Speaker: Greg Sanders

Passage: 1 Peter 1:14-17

HEALTHY FEAR IN THE NATURE OF CHRIST PT.1

We’re almost to the end of chapter 1, and before we take a look at verses 18 through 25 and finish out chapter 1, I want to build on the idea that Steve brought last week about living in a healthy fear. Specifically because in this passage of Peter, the word Peter uses for fear is very strange, it’s not one that is normally used when we talk about fear in the circle of faith. 

Oftentimes, the word that is used in talking about fear is the fear of the Lord, and that’s not the word that Peter uses here. And I think it’s important that we look at it, because I believe that there’s a really important concept, and in truth, I think it’s central to everything Peter’s going to say, not just in this book, but in chapter 2 and in the second book as well.

1 PETER 1:14

So, I want to look at verses 14 through 17 first. We’re just going to break those down for a quick second, and then we’ll jump into some thoughts. The first one is in verse 14. He begins with, “as obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts, which are yours in your ignorance.” Do not, “as obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts, which are yours in your ignorance.”

The first phrase he uses that I just want to highlight, as obedient children in the Greek it renders differently. In the Greek, it renders as children of obedience. In other words, what Peter’s saying is the only way to be a child of God is to commit to being obedient. 

There’s a very clear interplay in the Greek where the two ideas are locked together, being a child of God and obedience, and a lot of times in our culture, specifically, how many would agree our culture is kind of soft these days? There’s just a lot of stuff out there about how we feel and what’s good for me, and is it working for me, and the truth is Peter doesn’t approach faith that way. 

Peter really approaches it as, here’s the standard, either live it or you don’t. And that feels incredibly exacting for us, because it doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room for our perspective. And I would offer that there isn’t. That’s a made-up faith idea that we’ve come up with, not one Scriptures teach. 

He says, “Do not be conformed to the former lusts, which were yours in your ignorance.” And I want to highlight this for a second. Have you noticed how many understand the idea of being conformed to something? It’s being shaped into, being molded by it, becoming like it. Isn’t it interesting that Peter says, Don’t be shaped by, formed by, or molded by your former life. How many people have you met that act like I’m just a sinner saved by grace, just trying to figure out how to do this. I’m in this condition of triage as a sinner, and I’m trying to move towards Jesus. 

And Peter says that’s not the case at all. You actually were translated from darkness into light. You were given a new nature, so don’t let that old nature imprint you again and pull you back into it. It’s a much different concept than I’m stuck in my condition, and I’m trying to be more like Christ. It’s very different. 

What he’s really getting to is a wild declaration. You are sitting between two positions, one of them is the new nature he gave you, you can choose it. One of them is the old nature that he took away, and you can choose it. Which one will you choose? 

Peter fully does away with this idea that I’m stuck in a nature, and I’m trying to fight through it. The enemy loves to say that. The enemy loves to whisper to us, we’re stuck in a nature, we’re just trying to figure out how to, how to reform ourselves enough to get out of that nature, that’s actually completely contrary to what’s being taught in the scriptures. 

What’s being taught in the scriptures is when we came into the Kingdom, we were given the divine nature. The interesting thing is, though, He doesn’t force upon us His divine character, He leaves it for us to choose. So you have a choice in your life. It’s really what Peter’s going to be digging at. You can choose the divine, or you can choose what you were given natively. 

Paul in Galatians, and I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but I think it’s important. Paul will say this in Galatians, you will never make a decision that is free of those two tension points. You always have to choose, i.e. if you’re waiting to wake up someday and have the desire of Christ in your life, you probably won’t.

So, “as obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts, which were in your ignorance.” I love this word, ignorance, because ignorance is the idea of something you didn’t really even know how wrong it was. Okay, love that, because there’s grace to that, but can I offer a thought that now that we’ve come into the Kingdom, we know better, and there is less of an excuse because we know better. That feels so harsh. No, it’s not. It was. It would be harsh if we were being judged for something we didn’t know was wrong. 

Peter says, here, you know it’s wrong. Now, the issue, the only issue at play, is will you choose the Kingdom or not? How many have ever said the devil made me do it? He has not. You made you do it. We make ourselves step into this. That’s what Peter’s saying.

1 PETER 1:15

I want us to wrap our heads around how much freedom we have in Christ. We have so much freedom in Christ that we can choose the life we want before Him. He has given, that’s Paul’s statement in Philippians 3, we are luminaries, we’ve been given the opportunity to reflect Him or not. “But like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior;” “like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior.”

Say that phrase with me, in all your behavior. What part of your life is exempted from this? Last time I checked, all means what? All total, okay? Like the holy one who called you, I want us to highlight that Peter’s putting on display Jesus, and he’s saying, like Christ, who is holy in all His behavior, be holy in all yours. 

He’s not saying work harder, be holy. He’s saying just be like Jesus. In other words, just model your life like He lived, model yourself after the way He did it. That’s all you got to do is just ask the question, is this how Jesus lived? If the answer is no, then the answer is no. 

But what if I want to? You see, that’s a completely different issue. I would offer that we put ourselves on the throne when we choose behavior patterns that Jesus doesn’t allow. We remove Him from the throne of our life. 

We just sang a lyric phrase, and as we were singing it, this is my third gathering singing it, and all of a sudden it clicked. It takes me a while. The king of my mind, my heart, my life. What does it look like to enthrone Him and say, you’re the king of my mind, you’re going to control how I think. You’re the king of my heart, you’re going to control how I feel. You’re the king of my life, you’re going to control how I behave. That’s what it means to give myself to you. That’s what it means to be a disciple. 

1 PETER 1:16

And Peter will go on and say, “because it’s written: ‘YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.” Now, I grew up Pentecostal, and that was, that was kind of hammered. Be holy, because God’s holy. I really think Peter’s presenting it as an invitation. Look, He’s holy, which means you get to be holy, because His nature’s in you. 

You see, when you came into the Kingdom, you were translated from darkness into light. According to what Jesus teaches to Nicodemus in John chapter 3, a nature was born into you, a supernatural nature, because you were born again, and it’s a mystery, and we don’t quite understand it, but I cannot explain to you gravity, but I sure know it works. I can’t really explain calculus, if I’m totally honest, I did like the humanities route, but I’m positive it’s a real thing, and I know people can explain it. 

Do you get what I’m saying? Because you can’t understand or explain something doesn’t mean it’s not real. You received a new nature when you came into the Kingdom, and that nature is divine. So, you have in you a divine nature. The issue is, will you activate it? Will you, will you allow it? 

So you have the divine nature in you, but the choice to let it live through you is yours. He will not make the choice for His nature to live through you. You have to make that. He will give you the gift of His nature, and you have to decide which nature is going to live.

1 PETER 1:17

And there’s verse 17, this is what I really want to focus on, because I think it’s the most terrifying verse in the New Testament. “If you address as Father,” what’s he mean there? If you call yourself a believer and you say I’m a child of God. We’re like, I don’t know if I’m a child of God, that’s a weird thing. 

Well, 1 John says, “Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us, that He’s called us sons and daughters; and we really are.” So he doesn’t make it an option, he doesn’t say, Hey, you feel like a son today, you feel like not a son today. He just says, You are, because you were born again, because of Christ and our faith in Him, we were grafted into the vine, we became part of His family, His bloodline comes through us, we are now officially DNA-based spiritually of His Kingdom. 

So, “If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one’s work,” time out, he’s talking to believers, right? He says that a believer will be judged according to their work. A lot of people out there, and don’t Google it because it’s dumb, are preaching this weird heresy that believers will never go through judgment. That’s absolutely not what the scriptures teach. 

There is a judgment of works that happens when we give an account for our lives, and Peter says this, if you’re going to address this one as Father, the lover of you, the one who’s kind to you, the one who’s gracious to you, and I love that part. I love how tender He is, I love how kind He is, I love how for us He is, and not against us. If you’re going to address Him in this very paternal way, as one who loves you and is poured into you and cares for you and protects you, you also need to remember He’s also the one that will impartially judge you. He’s going to judge you based on a standard, not based on what’s impartial. 

It means He’s not going to judge you because you’re His child and He loves you. He’s going to judge you based on what you did. Oh, wait, He does that? Yes, He pushes pause on the paternal thing and says, I’m going to allow your life to stand, and I’m going to look at what you did. To judge someone without that standard would be enabling, because we’d be unwilling to look at the actuality of what they did. 

Peter says, He doesn’t do that. And he says this in light of that, knowing you’re going to stand before Him, the one who’s going to be impartial, even though He loves you, conduct yourselves in fear. The word is phobios. It means to be afraid. 

It’s a very strange thing that Peter teaches, I want you to live in fear over this issue. That’s not healthy. It’s wrong to live in fear, God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear. See, that’s not what Peter’s talking about here. Peter’s talking about a healthy understanding of the reality of the situation during the time of your stay on earth. 

In other words, what he’s saying is, you’re on earth, according to Scripture this life is a vapor, it’s short. Peter says you’re on earth for a short season. While in that short season, you need to have a fearful understanding of what’s at risk. He doesn’t say anything about living in fear in eternity, because it’ll be removed. He says it is to be a healthy motivator while we’re on earth. 

We have to wrap our heads around that. Being afraid of what Peter’s talking about here is right. I don’t want to live in fear. We have to live in a healthy level of fear, because he’s driving the church to live with a perspective that keeps her on the path of Jesus. 

Means he’s driving us to have a right mindset that will keep us on the path, which means if we don’t live with that fear, we will stray off the path. Why? Because we’ll forget that how we live every day matters. We start to believe it’s all grace, it’s all love. He just loves me, he’s for me. 

It doesn’t really matter what I do in the micro moments. And Peter’s statement is that it’s not true, and it gets really uncomfortable in our culture, because we naturally want to rebel and cry out, like, I need to be loved, not driven, accepted, not directed. And Peter’s statement here is, I am driving you and directing you, I want that fear to lead you. He’s giving them a lens that’s going to help them align with the purpose of God for His people. What is the purpose of God for His people?

CARRYING THE NATURE OF CHRIST

Let’s read John Stott, who’s now passed away, but he’s an incredible thinker and theologian on this issue. And John Stott made a statement. There’s a thing called the Westminster Shorter Catechism, maybe you’re familiar with it. Man’s chief end is to love God and enjoy him fully. It’s been this thing that’s been communicated throughout culture. 

John Stott’s coming out of the Anglican Church in England, and he says this. “I’ve come to the conclusion,” which is a big idea for John Stott to say this, “I’ve come to the conclusion that the Westminster Shorter Catechism is actually not correct, that man’s chief end is to carry the nature of Christ.” You see, God wants his people to become like Christ. 

Peter’s challenging the church to live afraid of missing the life that Christ has made available to them. I want you to hear it again. Christ-likeness is the will of God for the people of God. That concept has been loaded in the last three years of teaching. We come out of Romans and Jude and Titus, it’s all over, but there’s no Book that I think it’s more present in than Peter. 

I want to tackle this, and my goal in this over the next week or two, or three, or ten, two is my goal, we’ll see, is to convince us and prove to us that this is the purpose and plan of God for our lives. A lot of people are like, what’s my ministry? I would say your ministry is to carry the nature of Christ. 

What does God want for me? To carry the nature of Christ. What’s my purpose? To carry the nature of Christ. Well, what about all that other cool stuff? It’s all cool stuff, but the only thing that actually would boil down to the purpose of God for your life and for my life is that we would carry His nature. 

I want this to be a challenge for us to become people who are Christ-like in our everyday lives. To do that, we’re going to break it into kind of three lenses. We’re going to look at the biblical call to Christ-likeness, what does the Scripture say about it, we’re going to look at some New Testament places that really highlight it well, and then we’re going to ask the question, How do we live it out? What’s it really look like to become like Christ? 

THE BIBLICAL CALL TO CHRIST-LIKENESS

So, with this first one, let’s go into the first, the biblical calling for Christ-likeness.We’re using a word, Christ-likeness, that you’ll notice never shows up in Scripture. So, the first question is, did we just make this up, or is this something that is in Scripture? A likeness is to model something, or it’s to take on the image of something, it’s to be like something. So to live in Christ-likeness is to model our lives according to the image and character of Jesus. 

That calling is not found in a single verse, it’s found all over through the New Testament. I would say, if you ever heard the phrase scarlet thread, something that’s woven through the scriptures, this is one of those scarlet threads. But for the purpose of this study, we’ll look at three specific texts. Romans 8:29 says, “those He foreknew, He predestined”, 2 Corinthians 3:18 and 1 John 3:2. 

So, let’s look at Romans 8:29. It reads like this, God has “predestined His people to be conformed to the image of His Son,” that is to become like Jesus. God has “predestined His people to be conformed to the image of His Son.”

Now, see again the word conformed. Peter used the word conformed. He said, Now don’t be conformed to your old ways. Here we are looking at Romans, where Paul says, Be conformed to the image of Jesus. 

All of a sudden, we have in front of us a reality, being conformed to something is a reality where we have to choose which one it is. Am I going to be conformed, imprinted by, shaped by the image of Christ, or am I going to be conformed, imprinted by, and shaped by my old nature? The gift of the Kingdom, the gift of the gospel is that what we had removed from us was our slavery to our old nature. 

You are not a slave to your sin nature. Please hear that you are not stuck in it. You are not committed to it. You might be committed to it in all the wrong ways, but it doesn’t actually have a hold on you that gives it a right. That’s what was removed at the cross. 

What you were given at the cross was the opportunity to choose, grafted into the Kingdom, birthed into the Kingdom, but because of the king and the way He’s wired, He will not force Himself, nature-wise, upon you. You have to choose it. It’s presented to you, and you have to choose it. 

Too often, we’re waiting to wake up and have been conformed by Him overnight. If you’ve prayed prayers like, Lord, just take this away from me. Here’s my, here’s my youth pastor taught it all the way through, God will never do for you what He’s given you to do for yourself.

Paul says you are to rule over your sin nature by choosing the king, choosing His nature. And sometimes we do that in blind faith, where we choose the nature of the king, and while we’re doing the behaviors that we’re taking from Him, we’re modeling, we’re living like Christ. He will supernaturally change our heart to where eventually we stop wanting what we used to want. He will never do that before we choose His nature.

When Adam fell in the garden, he was in a perfect environment, utopian. They were naked and unashamed, meaning they were pure and right, there was no sin in them. When they stepped into sin, they were image bearers. We know that Scripture says, “Let’s make man in our image.” So Adam and Eve, image bearers, their number one job at that point was to bear the image of God. Through sin, Adam lost that image, maybe a portion of it was left, just enough. I would argue that enough was left, because God wanted humanity to understand it was missing something. 

Through Christ, we understand that every curse is broken. What was lost in the garden is restored. How is it restored? Because the original intent of God for humanity was to bear His image, and now through Christ, by taking on the nature of Christ, we once again can carry the nature of God. 

Conformity to the image of God means becoming conformed to Jesus. Christ-likeness, therefore, is the eternal predestinating purpose of God. “Those He foreknew, He predestined.” What did He predestined them for? To look like Jesus, to carry His nature.

2 Corinthians 3:18 says, “and we all with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who is a spirit.” So all of a sudden we see it,  the Holy Spirit living within us, the indwelling Spirit is the one that is changing us from glory to glory. Well, how does that happen? 

According to Paul, he’s saying, there’s a process of the Holy Spirit at work in us, we’re moving in a constant fashion towards greater Christ character. Glory to glory becomes an important phrase, because it means that we’re dealing with sin, we’re growing in alignment, and the Holy Spirit is increasing our ability to choose the Christ-life in every situation, with every attitude, and every behavior.

It means, as a believer, we should be seeing, and how many understand in business “up and to the right” is a good metric. It means, over the course of time, things are increasing. As a believer, we should be seeing an “up into the right” metric, which says I’m dealing with sin less the more I walk with the Lord. I’m seeing the nature of Christ more as I walk with Him. 

What happens, though, when over the course of time we’re waking up going, I don’t know, I’m seeing a lot of my sin nature, I’m seeing a lot more than I used to, I’m just really struggling. That should be for us, church, an all-stop, full hit the brakes and repent, because the process of Scripture that it teaches that the Holy Spirit is doing is the Holy Spirit is constantly leading us towards more Christ-likeness, not towards less. 

So, if you’re seeing less Christ-likeness in your attitudes and your behaviors and your mindsets, it should be an indication that you need more of the Lord and more time with the Lord. These are principles of the Kingdom that should just be like road signs. It’s like when you come to a stoplight, and it says red, we stop, and we understand if we drive through it, Fort Collins sends you a $40 ticket, or someone hits you. 

It should be the same thing spiritually, that when we see this thing happening in our life, we’re like, man, I’m seeing a ton of my sin nature on display. What is going on? It should be a push pause and get it figured out. 

ACCOUNTABLE TO CHANGE

There’s a phrase that we sing in a song called The Blood, and there’s a phrase that I love. It says I don’t walk like I used to, I don’t talk like I used to, that is to be the expected reality of a born- again believer, that you’re seeing sin lessen and His nature increase. You’re seeing yourself more calm, more controlled by Him each day. His nature is growing in you. 

If you’re in a season where the answer is, I’m not seeing that, I’m seeing more of my sin nature. Church, that’s a moment to stop and repent. Do not take the bait of the world, which is to blame that behavior on xyz, to find some excuse and to justify it. 

The only answer is I need more of Jesus in my life. I need more of His control. I need more surrender. That happens through repentance. It happens through time with Him. 

There’s a movement that happens here, which is the perspective changes from past to present, like from God’s eternal predestination, which is His overall plan for your life, to this very present thing that the Holy Spirit’s doing, which is actively transforming us. 

I would offer that you cannot be actively transformed by the Holy Spirit if you’re not in active conversation with the Holy Spirit. There’s a very real moment-to-moment thing. If I’m giving him room to speak. I would challenge all of us, learn to sit with the Lord daily and ask him this question, Are you pleased with how I’m living? How am I doing with your nature? Are there places you want me to work on? Assess me. 

David prays this, I love it, “Search me and know me,” “See if there be any wicked way in me.” It is to be the heart cry of the people of God, which is, hey, Lord, I’m not just going to assume I’m awesome, not just going to assume I’m doing it well. I want your perspective. 

Why? Because if you hear His perspective, then you have faith to live by. When you hear Him say, Yeah, I want you to work on this, this, and this. I think you’re doing great over here. You now can walk away going, The Lord just told me I was doing great over there. I can be okay with that. I don’t have to live in fear, but I got to work on this, because He told me to work on it, because I’m a disciple. What’s that mean? It means I’m a learner under discipline. So I’m under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit, when He speaks, I’m going to react. 

“Beloved”, 1 John 3:2,  “We are God’s children now, and it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He appears, we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” And we have no idea what we’re gonna look like on the last day. I could give you great arguments, we might look like transformers. Who knows? There’s lots of metallurgy in Scripture. We don’t know, Jesus was gleaming.

Here’s my point, I doubt we have angel wings. I doubt it’s white linen, but it doesn’t actually matter, because what the Scripture says is we don’t know what it’s going to be like, but we do know who it’s going to be like. We’re going to look like Him, we’ll be like Him, and we can bank on that future reality. 

But I think this is a really important verse, not just for what it says, but for how we’ve viewed it in the modern church, because too often I think we give ourselves excuses for current patterns and behaviors, and we just take the answer, If you know I’m not quite like him, I’ll be like him when he appears. 

You see, but Peter’s saying we are to appropriate holiness and put on the nature of Christ now, not waiting for what we’re going to be transformed into. Here’s what I’d say, if you can see a lack of Christ-likeness in your life, you should assume the Holy Spirit gave you the ability to see it, and it should drive you to repentance and to crying out for His transformation in the now. 

There is no place where a believer should be comfortable with a lack of Christ-likeness in their life. We should have an aggressive pursuit of Christ-likeness to the point that when it’s not in our lives, we stop and go, Man, Lord, my life doesn’t look like you, please forgive me, heal me. Let’s change that. 

If you can see it, you’re accountable to change it. Well, he didn’t convict me of it. I would just offer, if you can see it, he did. If you can identify it, you and I both know you know it’s there, and if you know it’s there, when Peter says before, in your ignorance, it’s not in ignorance if you know it’s there, that becomes willful sin, which is a much different issue. 

1 John says, if you keep on sinning, knowing it’s sin, it’s a concern. Too often in this area of carrying the nature of Christ, we continue in sin, we continue in behaviors and patterns that we absolutely know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, are not Christ-like, and it’s because we like them. Humans don’t choose behavior patterns they don’t enjoy. 

The problem is, we just don’t always take note for what’s the benefit. Sometimes the benefit is, I don’t want to be governed, I don’t want to be under authority, I don’t want to be disciplined. All of those things are real things, none of them are real excuses. There is one answer for not carrying the nature of Christ, and it’s an unwillingness to surrender to Him. 

So, there’s three perspectives of our calling: there’s past, there’s present, there’s future. We know what God’s intention was, to look like Jesus. We know the Holy Spirit’s at work in our life currently to make us look like Jesus, and we know that coming down the line, we’re going to be transformed in His image.

CHOOSE THE NATURE OF CHRIST

And 1 John 2:6, I want to close with this. John will say, “He who says he abides in Christ ought to walk in the same way as He walked.” There’s two words I want to highlight here: ought to, and walk. “He who says he abides in Christ ought to.” 

The word ought to hear is obligation, or a debt of service that’s owed. It means a requirement. Ought to means you’re obligated to do it. The word walk here, it is a word phrase used primarily to describe a daily path a person took in their journey. 

Let me put it in modern terms. If you claim to be a follower of Jesus, you are obligated to shape your behavior to be Christ-like, living as He did. And what that has to mean is that if you see behaviors and attitudes in you that are not behaviors and attitudes that are in Jesus, they’re not consistent with who He is and how He would handle Himself, that you immediately admit it and repent, and you make restoration to those around you that you’ve wronged. And you say simply, that’s not my nature, I’m going to choose Him. That’s the ought to, that you owe a debt of Christ-likeness to the world around you. 

As a believer, we owe a debt of Christ-likeness to the world around us, to our family, to our friends, to our city. One of the greatest concerns I have is the gospel is not advancing because the people of God don’t look like Jesus. Because they still walk like they used to, and they still talk like they used to. And the world’s asking a question, So, what transformations actually happened? What has this belief system done for you? I don’t see any change. I don’t see any difference. 

That is what the watching world is saying, but the bigger concern isn’t them. The concern is that we stand before Him, and I believe every believer is going to face this. I think we’re going to have Him look us in the face and ask this question, What did you do with your opportunity to carry my nature? Were you too proud to carry my nature? Did you appreciate your own too much? 

And then I think He’s going to show us who we were called to be with His nature, and we’re going to live with, I think, an element of sadness that says, you know what, I didn’t take on His nature, I offered justification and excuse, instead of just going, you know what enough of this, I follow Jesus, because I believe in Jesus, I’m going to be like Jesus. 

What I love is that Paul will say this over and over again. We have been given the power to choose this. None of us are without the ability to choose the nature of Christ. You can choose it, I can choose it. 

Stand with me, please. I went a little long. That was two of seven pages of notes. I’m sorry. I really think this is a big idea for us. I think the church right now is caught up in keeping people happy, and just trying to win crowds, and Jesus had a knack for gaining crowds and cutting crowds. 

To me, if the truth causes you to want to walk away, then I’m not sure how much of the truth was in you. I know that’s a tough phrase, but that’s what Jesus said. He put a line in the sand and went, You still gonna follow me? This is the standard. And church, it’s time, it’s beyond time for the church to return to the nature of Christ and say, You know what? I got to carry His nature. The people around me need to see His nature through me. They need to see it in my behavior.

So maybe you’re here, and you’re like, I’ve got a bunch of behaviors I know are not Christ-like. Great, repent. It’s a great gift to just be able to look at Him, go, Jesus, I agree, I agree with you, that’s not right. Forgive me. We’re stepping back into your nature. In that moment, I’m going to choose the way you want to do things, instead, I’m done choosing the way I want to do them. 

I want to take the bread and cup as we close. I want you to individually ask this question, Am I willing to carry the nature of Christ? Am I willing to deal with the places of my life that are out of alignment to bring them into subjection to the nature of Christ? 

We’ll have prayer teams at the front, they have the black lanyards with the yellow tags, and maybe you’re here, and you’re like, I need somebody to pray with me. I got some stuff that’s pretty big. I need to repent of. 1 Corinthians, “confess your faults to one another and be healed.” 

Too often we want to go to church, get convicted, and leave, and then we wonder why we don’t get any change. Because we didn’t have the courage to lay down our pride and go, hey, this is what I’m dealing with, I need you to pray with me. Don’t leave here today in that condition, don’t leave here today in your arrogance, saying I’m not going to talk to somebody about it, because I’m afraid they’ll know what’s going on inside me. Who cares? 

Peter’s statement is, live in fear that you’re going to stand before the Lord, and He’s going to ask you about this. Clean it up now, while we can, where there’s tons of grace supplied. You think it’s lost on the Lord that we fight with a sin nature, not at all. Says He was tempted in every way we were, and yet He did it without sin. So, there’s a ton of grace in Him, but there’s not a grace to stay in the condition, because He understands what it takes to not stay there. 

All right. Holy Spirit, thanks for the day. Lord,this is a weighty word. This is one of those where you just kind of want to walk away quietly, but Lord, I don’t want to do that. I want us to face the bread and the cup and have to come into real alignment with, are we willing to take your body and take your blood and take this incredible ceremony that just reminds us of the cross. Are we willing to do that, and repent? Say, Lord, I’ve got to work on these areas; please forgive me. So, Holy Spirit, would you lead and guide us in this? We love you, we honor you, Jesus’ name. All right, let’s take bread and cup.