Living Water

Welcome! I encourage you to continue to pray the secret prayer. Today I will give a shorter message followed by a time of remembering the Lord with the bread and cup, and following this we will have a sharing time, where all here are encouraged to share what the Lord is teaching them.

Today we are going to talk about thirst. Did you know that the human body is about 60% water by weight? We are constantly losing water in our bodies, through internal processes, breathing, evaporation on our skin, and expelling wastes. As a result, we need to regularly, frequently replenish the water in our bodies. God has designed our bodies such that when we become low in water, we experience a unique sensation of thirst. If we do not pay attention to this signal, it becomes stronger until such point that we do real harm to our bodies. Ultimately, the result of refusing or being incapable of responding to thirst is absolutely certain death.

Living in Harmony

1 Peter 3

"Likewise you wives, be submissive to your husbands, so that some, though they do not obey the word, may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, when they see your reverent and chaste behavior. Let not yours be the outward adorning with braiding of hair, decoration of gold, and wearing of fine clothing, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable jewel of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.So once the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves and were submissive to their husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are now her children if you do right and let nothing terrify you."--I Peter 3:1-6

Before I begin to explain these verses, I must make one thing perfectly clear. The word submissive in this context does not condone a woman doing anything immoral or illegal because her husband has asked or demanded her to do it. Neither does it authorize the husband the right to physically or emotionally abuse his wife if she refuses to obey a request or a demand regardless of whether it is illegal or immoral. 

The Living Stone

1 Peter 2

Good morning. We get to continue in our study of I Peter this morning. Chapter two is falls into two parts covering two topics. The first half of the chapter will conclude the portion dealing with our position in Christ. The second half of the chapter delves deeper into our response to what Christ has done for us and how He went about it.

Last week, we covered chapter 1. The themes that came out last week were:

--We are God's elect, His chosen ones.
--We can have confidence that we are chosen.
--Foreknowledge (God the Father), sanctifying (Holy Spirit), and obedience (Jesus Christ)
--We are God's elect strangers, we are no longer of this world, but passing through .
--Through faith, we are shielded by God's power.
--Our faith is proved genuine by trials.
--Our salvation is a precious gift not to be taken for granted.
--Therefore, we must prepare our minds, be self-controlled and set our hope fully on grace.
--Do not conform to evil desires, be holy.
--We are redeemed not by gold (perishable) but by the blood of Christ (imperishable).
--As a result of this purification, love one another.
--We are born again of imperishable seed, not perishable.
--All men are like grass, but the word of the Lord stands forever.

A Living Hope

1 Peter 1

Today, we start a new series. We are going to study chapter by chapter the books of I and II Peter over the next 8 weeks, a chapter per week. So, you may like to use some of your daily quiet times to read ahead or read the two books all the way through.

I struggled with where to begin today’s message. Since this is a new series, I feel like I ought to tell you a bunch of details about the author, the timing, the recipients, the geography, the themes, and … and … and. While those details are not bad things, I’m afraid that it might possibly distract us from the message and what it might say to us today, right now, and how we can apply these truths in our lives.

So, I apologize if you came in this morning looking for a history lesson. I think you’ll pick up a little history as we go along, but I’m going to skip the lecture and jump straight in to the Word of God.