God through the apostle Peter holds nothing back when He addresses honorable living. If you can read 1 Peter 2:11—3:12 without being taken back a bit, then you most likely are not really paying attention. I’m thinking that everything challenging to our way of life in this passage actually comes under the broader heading of “submission.” So, muse on that for a bit.
However, one specific verse I would like all of us to think deeply about is 1 Peter 2:11. “Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul,…” Dig into what “fleshly lusts” actually means, as well as, how these lusts “war against the soul.” As just some starter thoughts for you, here is what David Guzik says about this verse. “It is easy for us to see how the pursuit of fleshly lusts can destroy our body physically. Just ask the alcoholic dying of liver disease, or ask the sexually immoral person with AIDS or one of the 350,000 people on this earth who contracted a sexually transmitted disease in the last 24 hours. But Peter reminds us that fleshly lusts also war against the soul. Some escape disease in the physical body when they sin, but the disease and death of the inner man is a penalty that no one given over to the flesh escapes.”
Now some thoughts about this Thursday morning. The weather forecast looks snowy—so, let's stay cozy at home and safe off of the roads. Next week we should be good for meeting again and we have been assigned to Room 3 which should be cozy and warm—yay!!