Focal Passage: II Peter 3:8-18 

My family has an elderly friend who will soon be with Jesus. One thing is for sure — there will be no deathbed confession. Why? Ms. Jean has been confessing her faith in Jesus for decades. Whether you were family, friend, home health nurse, or total stranger, she would tell you about her faith in Christ, and that she was ready to go home. 

Have you ever met someone who was banking on their deathbed confession? Several years ago, I witnessed to a young father and then asked him what he thought about the truths I had shared.  [Read more…]

Focal Passage: II Peter 1:3-8, 16-21 

When you are sending your child away on a trip, you may ask, “Do you have everything you need?” What if the question was broadened to address your life as a whole? Typically, we would answer the question with several items from our wish list, which may include some critically important things. 

Yet when we consider the true definition of “need,” we realize that most if not all the items on our list technically qualify as wants. Even many of the things that are perceived as needs are actually created needs, like your cell phone. All but the last forty years of humanity survived without one!  [Read more…]

Focal Passage: II Peter 2:1-3, 17-19; Jude 17-23 

I am currently teaching Contemporary World Religions in Seminary Extension, because the nations are coming to our cities and we need to know what they believe. The course is mostly a study of spiritual darkness. It reveals the numerous pathways, both at home and abroad, that people are taking to avoid the cross of Christ and embrace intricately woven lies. Peter warned that false prophets would infiltrate the early church with heresies that deny Christ and bring spiritual destruction (II Peter 2:1), and the battle continues today. 

False teachers become a poison in local churches because people follow their “depraved ways,” and malign the truth (v. 2:2). Notice the exchange. In spite of what the kingdom of darkness wants people to believe, one cannot simply choose a contradictory set of beliefs and follow them.  [Read more…]

Focal Passage: I Peter 5:1-11

A CEO is much different than a shepherd. In the final decades of the twentieth century, an excessive emphasis on numerical growth began to “flip the Script[ure]” and many churches put the shepherd model out to pasture. He was replaced by a man with surplus self-confidence, a type A personality, and maybe even an advanced degree in business, who knew he could turn the ship around. And turn he did! While not all aspects of the church growth movement were bad, several priorities became distorted, especially the need for pastors with shepherding hearts. 

Peter made it clear that elders must shepherd the flock. What does that mean?  [Read more…]

Focal Passage: I Peter 4:12-19 

I had been a Christian for several years before I heard anyone speak on God’s purpose in suffering. I had heard preachers affirm Paul’s desire “to know Him and the power of His resurrection,” but they often failed to finish the verse: “…and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death” (Philippians 3:10). 

The false gospel of prosperity idolizes health and wealth, because it wrongly associates suffering with either sin or a lack of faith. On the contrary, the Bible teaches us to expect suffering. While God often uses suffering to produce spiritual maturity and perseverance in us (Romans 4:3-4, James 1:2-4), the Bible more frequently connects Christian suffering to our identification with Christ.  [Read more…]