Speaker: Greg Sanders

Passage: 1 Peter 1:13

PREPARING FOR SUCCESS

Alright, if you have your Bibles, let’s go to the Book of 1 Peter. We’ll be in chapter 1, verse 13 is what we’re going to pick up. And there’s a word that shows up, and the word is therefore. 

How many have ever heard the right question to ask when you see therefore? What’s it there for? So, what Peter’s going to say is, he’s making a transition, and I want to stay with where Pastor Gary was just a moment ago because Peter’s therefore is because of Jesus and because of our security, and because of the cross, and because of how amazing our salvation is, in light of that, he’s going to talk about what it looks like to live properly. 

How many have understood the word sovereign? That God is sovereign? It means He supersedes all things. He’s in control of all things. He’s outside of space and time. A lot of times we get hung up with God is sovereign because we don’t understand why bad things happen, or if God’s sovereign, why is there difficulty in the world? 

Sovereign doesn’t mean that God is actively controlling each detail, it means He’s watching over it. It means that those He foreknew, according to Romans, in the end, they’re going to look like Jesus, and He’s watching over your life. What it means for us as a believer is that we have to assume that where we’re at, God’s watching over. 

If we look at the Old Testament, the principle we see out of the believers or the followers in the Old Testament was that if the Lord didn’t remove them from a situation, they didn’t remove themself. 

We see that reiterated in Jesus when He goes to the garden and He prays this incredible prayer. He basically says, I don’t want to go to the cross. I don’t want to do what’s in front of Me. I don’t want to go through this. In His humanity, that’s what He’s praying. 

And then He pauses, and He says, Nevertheless, what I want doesn’t matter. What You want matters. Therefore, if You don’t remove this, He says, Please take this cup from Me. His precondition was, I will drink it if You don’t remove it, which has to be the discipline in our lives. 

When pastor Gary’s talking about those of us that are in circumstances where we want to run, you have to understand the discipline of the Kingdom is, I can take my petition to Him, but if He doesn’t remove it, I go through it. And I go through it because I make a right assumption and a right analysis, and that is: He’s in control of it. He’s capable. 

Do you remember when they said to Jesus, You know you could call ten thousand angels down? Because they understood He could, which means, in your situation, He could, at any moment, shift it. 

So, why would He leave you in it? Because He uses our life circumstances to shape the image of Christ in us. He’s putting us in places that are going to require an adjustment to our sin nature. 

If we’re going to live the Kingdom, that’s going to require that we put on Christ. It’s going to require that we align with Him instead of aligning with ourselves. And we don’t love that. And so, we tend to see in the Church and outside of the Church, the human tendency is, If I don’t like it, I’m going to run. 

I would offer that if we study the Scriptures, everywhere somebody ran from the season of God, it always netted them failure. Have you considered Jonah? We think about those principles, you think about Balaam, you think about all these stories, and what they’re laced with is people running away from the season of God in hopes that they would find something better. And all they find is they’re still there. 

Perhaps, if God in His kindness– if we believe He’s kind, He’s good– perhaps we have to settle our hearts in the therefore. The therefore is okay because of Jesus and what He’s done in my life where I’m at right now. 

I have a response that I have to make, and that’s what Peter is going to talk about here. He’s not talking to people who are living in luxurious lives. He’s talking to people who are wildly oppressed, who are being judged. 

I was just watching some goofy thing on National Geographic TV last night about the early civilizations, and I like early history, like pre-Christ Rome, because you can learn a lot about the Scriptures in that. And it wasn’t a believing show, it was just a science show. 

But one of the moderators said this: Jews and Christians were viewed the same for the first two hundred years after Christ, and they were persecuted with great efficiency, to the point where they could be killed on sight. 

It wasn’t until Constantine comes in almost 300 AD that he steps in and says, No way. No more. It just hadn’t hit me like that. Like to be a believer was a high-risk thing. And yet Peter’s going to say, Hey, because of Christ and what He’s done, therefore, here’s how I want you to live. 

I would offer, if Peter has the courage to say it to believers that are getting radically persecuted– you notice he doesn’t say, Guys, I know it’s so tough, I’m so sorry. Your life’s difficult. He doesn’t give them an ounce of sympathy. He just says, Yep, what you’re going through, God’s watching over it. Here’s how you’re supposed to live. Therefore we should take to our lives what I’m going through. He has a plan for me, and the plan is for how I live. It’s not where I run. Therefore, prepare your minds for action. 

Could I say to us, based on what the Lord just is weaving through the gathering so far, whatever you’re there for, is the answer is, prepare your minds for action. Keep sober in spirit and set your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 

PREPARE YOUR MINDS FOR ACTION

So, let’s go through these phrases. Prepare your minds for action. The word prepare here is a word that deals with planning ahead. We understand that. We understand what it is to prepare for something. 

The root idea in Greek is this phrase that we don’t really use much, called girding up your loins. It’s not even a concept that we really understand. We have to look to the ancient world and find out what did that mean. 

Okay, so in the ancient world, they wore long tunics. Male and female would wear long tunics. They hadn’t worked on pants yet. Girding up your loins is a concept that they would pull up their long flowing garments, and they would tie them off with a belt so they could move with efficiency. 

So, the idea Peter’s teaching here is aimed at learning to look at the journey or the task in front of our lives and make the necessary decisions so that we’re not encumbered. In other words, Peter’s saying, I want you to look at what’s going to hold you back and fix it. 

The journey of serving Jesus, you and I are on a journey of serving Him, and when we stand before Him, the way we lived this journey out is what? It’s going to be challenged. I do believe that we’re going to stand before Him, and the question is going to be, What did you do with My Grace? Not, Did you accept Me? What did you do with the grace I gave you to be like Me? 

Because a lot of the church’s answer in this day is, Glad I’m saved, with no concern for, Oh, wow, there’s an expectation on me to carry His nature, that the way I live needs to look like Him. The way I respond needs to be like Him. 

The word minds here, prepare your minds for action, it’s a word that deals with understanding, feeling, or desiring. See, we instantly, in our Western culture, take the word mind, and we go to just what we think about. But this word deals with a much broader idea. It’s what we feel, it’s what we understand, and it’s what we desire. 

So, it deals with the breadth of who we are, specifically speaks to the way of thinking and what we allow ourselves to think about. How many understand there is a connectivity between what you feel and what you think? There is a connectivity between what you desire and what you think? Our appetites and our feelings work with our thought process. The mind is a very important aspect of our believing. 

If we look at it in that lens, that’s what Peter’s talking about here. Peter is not reciting something new, he’s actually bringing an old concept forward. The writer of Proverbs, who is Solomon, considered one of the wisest men of all time, he makes a statement that I think we missed the weight of. He says, as a man or a woman or a person, we can sub that in– as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. That’s chapter 23, verse 7. 

So, Peter’s call here to prepare your minds for action is teaching us that living the Kingdom is about choosing to control what we think about, and about being intentional when we think about it. Have you ever considered that the secret to success in the Kingdom is being in control of your mind? What do I allow myself to think about? And when do I allow myself to think about it? 

SOBER IN SPIRIT

Let me put two statements in front of you. Number one: you’re responsible for what you choose to think about. There are no thoughts that are accidents. There are simply thoughts that are chosen. 

That’s why Paul says to take every thought captive. He uses a military term that is to take someone prisoner and drag them before the emperor. That’s the term he’s using, take every thought captive. In other words, when it comes into my mind, I have yet to decide if it’s allowed to stay. That’s Paul’s principle. 

That’s Peter’s principle here, that you’re responsible to choose to think ahead instead of allowing reactions to dominate your life. Reactions are what happen when we don’t think about, we just let them come out. They feel very native, and they feel right. 

I would remind us that Romans says there’s a way that seems right to a man, but the end is what? Destruction. So, Peter’s argument here is you’re never going to successfully live the Kingdom if you’re not in control of your mind. 

He says, “Keep sober in spirit.” This word phrase, keep sober here means to make an intentional choice. Catch this: to make an intentional choice, to remain or keep oneself in a state of being calm and collected in spirit, in temperament, and being dispassionate. 

The Scriptures just told me to be dispassionate. That feels like it’s telling me to stuff my emotions. Nope, it’s telling you to be in control of them. Let me put it this way: flying off the handle emotionally is sin. Period. According to Scripture, there’s no place it’s allowed. It’s a word that deals with reaction and abstaining from high emotion. 

I think based on this, it’s fair to conclude that Peter’s teaching that emotional volatility is actually a sin for a believer. How contrary to our modern Instagram culture is that? We live in a culture that basically teaches a unilateral concept of to thine own self be true. 

If you feel it, you have the right to act on it, because if someone tells you it’s wrong, they’re shutting you down, and they’re putting your emotions down. Scripture here says something very different. 

This is where, as believers, we have to ask the question: Am I going to live by the world standard or by the Kingdom standard? Am I going to embrace what feels right or what the Scripture says is right? That’s what it means to have the government of Scripture in my life, that in the moment of conflict between what I desire and what it says, I choose what it says. 

If we pair this statement with this prior statement, Peter seems to be challenging a tendency in people to allow an emotional reaction to situations, and he seems to be challenging that we’re to not do that. Instead, we’re to prepare in advance how we will respond in every situation. You’re like, How in the world do I do that? It only happens when the Holy Spirit is in complete control of us. 

I was thinking about this in the middle of the night. I think the way we prepare it is every single one of us probably knows the places we’re most likely to fail in this issue, we probably know who the person is that causes us to fail most likely in this issue. It could be somebody at work, it could be somebody in the home, could be somebody in the church. 

For all we know, perhaps the way we prepare is to consider those moments, consider what we’ve seen in our internal DNA that comes out that’s wrong, and make a plan of how we’re going to respond Kingdom-wise. You tracking with me? 

It means I know my tendencies, I’m humble enough to see my tendencies, and I’m going to build a plan that says, I’m not letting that tendency out because it’s not Christ-like. Instead, I’m going to sit with the Lord ahead of time and say, What is the plan? What would You like to see from me in this moment? 

Have you ever considered that? What would You like to see from me in that situation? I think that’s a two-fold thing. I think the secondary thing is we come back on the other side and we ask Him, Was my reaction pleasing to You? 

And in this way, we’re submitting our emotions and our behavior to the Lord and giving Him full jurisdiction over it because Peter is teaching the relationship between self-control in our minds, that we are responsible for how we react, and it is to be calm and controlled. That is what it means to be sober in spirit. 

Too often, we will see this word and go, Oh, that means don’t be drunk in this particular place. Alcohol is the fourth thing that that word deals with. The first three are emotional. Peter’s not talking about, don’t get drunk, I think that’s already established in Scripture. The drunkenness of sin Peter is talking about is don’t be intoxicated emotionally. Don’t let yourself get so wound up emotionally that it changes your behavior pattern. 

How many have ever been drunk emotionally? You get to where you don’t react right because you let yourself get too wound up? According to Peter, that’s sin. It’s not somebody else’s sin that caused it. It’s yours for allowing it. 

You’re like, Well, that’s stupid. He says to set your hope completely on the grace of Jesus. Hope without wavering to the end is the actual rendering of this phrase, and I want to highlight that because it is to trust without doubting. What are we trusting? The appearing of Jesus. 

LIVING FOR HIS APPEARING

Peter is putting a marker in the future, saying, I want you to trust without wavering that He is going to come back and He is going to do what He said. There’s a supernatural favor He’s bringing to those who are willing to live like this. 

According to Peter, we’re supposed to live with a line at the end saying, I’m disciplining myself now because I want to be able to stand before Him then and have Him look at me and say, Well done. 

Is He going to say that to everybody? Nope. If He’s both just and merciful, He’ll be kind and honest. He will have the willingness to say, You did not carry My nature, even though you could have. 

How would He say that to me? It’s so unfair. No, it’s not. It says that He was tempted in all ways as we were, and yet didn’t waver. He actually is the only one in the universe that understands what it looks like to discipline ourselves in the human condition. 

There is no one else besides Jesus that can counsel us on what it actually looks like to discipline ourselves as human beings to live the Kingdom. He did it without fail, and He did it in our condition, which means He is a wild resource to learn from, and it means we are without excuse. We have no excuses to say, I can’t do this. The only way we can’t do this is if we are unwilling to ask Him how to do it. What did Sam say? I love it when the church is quiet. 

What’s Peter’s point? That this is how we live with our minds, that the moment we shift our perspective for the sake of the Kingdom, I can’t do this, we start to control our minds. That’s the reason we choose not to overreact, to be volatile, to be ugly or unkind. That is why we plan our reactions and our mindsets, because we’re living for His appearing. 

We’re not living from our perspective. You’re going to have to be willing to ignore some things in front of you to do this, you’re going to have to be willing to have the discipline to not respond to some things in front of you– not because you don’t have something to say, how many have ever had something to say, and as soon as you said it, you went, Shouldn’t have done that? Because this truth is to shape how the people of God live and behave every moment of the day in every situation. 

CONTROLLING YOUR MIND

Just a little bit of time left, and I want to go back to Peter’s first concept, controlling your mind. What are the real practical steps to do that? Because Peter seems to teach it as the first and most integral step of being able to live this way. 

If we say to the question, how do you control your mind, we’ve got to look at what Paul says in Philippians. He offers an incredibly similar teaching about controlling perspective in chapter 4, and I want to submit that controlling the mind is about controlling one’s perspective. 

So, I want to put a statement before us to consider: if you can control the space in between your ears, you can rightly steward the spaces you’ve been entrusted with. When we don’t control the mind, we’re going to fail at the places he’s given us responsibility for. 

So, some practical steps. Philippians, chapter 4, verses 4-8, the first thing we see Paul say is, “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice.” I want to give us this. Rejoice. Learn to rejoice as your first and only response. You have to choose to rejoice. You have to choose to only rejoice. 

And I think it’s really interesting. Rejoice in the Lord always. So, what’s it take to rejoice? It means you have to discipline yourself to learn to see what’s right instead of what’s wrong. There is no way to rejoice before the Lord about what’s wrong. Oh, praise God for this stupidity. 

You have to learn to look for what’s right instead of what’s wrong. You have to learn to make a choice not to speak to or even acknowledge some things. Admittedly, that’s going to be tough, and it’s going to take some discipline. 

Paul will go on and say, “Let your gentle spirit be known to all people for the Lord is near.” Catch what he says, “Let your gentle spirit be known to all people for the Lord is near.” In other words, when you choose to not be gentle, I want you to be aware the Lord is standing there watching you. That’s what Paul’s getting at. 

The word gentle, here, is a qualifier of communication and behavior. It controls how you do what you do, and how you say what you say. Gentleness is a qualifier of communication. There are some things you can’t say. We agree on that, but most things can be said with gentleness, and it changes everything. 

If you have adopted a concept of speaking the truth because it’s truth without love, you’re actually in sin. Scripture says to speak the truth in love. What is love? It means that what you’re saying is being said for the benefit of who’s hearing it in a way they can grab it. 

If you’re learning to launch one-liners because they feel good, it’s wrong. You’re like, But they are. They’re so good. He says, Let me say it one more time: if you can’t communicate it drenched in gentleness, then you’re not permitted to communicate it. 

Wonderful servants, terrible masters, our feelings. Your feelings and your perspective do not justify any lack of gentleness. We have to grab that and hold on to it. My feelings and my perspective does not permit me a lack of gentleness. 

He says, “Don’t be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and pleading with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” There’s two things I want to show us here. Number one: I want us to learn to make anxiety a prayer trigger. Make anxiety a prayer trigger. 

What do I mean by that? The word for anxious here means to be troubled or stressed. So, Paul’s teaching us to become self-aware of anxiety and how we’re to react to it. When I feel stressed, when I feel anxious, here’s how I respond: it should drive me to prayer. 

When something hits you, and you go to ten, or you go to seven, or you go anywhere past Holy Spirit on the scale, or you go to fear, or you go to sadness, you have to have the guts and the discipline to go to prayer. You have to push pause, walk away from it, and go seek Jesus. 

Can I say it this way: resist the arrogance to handle it alone. Because Proverbs teaches that a recluse, or that one who wants to do it alone, is actually arrogant and selfish. Scripture says a recluse is self-indulgent. It means they want what they want, and they don’t really care about outside perspective. 

So, we must react to prayer instead of reacting to situations. You see, in the prayer place, we find strength. Have you ever noticed when you go sit with the Lord, somehow you get more calm, it settles you, and you see things differently? 

We sang a phrase earlier in the engine room about “To see You rightly, Jesus.” I would offer a lot of times in our humanity, we can’t see Him rightly. That’s what I love about the secret place. Because instantly I’m in a spot where, if I yield myself right, I get to see Him correctly. 

The second thing that Paul will say here is,  “But in everything, by prayer and pleading with thanksgiving.” Pleading with thanksgiving. What an interesting phrase. Pray from thanksgiving and pray with total honesty. 

Sometimes I think we pray from total honesty with thanksgiving. Paul reverses it and says, I want you to pray with thanksgiving. What does he mean by that? When you go to prayer, begin in gratitude first. It’s super easy to pray from complaint, and Paul would seem to say here, Don’t do that. Take time to set your heart in His goodness and in His provision, then invite His perspective. 

How do you do that? Actively choose to rehearse what you’re thankful for to Him. Why? Because it resets your mind. That discipline helps protect us against the leans or the bents or the perspectives that we have. It aligns us with Him. We get aligned right, then we can pray right if I walk into the secret place and I am bent on my perspective. 

Have you ever noticed how quiet He stays most of the time? We’re like, Well, He didn’t say anything. Yeah, it’s because He wasn’t going to, because His answer is, Whew, I’m not touching that. I do believe that sometimes the Lord’s answer is, Well, stupid is with stupid, because we won’t align ourselves with His heart, because it takes a humility to lay down where we’re at to align ourselves with His heart. 

You’re freaked out about finances. Here’s a thought: begin in gratitude for what He’s provided. If you’re freaking out in business about what you don’t have, start by declaring how good He’s been to you fiscally. Because by doing this, the magnitude of your problem reduces, and you get a proper sense of what He can do by rehearsing what He’s done. 

See, the faith that’s built to believe for what He can do is usually resting on what He’s already done. That’s why the psalmist will say over and over and over again, count your blessings. Name them one by one. 

It’s not because He’s putting a task in front of us. It’s because He understands if I stare at the blessings of the Lord long enough, and I recite them long enough, I start to believe for what He wants to do, and after you’ve begun in gratitude, then you can get your ugliness out with Him, instead of with others. 

You see, there’s a safety in prayer where we can actually have bad attitudes and lousy protocol. We can say what we need to say to Jesus, and He’s going to respond, He’s going to correct us. We don’t betray ourselves when we do it in a secret place. We don’t dirty ourselves with guilt by doing it to others. 

I want you to learn to go to the safety of that encounter, get it out. It’s not like He doesn’t already know it’s there, but when we get it out, something happens. You hear your actual heart come out, and you go, Oh man, Lord, we do have some things to work on. I just heard this come out of my mouth, and I got to deal with this before You. We get to evaluate it. We get to be confronted by it, and we give Him a place to adjust me. 

Are you giving Him a place to adjust you, to modify your thought process and your behavior? When we hide what’s in our hearts, He doesn’t tend to root it out. He’s not that kind of God, because our willingness to be vulnerable before Him is a statement of trust to Him. I trust you. I trust Your ways, therefore You get to see me. 

When I hide myself from Him, His answer is, You clearly don’t trust Me. Yet, without trust, it’s impossible to please God. Without faith, it’s impossible to be pleasing. When we trust Him, and we’re vulnerable, it draws Him into our situation. Pride is another word for it. And what do we know about pride? He resists it. 

Paul will finish in with these two phrases: “And the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension.” Sorry, I’m going a little long. We got to get this out. “Guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” 

In other words, pray until you find peace and then stay in it. Church, learn to dig in and pray until you’re actually settled before Him in peace. That’s going to require humility and honesty because too often we go to Him looking to hear what we want to hear, when we need to hear it, He doesn’t speak. So, we assume, Oh, it must be good. He must agree with me. That’s not what that means at all. Invite the Holy Spirit to truly search your heart. 

Can I give you a pro tip? Assume you’re wrong and ask Him to show you where. If He says you’re not, it’s great. But start in that assumption. I’m pretty sure, Lord, I’m probably missing something. Will You search my heart and show me? 

Don’t rush the process and don’t get antsy. Why? Because stubbornness and pride do not leave our hearts quickly, and when we’re antsy before the Lord. What we’ve just declared to Him is, I actually don’t have time for Your process, You need to be on my terms, and we have presumed the authority of His position. 

Once you find peace with Him in a situation, once you hear His direction for peace, protect that peace by refusing to step back into the thoughts and patterns and behaviors that have robbed peace. 

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, and if anything is worthy of praise, think about these things.” 

And that’s all the time we have. Stand with me, please. We’ll finish that up later because the really punchy stuff’s in that piece. You’re like, Really? The punchier stuff? Yeah, I know. 

I do believe the enemy has a very clear agenda, and that is to put situations in front of us until we learn to supersede them by controlling our minds. I think we’re going to see something happen when we learn to control our minds and we learn to discipline them to walk before the Lord correctly. All of a sudden, the enemy is going to quit trying, because it doesn’t work anymore. 

If you’re here today and you’re like, Oh man, I am failing miserably at that, welcome to humanity. We’ll have prayer teams up front. Sometimes it’s good to get it out. Go, I need some prayer. Just let them lay hands on you and pray for you. Break the thing off of you, break the discipline, confess your faults to one another, be healed. It’s a great process. 

If you’re here, and instantly the answer is, I’m not dealing with that. Be careful, because when the Scriptures are taught, and we’ve been under the sound of the Scriptures being taught, and we refuse to pay attention to it, we bring upon ourselves a judgment. 

There is to be in the people of God a yieldedness to the Text that says, I heard it. I’m accountable for it. I’m going to live it. Like, Oh, that’s so harsh. That’s not harsh at all. That’s called discipline. It’s called justice. 

If you’re here and the answer is, I am not in control of my mind, I’m not in control of my emotions, then you need to repent and get that fixed, because the enemy can take you wherever he wants to take you. If that’s the truth. You’re like a tumbleweed. He just yanks on that thing, and you go following. 

And maybe you’ve been in chaos, and your answer is, I’ve been in chaos nonstop, I’m not letting Him control my emotions anymore. I’m going to let Jesus do it.