Category: 1Peter

Posted in 1Peter, Isaiah, Psalms

Quieting Your Soul

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty; nor do I involve myself in great matters, or in things too difficult for me. Surely I have composed and quieted my soul; like a weaned child rests against his mother, my soul is like a weaned child within me.” Psalm 131:1-2

David learned how to quiet his soul. Infants immediately seek for milk when near their mother’s breast and have to be weaned away from the habit.  After a child has been weaned, they will rest quietly on their mother’s lap without frantically searching for food. Similarly, we naturally worry about that which we cannot control and have to be weaned from this tendency, so that we can find our rest in God. How do we quiet our noisy souls within us?

  1. Accept with humility the limits to human understanding. Although we can learn things about God, there are heights and depths to who He is and the way He does things that are beyond our capacity to figure out. David had surrendered those areas and recognized that it was only his pride that kept him from trusting God just because he didn’t know the answer to all the “whys” of this life. 
  2. Recognize that God is the center, not you. “Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted in all the earth…” (Psalm 46:10) Astronomers have recently  discovered that there are billions more stars than they originally thought. The earth is a small place in a small galaxy that is a small part of the universe. The greatness of the heavens should help us to grasp both the enormity of God and the smallness of us. When we become large in our own eyes, anxiety easily creeps in. Our strength doesn’t come from our activity, but in our quietness and confidence in God. (Isaiah 30:15)
  3. Trust God’s love for you and in His willingness to save you.  Weaned children rest content because they have now eaten solid food. It is not enough to stifle our need for control, we must actively feed on God’s love and salvation. You are safe in His care. Although you can’t control anything, He can, and He will exercise loving and wise oversight to our lives if we will only trust Him. Peter says it this way, “Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.” (1Peter 5:7)
Posted in 1Peter, Romans

Pregnant with God’s Purposes

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“We know that creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time…In the same way the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.” Romans 8:22; 26-27

Effective prayer is like pregnancy. Humility recognizes that we don’t really know what to pray so it starts by asking, “God, what do You want to do in this situation?” As we open our hearts in sincerity and surrender, the Holy Spirit plants in us the very word of God concerning the situation we’re praying about and we become pregnant with the answer.

God’s Word to us, Peter says, is an imperishable seed that will stand forever. (1Peter 1:23-25) The only question once God has impregnated us with His purpose is will we persevere with Him in the place of prayer and agreement until heaven’s purpose becomes a reality on earth? There is a weight when we carry His purposes; there is an inward groaning when the very opposite of what we have prayed seems to be happening. Will we continue to travail until God’s full purpose is accomplished or will we give up and allow that vulnerable seed to be aborted before birth?

“If God wants to do something why doesn’t He just do it?” you may ask. He chooses to co-labor with us and has purposed that His plan will not be done on this earth unless someone on earth wants it, prays for it, and does whatever is necessary to birth it. Why else would He tell us to pray, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven?”

Are you just surviving day to day or are you pregnant with God’s purposes for your life? Women that are pregnant don’t do things others do and don’t eat things other people eat because they don’t want to injure the baby. They limit their freedom because they don’t want to put what they are carrying at risk. Are you conscious that your life is not just about you, but about the One you are carrying and the purposes He has for you on this earth?

Now that’s something to pray about!

Posted in 1Peter, Acts, Galatians, John, Mark

God’s Timing

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“It is not for you to know the times (chronos) or dates (kairos) which the Father has set by His own authority.” Acts 1:7

Two of the Greek words for time in the New Testament are “chronos” and “kairos.” Chronos is the word for sequential time which is how mankind usually thinks about time. There are twenty-four hours in a day, seven days in a week, and fifty two weeks in a year. We make plans and appointments in sequential time and live our lives trying to fulfill them.

Kairos is a word we don’t have one English word to describe. It is not sequential time, but rather, God’s time for something to happen. 

Vine’s Expository dictionary gives this distinction: “Chronos marks quantity (of time), kairos, marks quality.” (554) So how does recognizing God’s kairos time practically make a difference in our lives? Let me give a number of ways.

  1. Although we live in sequential time our priority should be kairos time. Jesus waited for God’s time to go to the feast while his unbelieving brothers had no such concern. “The right time (kairos) for Me has not yet come; for you any time is right.” (John 7:1-2) 
  2. We should not be frustrated by our present difficulties but can have confidence that if we keep doing what’s right, the time (kairos) will come when we will see God’s deliverance. “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God and in due time (kairos) He will exalt you.” (1Peter 5:6) “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time (kairos) we will reap a harvest if we don’t give up.” (Galatians 6:9)
  3. History has a purpose and a direction way bigger than us, so we should be able to put all of our minor irritations in perspective.  Jesus died at the “right time” (kairos) for us (Romans 5:6); and we can be assured that Jesus will come back in God’s “appointed time” (kairos – Mark 13:33).
  4. As we respond to God’s dealings with us with a spirit of repentance, He desires “times” (kairos) of refreshing to come to us from the presence of the Lord. (Acts 3:19)
Posted in 1Peter

Generational Telephone

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all were saved.” 1Peter 3:20

Do you remember playing “telephone” as a kid? Someone comes up with an original statement that they whisper into the next person’s ear. That person, in turn, tells the next until it goes all the way around the circle. At the end you have the last person tell what they heard and then compare it to the original to see how much it’s changed.

Less than 5,000 years ago there was a world-wide flood on this earth and only eight people survived it. Five generations later people had strayed so far from God they built a tower to make a name for themselves, so God confused the languages. Five generations after that God spoke to Abraham and from there the Jewish race was established who carried the promise of Messiah and were entrusted with the story of what actually happened in the early years of mankind. Moses was the one who finally wrote it down.

Most cultures that arose out of the original eight people eventually wrote down their version of what happened as it had come down from their ancestors. Today we have over 300 different versions of a flood story from people who live all over the earth.*  After so many retellings it is amazing how similar they are. Of the over 300 accounts:

  • 95% are worldwide floods
  • 88% favor one family
  • 66% the family was forewarned
  • 66% it was the result of man’s sin
  • 70% survival was by a boat
  • 67% animals were saved
  • 57% survivors landed on a mountain
  • 35% birds were sent out

Georges Cuvier, the father of modern geology (he was the first who recognized mass extinctions in the earth’s past), maintained that catastrophes had happened in the earth’s history, the most recent being a world-wide flood. He wrote an essay called: “The Concurrence of historical and traditionary testimonies, respecting a comparatively recent renewal of the human race, and their agreement with the proofs that are furnished by the operations of nature.” To Cuvier the evidence of these testimonies meant there had to be an original. Noah’s flood is not a children’s story; it’s part of the history of our planet.