“But in your hearts set apart Christ as
Lord. Always be prepared to give an
answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you
have. But do this with gentleness and
respect.” (1 Peter 3:15NIV)
We’re in the “home stretch” of our
Bible Reading Plan, and I hope you are still keeping up with the reading, and
are enjoying your time in the Word regularly.
The reading for this coming week takes us to 1 Peter, and the location
of a verse I’ve come to call my “life verse”, 1 Peter 3:15. Even before really finding this verse, it was
through the living out of this verse that God called me to pastoral ministry,
and this verse has guided my ministry through the last 18 years.
The first part of the verse calls us
to “in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord”.
That is the first part of being a believer in Christ. Christ has to have lordship of our lives, of
our hearts, of our whole being. When
that decision is settled, a lot of other questions we may face in our lives are
already answered. If Christ is Lord of
our hearts, then every decision we make after that will bear the impact of
Christ as Lord of our heart.
The second part of this verse has
been the framework from which I attempt to do ministry. “Always be prepared to give an answer to
everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” While I would never consider myself a
scholar, God has given me a desire to help others to better understand the Word
of God. This happens through preaching,
teaching, as well as informal conversations in a wide variety of settings, and
even sometimes in unexpected ways.
I really love to see or hear about
someone understanding something about God, or His Word that they’ve not
understood before, as it is one way I can see the Holy Spirit at work. Even for some of us who have been believers
for many years, when a facet of God’s nature and character is better
understood, or we see how a passage of Scripture applies to our life in a way
we had not thought of before, the light comes on, and God is glorified.
Finally, the last part of that verse
says, “But do this with gentleness and respect.” This is sometimes a hard thing for me to keep
in focus. Sometimes in our zeal to
boldly proclaim the Word of God, the gentleness and respect gets pushed to the
side. There is still room to be firm in
this verse, but it is important to maintain the gentleness and respect called
for here by letting God do His work through us, and not feeling like it is our
responsibility to make the other person understand. As I stated above, that is truly the work of
the Holy Spirit to help us grasp, understand and apply the Word of Truth to our
lives.
By His Grace
Alone,
Pastor Bruce
Jacobsen
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