Prepared for Action

Therefore prepare your minds for action: 1 Peter 1:13

If, as I have suggested in my earlier posts, we are rapidly heading into a post Christian/Christendom era in the west. In this environment, how should we live?

Once again Peter’s epistles overflow with answers. For example:

And he continues with submission to authority, love, self control, willingness to suffer and much, much more. In all he is urging the church to live lives that are an alternative to the way the world lives: lives that are a beacon of hope in the hopelessness of paganism. You find the similar echoes in the second letter.

We could translate that into negative statements: Don’t live the selfish, selfcentred lives of those around you. Don’t live lives obsessed with ego, fame, money, possessions, greed, materialism, consumerism. Don’t live fractured lives in fractured families … and so on.

Churches speak about mission, evangelism and witnessing, which I hasten to add is great, but unless we come to realise ( as Peter is telling us) that our greatest tool is the witness of our own lives – our actions, deeds, words, character, our expression of Christ to our neighbours and friends, our marriages, our families … or to put it into a Biblical term, our holiness. Lives purchased by Christ and being transformed by the Holy Spirit. Our lives need to attractive and attractional. God’s people need to be living billboard to the character of Christ.

I see this as the challenge for the C21st Church and Christian. Every time a celebrity preacher falls and every time you and I fail, we damage the name of Christ. So in the words of Peter, “Be firm and steadfast.”