Devotions
Hopeful Intentionality—Toward Your Husband (1 Peter 3:1–6)
As he continues to apply his exhortation to “abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (2:11), Peter addresses the realm of the home. Specifically, he addresses the way that believing wives should behave toward their unbelieving...
Hopeful Intentionality—Toward Employers (1 Peter 2:18–25)
Some thirty years ago, I was in our front yard at home when I overheard a very loud disagreement between one of the neighbour children and his mother. I forget the precise cause of the disagreement, but I distinctly remember the boy at one point shouting, “Children...
Hopeful Intentionality—Toward Government (1 Peter 2:13–17)
We saw yesterday that honourable Christian living requires intentionality, which covers every area of life. Peter encouraged his readers to ensure that both their inner and outer lives honoured God (2:11–12). In what follows, he applies this truth to several spheres,...
Hopeful Intentionality (1 Peter 2:11–12)
The Christian faith is far more than a set of rituals reserved for two hours on a Sunday morning. Christianity is a living relationship with God that pervades all of life. It is, in other words, a faith that must intentionally influence every area of our lives. This...
Hopeful Community (2 Peter 2:1–10)
Much attention has been given in recent years to addressing abuse scandals within the church. There was a time when Protestants mockingly considered abuse to be a peculiarly Catholic problem but, with recent high-profile scandals rocking evangelical churches, it has...
Hopeful Future (1 Peter 1:13–25)
We have spent quite some time now digging into 1 Peter 1:13–25 and I want to take one last look (I promise!) at these verses before we move on. We have considered the ethical exhortations that Peter offers in these verses—holiness (vv. 14–16); fear of God (vv. 17–21);...