This week, Pastor Luke continued on with our 1 Peter series with Chapter 4: 1-11. He titled his message “Peters practical guide for not losing yourself in 2020.”
His five practical points were:
1. Arm yourself with the Gospel
In order to effectively live life in the center of Gods will and escape the temptations of this world we need to arm ourselves with the mindset of Jesus and the Gospel.
We can not just have head knowledge of the Gospel, but instead, we need to apply it to our lives. We need to arm ourselves daily and carry a Christ-awareness with us everywhere we go. We need to always be aware of God’s will and His presence.
2. Draw the line
The person we were before Christ is not the same as the person we are after Him. We need to draw a line around the things we used to do and be, and stop teeter-tottering between the will of God and who we were before Christ.
We need to draw the lines in our lives, and refuse to cross them, knowing that God’s grace is sufficient to cover all of these things.
3. Pray as if it’s your last day
Peter says that in order to pray effectively in this time, we need to be sober minded and self-controlled. We need to pray as if it’s our last day in order to keep our focus on the right, main thing.
We need to ask the Lord: what is your heart today? And we need to live from that place.
4. When tempted to sin, serve.
Peter tells us that above all, we are to love earnestly. We need to serve, in our hearts and with our lives, our brothers and sisters in the Lord. Nobody can truly love others if we take delight in finding and exposing the faults and sins of others, and so we need to stop doing that. We need to learn healthy confrontation for the sake of love and unity.
If we get annoyed with people, we need to deal with it, staying together for the sake of Jesus in order to show the world what the church actually is.
People are to know the disciples of Jesus by our love for one another, and we need to put that into very practical, everyday action.
5. Remember who your life is for.
Two things happen when we give our lives to Jesus; He gives us spiritual gifts, and He redeems our natural talents. These gifts are discovered in service, as we need to give our lives away.
Our life is not our own, it is meant for people – as Jesus’s heart is for people. Jesus died for souls. For humans. We need to take our spiritual gifts and our natural gifts and use them for the Glory of God.
