In His Service

                                                                             Who are you really? 1 Peter 2:9-10     Have you ever wondered how important your identity is? People usually identify themselves through various external values: work, sports, race, gender, age, likes and desires, grades and intelligence, bodystyle and shape, and money. Then there are those who have their identity hacked by an evil world. I have been hacked and had my identity corrupted a couple of times and have had people use my identity in China and Texas, neither of these places have I ever been. In both of these cases money was involved, I had to change bank cards and ID numbers to protect my name.  And in today’s world, everyone is known by a set of numbers in a ...

                                                    Be Living Stones and Holy Temples 1 Peter 2:4-8 As I was asked, “What spiritual concerns do you have about yourself at a men’s conference. It was distinguishing the truth that was propagated by the media. It all boiled down to all of the madness of a fallen world of distorted facts and partial truths. Let’s look at the text,  “As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Peter understood the concept of the foundation of the Church because it was Christ who said to him, “ Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my ch...

                                                                             No More Pretence!!! 1 Peter 2:1-3,11 So get rid of your feelings of hatred. Don’t just pretend to be good! Be done with dishonesty and jealousy and talking about others behind their backs.  Now that you realize how kind the Lord has been to you, put away all evil, deception, envy, and fraud. Long to grow up into the fullness of your salvation; cry for this as a baby cries for his milk…   Dear brothers, you are only visitors here. Since your real home is in heaven, I beg you to keep away from the evil pleasures of this world; they are not for you, for they fight against your very souls. Living Bible When my wife asks me to take out the garbage, it means exactly that, when th...

                                                                   The Word was Preached 1 Peter 1:22-25  In an earlier lesson, I talked about the voices of the grace of God from the Old Testament. Today, the Word of God has been preached to most of the world. In the parable of the Sower (Matt. 13:1-23), the seed is the word of God and it was broadcasted to all the various soils, but it was only understood and productive in the soil that was free of rocks, weeds, and tilled. This soil was purified, obedient to the Word of God, and produced an abundant life. Let’s look at the scripture text: “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable see...