River and pray for those who are enslaved because of human trafficking. Ask God to rescue those enslaved and to protect those at-risk and bring healing to those who have been rescued.
Living as God’s People by applying the Bible
Scripture Reflection from the Sermon
In verses 8-11, Peter challenges us to “confirm our calling.” These qualities in verses 5-7 are to be ours and they are to be increasing. The goal in all of this is that we might be effective and fruitful in our knowledge of Christ. As these qualities become increasingly evident in our lives, we confirm our calling.
Peter is not arguing that our rejection of sin or our pursuit of good works are effective in securing salvation, but that those two things are effective in revealing salvation. He is not arguing that born-again Christians will be perfectly free from sin, but he is arguing that they will consistently reject sin and pursue godliness.
How does Peter’s challenge here address various climates in the contemporary American church? How does it address the climate of your heart?