As Jesus suffered prior to His death, we’ll also suffer before we die—and that’s okay; it’s purposeful; it’s glorious! As the Holy Spirit applies Christ’s sin-destroying death to us, our lives now truly resemble Jesus’ life: spiritually alive in the body before death, capable of overcoming sin, and capable of enduring suffering and mistreatment from the world as a result of turning away from sin.
A loving community of Christ-followers glorifying God together by making disciples of all nations
A loving community of Christ-followers glorifying God together by making disciples of all nations
Sermons by Darin Avery (Page 23)
While it’s impossible for us to calculate the benefit God receives from worship (since we’re not God), Peter’s point is that worshipers derive maximal benefit—maximal joy, spiritual fulfillment and soul satisfaction—from worshiping God when we give His worship maximal focus through obedience. And the obedience sought in this text is that we “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution.” Nothing says satisfaction more clearly than obedience; and nothing says obedience more clearly than submission. And nothing indicates a worshipful, satisfied, obedient submission to God more impactfully than a community of Christ-followers living out that command together.
The Christians living in Peter’s time faced a challenge that Christians still face today: how to remain hopeful and attune to the scent of Christ in this age while anticipating His substance in the age to come? We do it by living holy; and we do that in community.
It’s not that everyone saddened by the decline of Christianity and the degradation of morality in this country isn’t a genuine (elect) disciple of Jesus—I’m saddened by these things too! But if all a person wants is a Christian America then that person (or that religious community) is flirting with a false gospel, and—unless they repent of that grief mentality and get back in sync with the church’s true gospel dynamic and impulse—they may, in the end, prove to have been just religious, moral, culturally-Christian but non-elect exiles.
I hope you don’t leave this prayer series having just learned a few new facts about prayer: the difference between praying occasionally and making prayer an occasion; that a heart examined by God through prayer is a heart that’s useful to God; how prayer and predestination work together; that there’s a difference between struggling TO pray and struggling IN prayer, and that…
Struggle. It’s something we all face at different times and in varying degrees of intensity, including struggle for the sake of others. We all know what it means to struggle through something personally. Physical, mental, emotional, financial, chemical, spiritual, relational—these are a few of the big categories of common personal struggle. But if you’ve ever labored long and hard for something on…
Paul doesn’t pray for the Colossians to be filled and strengthened so that they can get saved. He petitions God for their filling and strengthening so that they can demonstrate to the world what saved people look like and live like! And saved people look and live like their Savior, who constantly mediates a new covenant between God and man, whose blood constantly pleads for our forgiveness and redemption. As Christians (i.e., ‘little Christs’), do we do that for each other through prayer?
You can have a house full of electrical sockets, but if there’s no wiring connecting them to the power source, plugging your toaster or sweeper into the wall is pointless. Prayer is the line that carries our load before God, and prayer is the channel through which God’s power flows to His people.