Monday, March 10, 2014

If someone asks you - be ready

1 Peter 3:15 (NLT)
15 Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it.

We sanctify the Lord God in our hearts when we with sincerity and fervency adore him, when our thoughts of him are awful and reverend, when we rely upon his power, trust to his faithfulness, submit to his wisdom, imitate his holiness, and give him the glory due to his most illustrious perfections [Matthew Henry]



In his book A Sweet and Bitter Providence, John Piper offers these thoughts about God's providence:

Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ. [John Piper, A Sweet and Bitter Providence (Crossway Books & Bibles, 2010), pp.101-102]



When you have lived a Christian life you understand life provides moments of uncertainty, moments of pain, moments of sadness and other hardships along the way. Now there are good moments too and regardless of whether the moments are good or bad The Lord is always walking with us. Because The Lord is always with us we can use the moments of our life as a testimony to others. If someone asks, “What gives you hope about eternal life?” you can respond Jesus Christ. For He is Our Savior, Our Rock, Our Shepherd, Lord of all and many other names of importance. We can give examples of how we know The Lord guided us when we were lost and in what we should do. Be ready when others ask you about your Christian life and be ready to explain it – the good parts and the bad parts; for Christ loves us no matter what.

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