Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Do You Want Most? | New Testament | 1 Peter 5

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

What is your life pointed toward? How do you react when temptation comes? Will you do whatever it takes to gain popularity and wealth? In today's episode, Jensen shares the importance of having your life centered on Jesus and nothing else. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 1 Peter 5

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. And the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. Those that have known me for long enough will know that I have a deep love for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. I have shed many, many tears over it, and I am only slightly ashamed that that is in fact very true. But hopefully some of you have also seen these movies. because in the films, one of the main characters, Captain Jack Sparrow, has a compass. And this compass doesn't point north, making it seemingly useless.

Except that this compass is a special compass. Instead of pointing north, it points to the thing the person holding it wants most in life. So, if you know what you want, then this compass will be incredibly helpful to you, leading you to where you want to go. It sounds like a great tool to have. But as Jack finds out in the series, when you waver in what your deepest desires are, when you aren't sure what you want the most, the compass becomes unhelpful and disorienting. And like Jack, I think that if we aren't careful, we could easily find ourselves operating off of a faulty compass, surging through life with no real direction. It seems to me that the author of First Peter also knew this, and in his final words of the book,

he includes a paragraph that serves as both a warning and an incredible encouragement to those of faith. Let's read it now. Clothe yourselves all of you with humility towards one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. So first, Peter calls his audience to a certain way of life. The life of a faithful follower of Christ is to be marked by humility. He calls his audience to live in a way that is not proud, but that recognized their own

weakness, casting their anxieties on their God who cares for them. He then goes on to warn them, be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prows around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him. Firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. Peter knows the danger. He knows that while Christians are called to humility, called to faithfulness, there is someone who wants to pull them away. The devil is like a roaring, lion seeking someone to devour. Peter's current audience is facing immediate persecution and suffering for their faith. They are in jeopardy of allowing their fear of persecution

to take them away from the faith, exactly what the devil hopes to do as he prowls around looking for prey. Now while you and I today may not face persecution of the same kind, the devil is still not to be underestimated. He will tempt. and manipulate and deceive his way into hearts until he has caused his prey to navigate off course. He's tricky, like a snake making you a question whether God has your best interest at heart. When he tempted Jesus, he used half-truths to manipulate God's promises and his word, slowly trying to pull Jesus away from truth and into a lie. You see, the devil is going after what our hearts desire most.

He wants to mess with your compass because he knows that a faulty compass in your life is far worse than a shipwreck. It means missing out on the life that God has called you to and the promises of his inheritance. So Peter rightfully warns his audience to stand firm, firm in your faith. Adam and Eve faced the devil in the garden and allowed him to disorient them to the truth of who God was. They lost sight of what they had, fellowship and deep relationship with God, and were taken off course to seek after their own gain, their own power. They faltered on where they were going, what they believed, what their lives were for, and they faced the consequences.

There is real danger in the lies of the devil, and Peter calls believers to resist his tactics by standing firm in their faith. And he immediately reminds them of exactly what it is they have put their faith in in the following verses. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. The God of grace has called us to an eternal glory in and through Christ Jesus. And He has promised to restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish us. He is the one who has dominion today and forever.

That is the truth that we stand firm on, knowing that whatever we face in this life, whatever is thrown before us, we follow a God who has made a way for us to stand before him in his eternal glory, a God who has promised to restore us to be our good and just king as he reigns on the throne of all creation for all eternity. When we faithfully follow Christ, when we give our lives to him, trusting in his righteousness to be our own, trusting that his resurrection will be our own, living humble, faithful, patient lives, we are living out our lives towards that truth.

Peter ends this book reminding his audience where they are going and what they are facing to get there. He knows that where our lives are pointed towards matters. A wrong compass can have dire consequences and someone without a firm course can be easily swayed in any direction. Where is your life pointed towards? Is your heart's greatest desire to live with Christ in His eternal glory? to live under His eternal dominion, to have Jesus as your king? If that is true for your life, then you are called to live a life of humility,

casting your cares on God, faithfully and obediently following all that He has called you to in His Word. But maybe you're realizing that you don't know where your life is pointed towards. You want it to be Christ in His kingdom. But if you're honest, your life trajectory doesn't point in that direction. most of the time. Maybe you can see the ways the devil has tried to tempt you off course with money, sex, popularity, the approval and praise of those around you. When temptation comes, you don't always stand firm with the truth of Scripture, and instead fall praise to the lies that the devil speaks into the world. You want to believe that living a life of humility brings lasting

joy in Christ. But it's hard to ignore the praise and comfort that comes today from doing whatever it takes to gain popularity and wealth. See, that has a hard place to be in, and it's hard to admit that our lives may not be headed in the direction we thought or even hoped it was. It's even harder to know how to reorient our lives back to the truth of the gospel. Maybe today, we just start with what Peter calls us to in this scripture, to live humble lives, asking God to help us, and casting our worries and anxieties that we have on a God who cares deeply for us. Wherever you find yourself today, I just want to take a second to pray for us as we finish up. Lord, we thank you for the promise of your eternal kingdom. We thank you that you made a way for us to be seen as

righteous before you. You have promised to restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish us. And that is far more than we could ever hope for in this life. God, you are the eternal king, the one who has dominion and power over all of creation and we praise you. We ask that you would calm our worries and fears that lead us astray. Strengthen us against the temptation and lies of the devil remind our hearts of truth. Set our hearts steadfast towards your kingdom. May we live humble lives, bringing glory to your name above all else, and may you open our eyes to see the beauty of living in this way. May you put in our hearts a deep desire to live in your kingdom with you for all of eternity. It's in your name that we pray. Amen. Before you forget, Scy

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