How to Love Life According to 1 Peter 3:8-12

 1 Peter 3:8-12  Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous, not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing.  For


      “ He who would love life
      And see good days,
       Let him refrain his tongue from evil,
      And his lips from speaking deceit.
        Let him turn away from evil and do good;
       Let him seek peace and pursue it.        
       For the eyes of the LORD are on the righteous,
       And His ears are open to their prayers;
      But the face of the LORD is against those who do evil.”

Dear Suzanne, Rebecca, Anna and Mikayla,


Been spending some time meditating a bit on these verses.  There is so much here. So many marvelous truths.  How do we love life and see good days?  It is right here in these verses.   Peter is summing up the whole section that began in 1 Peter 2 with verse 11.  This is where the Apostle began a discussion of how we, as Christians, are to relate in the society in which they live.


Verse 11 of Chapter 2 says "You're aliens and strangers...You're in a war not only against the soul but a war against the society around you and you must keep your behavior excellent among the pagans."  Peter went on to talk about three social relationships which demand godly living...citizens, employees and mates. Peter exhorts us to live out pure, godly lives...to live specifically in an evangelistic way before the world so that we glorify God in these relationships and we bring other people to the point where they will glorify Him in their day of visitation.  Visitation here means in the day of judgment.  In the day of judgment, then, they will face God redeemed and will not suffer His wrath.  It means you live your life in such a way as to bring others to Christ. It is living in accordance with God's will rather than self-will. That is the bottom line of living the good life.  How to do this is a paradox as it always is living for Jesus.  It is living opposite of how the world lives.


The first thing we are to do to live this way and heap not only blessings on ourselves but on others is to live with the right heart attitude.  The right heart attitude will be one of love.  Love is where it all begins.  The love of God that is shed abroad in our hearts will be made manifest in our dealings with others.

It will be evidenced by our like mindedness with other believers. There will be a harmony with God's people.   A unity of mind and a working together  for the purpose of doing the will of God here on earth. 

The right attitude also involves putting on of brotherly love and compassion for those God has placed in your lives...everyone..not just fellow Christians. It is so easy to become hard-hearted in this world. We are constantly bombarded with bad news and evil.  It is easier just to insulate ourselves from all of it.  It hurts to love.  It hurts to open up your heart.  This is, however, what God wants us to do.  We are to be actively compassionate, and lovingly concerned towards one another.  We are to love as brothers...sharing one another's joys and sorrows.  We are members of the same family.  When one hurts, the others should also.  When one is joyful, the others should be also.

Our hearts will be tender towards others...feeling their pain and sympathizing with them in an active way.  The right heart attitude also involves being courteous which means simply that you will be meek, humble and put others and their needs ahead of your own.

Peter goes on in verse 9 and exhorts us not to retaliate in kind when someone offends us or does evil toward us.  The right response then if we want to love life and see good days is not to return evil for evil or reviling for reviling but to respond with blessing.  Girls, the bible speaks to this very thing in so many many places.  God truly wanted us to hear this message and He exampled it mightily in His Son.  Returning good for evil goes so much against our flesh which almost always wants very much to respond with even greater evil.  If we want to obey our God, however, we will respond with blessings.  This CANNOT be done in our own strength. It must be done by the power of His Spirit working in our hearts.

When we do respond with blessing to evil done against us, oh, what blessings are ours. I can only describe the heart feeling that comes when I heap a blessing on someone who is not out for my good like this.  Think of when the Grinch's heart grew...that is how it feels...your chest expands...you can breathe easier.  You relax.  and your shoulders come down. You let go of something you didn't need and your whole body feels lighter somehow.  Joy has entered our heart and our capacity to love has been expanded!  What a lifting of the veil occurs as we see Jesus and what He has done for us then so much more clearly in our own hearts.  We begin to understand  the love that He wants us to show to others. We see the "self" that we need to die to. God operates with us on the basis of mercy...if it were not for His mercy all of us would be consumed and die in our sins. Returning evil for good is satanic.  Returning good for good or evil for evil is human.  Returning good for evil is divine.

We are to respond divinely as Jesus did.  "For you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing."  I LOVE this statement. You were called, that's your election to salvation,  for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing.  Your  election...your salvation is a free undeserved, unmerited gift from God.  You have been freely given and are to freely give in return.  Instead of wrath and vengeance from God for your sin and offense, He has given you mercy, salvation and abundant blessings in Him.  We should know then very well how to show mercy and give blessings to those that have offended us.  If we do not do this, then we are not even close to being aware of what we have been delivered from and blessed with. We should be jumping at the opportunity to bless someone else with the undeserved, unmerited free gift of forgiveness that we ourselves received from God. 


1 Peter 2:21-23 puts it this way: "For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps:  "WHO COMMITTED NO SIN, NOR WAS DECEIT FOUND IN HIS MOUTH"; who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously;"

We are to depend on Him knowing that it is His battle and that the ONLY way to overcome evil is with good. Leave the vengeance and retaliation to Him.  He suffers long but as my pastor says, "do not mistake the longsuffering of God for indifference".  The time of judgment will come.  Our weapons are not carnal but spiritual...mighty in God.  We are to depend on prayer and His power. The greatest evil was overcome by the greatest goodness the world has ever seen...the death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary.

How would this look practically?  Pray for your enemy...for their salvation or their spiritual growth.  Pray for their desire and for their well-being.  Speak well of them. Be thankful for them. Bless them with an act of service. Again, none of these can be done outside of the Spirit of God working in your heart as you surrender yourself to Him.

Peter goes on in verse 10 quoting Psalm 34 to support the exhortations he gave in verses 8 and 9. He tells us to do these things  because Scripture tells us to do them.  Scripture is the standard. The first thing we are to do is to deliberately decide to love life. To love life is not usually spoken of well in Scripture. It is condemned in John 12:25, but there it means to living according to self-will. Here it means to live in the way God intended.
Warren Wiersbe puts it this way:

"This is an act of the will: “He who wills to love life.” It is an attitude of faith that sees the best in every situation. It is the opposite of the pessimistic attitude expressed in Ecclesiastes2:17 : “Therefore I hated life . . . for all is vanity and vexation of spirit.” We can decide to endure life and make it a burden, escape life as though we were running from a battle, or enjoy life because we know God is in control. Peter was not suggesting some kind of unrealistic psychological gymnastics that refused to face facts. Rather, he was urging his readers to take a positive approach to life and by faith make the most of every situation."

I really like that...by faith making the most of every situation. Seeing life that way will give us a purpose in every moment of every day despite what we are facing. Living for Him is the only way to do this.

Next, it tells us to keep our tongue from evil and our lips from speaking guile or lies.  The Word, tells us this in many places.  The first 12 verses of James chapter 3 talk about the evil of the tongue.  The mouth speaks out of the abundance of what is in your heart, girls.  You can find out much about yourself and others from their speech. James says that if a man does not stumble in word he is perfect able to bridle the whole body. We are to refrain from speaking evil of anyone and avoid lying...we are to be committed to the truth and giving back good for evil with our tongues.

Peter speaks of the things that need to be eliminated if you want to love life and see good days. We are to be committed to turning away from evil and doing good and we are to seek peace and pursue it. The good life then is in rejecting evil and doing good. It is not in doing our own thing. It is in doing good...that which is excellent.  Next we are to seek peace and pursue it.
 
John MacArthur says that the word for seeking is the strongest verb, zeteo. He is to seek peace with all his might..  Pursue peace means to hunt it. It should be remembered here that Peter is writing to people who are living in a world that is hostile towards them.  There are people surrounding them looking to speak evil of them, discredit them, and really just make their life miserable. He is writing to people who are or will be shortly, under persecution that will threaten their very lives. Even under the most extreme circumstances, then,  we are to respond as God tells us to in His word.  The Word of God tells us not to respond in our humanity to offenses, but to respond in Him, divinely.  We are to do everything we can to live in unity with compassion and brotherly love towards one another.  We are not to return evil for evil but are to return a blessing for evil done to us. We are to guard our tongue from evil and lips from lying.  We are to shun evil and do good.  We are to seek peace and pursue it and all of this we are to do despite the provocation.  Christians are to live like this. John MacArthur puts it this way.  Christians should be the greatest blessing in any culture. The whole world was blessed in Jesus Christ.  We are those who are the peacemakers.

Last verse taken from Psalm 34 verse 15 and 16.  Here is our motivation.  For the eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, And His ears are open to their prayers; But the face of the LORD is against those who do evil.” Our motivation is that God is watching.  He is watching.  The Lord sees and that is a good incentive to do all those things. Accountability is a good thing, but the Lord is not just watching for the purpose of judgment or chastisement but His purpose is a gracious one. God is omniscient.  He observes us and is aware of every detail of our lives. God is looking at us and what we are doing so that He might listen and respond to our prayers.  I don't know about you but I want to live my life in a way that the Lord is waiting and watching to answer my cry and provide for my needs.  I want to live in a way that honors Him and all that He has done for me.  I want to live before my fellow man in a way that they will see Jesus and turn from their ways to His.  I have been forgiven so much and I so want others to have the treasure that I have in this earthen vessel of mine...Christ the hope of glory.

Love
Mom

Like A Weaned Child

 A Song of Ascents. Of David. 

LORD, 

my heart is not haughty, Nor my eyes lofty. 

Neither do I concern myself with great matters, 

Nor with things too profound for me.

  Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul, 

Like a weaned child with his mother;

Like a weaned child is my soul within me.  

O Israel, hope in the LORD From this time forth and forever.
Psalm 131

Dear Girls,

I love this one.  It is so short and yet full of such wisdom.  Like the psalmist, I want to be like a weaned child that crawls up on his beloved's lap and is content with just resting his head against him. He is satisfied in their presence and does not concern himself with matters that are too weighty for him.  He knows he doesn't understand much or have all the answers. He seeks only to rest in his mother or his father's arms knowing they do.

A child in the process of weaning is discontented and irritable. We are often the same way in the midst of a difficulty. What we need to remember in our times of trial is that our hope is in the Lord and that in His presence is fullness of joy. A weaned child no longer comes to you fretting, gesturing and demanding to be satisfied but cuddles and rests quietly against you.  He can't figure it all out and doesn't want to figure it all out.  He just trusts that you know the way that he takes and will get him where he needs to go.  Our Father in Heaven has given us such a beautiful picture here of what it means to abide and surrender.  Let Him hold you....let Him direct your steps...He's got it figured out...trust Him.  Abide. Wait on Him.

Love

Mom

Psalm 91

Safety of Abiding in the Presence of God

 ¹ He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
         Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
 ² I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress;
         My God, in Him I will trust.”
     
 ³ Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler^[a]
         And from the perilous pestilence.
 ⁴ He shall cover you with His feathers,
         And under His wings you shall take refuge;
         His truth shall be your shield and buckler.
 ⁵ You shall not be afraid of the terror by night,
         Nor of the arrow that flies by day,
 ⁶ Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,
         Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.
     
 ⁷ A thousand may fall at your side,
         And ten thousand at your right hand;
         But it shall not come near you.
 ⁸ Only with your eyes shall you look,
         And see the reward of the wicked.
     
 ⁹ Because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge,
         Even the Most High, your dwelling place,
 ¹⁰ No evil shall befall you,
         Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;
 ¹¹ For He shall give His angels charge over you,
         To keep you in all your ways.
 ¹² In their hands they shall bear you up,
         Lest you dash your foot against a stone.
 ¹³ You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra,
         The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.
     
 ¹⁴ “Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him;
         I will set him on high, because he has known My name.
 ¹⁵ He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him;
         I will be with him in trouble;
         I will deliver him and honor him.
 ¹⁶ With long life I will satisfy him,
         And show him My salvation.”