Honorable Living as a Wife

The past two Sundays God has blessed our church family with valuable messages from Enriko concerning homosexuality from a Biblical perspective. Basically most, if not all, of what he has taught applies equally to all sin that we face. Two particular quotes he shared this past Sunday present challenging thoughts for all of us.

“Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more extractive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation.“

From Life Together by Diettrich Bonhoeffer, as quoted in The Gospel Comes With A House Key by Rosaria Butterfield

“Every Christian is called to costly sacrifice. Denying yourself does not mean tweaking your behavior here and there. It is saying “no” to your deepest sense of who you are, for the sake of Christ. To take up a cross is to declare your life (as you have known it) forfeit. It is laying down your life for the very reason that your life, it turns out, is not yours at all. It belongs to Jesus. He made it. And through his death he has bought it.

Ever since I have been open about my own experiences of homosexuality, a number of Christians have said something like this: “The gospel must be harder for you than it is for me,” as though I have more to give up than they do. But the fact is that the gospel demands everything of all of us. If someone thinks the gospel has somehow slotted into their life quite easily, without causing any major adjustments to their lifestyle or aspirations, it is likely that they have not really started following Jesus at all.”

Sam Allberry in Is God Anti-Gay?

Consider the words of these godly men as you once again study through 1 Peter 3:1-12 in preparation for this Thursday morning’s discussion of honorable living as a wife—beginning with question 4 on page 25. We are meeting in room 3 now and it is heated. :)

True Honorable Living

Now that the snow has basically cleared away I am excited about settling in to a thought provoking study of 1 Peter 2:11-3:12. As I wrote to you last week, among the verses that particularly captured my attention in this passage would be the very first one. “Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul,…” I have not been able to let loose of that thought for two weeks now. When you think about it, all of “honorable living” (the title of our lesson) flows out of this powerful verse.

As I read every reliable commentary I could find concerning this verse I landed once again in the late 1600’s with Matthew Henry’s explanation. ”The grand mischief that sin does to man is this, it weakens and debilitates the soul by impairing its faculties; it robs the soul of its comfort and peace; it debases and destroys the dignity of the soul, hinders its present prosperity, and plunges it into everlasting misery. (2.) Of all sorts of sin, none are more injurious to the soul than fleshly lusts. Carnal appetites, lewdness, and sensuality, are most odious to God, and destructive to man's soul. It is a sore judgment to be given up to them.”

Please plan to join us this Thursday morning at 9:30 either in person (in a warm room at Harborview Fellowship) or on Livestream at discoverybaptist.org as we discuss issues of vital importance in our daily lives (Lesson 3).

Also, if you would like to help out when a family is in need of meals, please let Emily Hunt know that you would like to be on the Meal Train list. We are currently helping out the Creiger’s as Briana is having surgery on her legs on the 18th and 25th of this month.

Forecast--A Snowy Thursday Morning

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!!