The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Reliance - Good Stewards of God's Varied Grace

Episode Date: June 29, 2025

God bless the Menkins!

The end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. Whoever speaks is one who speaks oracles of God. Lord, we thank you and we worship you and we praise you. We declare that you are faithful and righteous and holy and good and that your mercies will never fail.

Your grace will never subside. Your love will never cease. We declare that you will never leave us nor forsake us. We give you glory, Lord, for what you have done in our lives and what you will do through us. Lord, help us, guide us, equip us, strengthen us, fill us. Holy Spirit, lead us and move us to where we need to be. Open our hearts, our ears, our eyes, our minds, Lord, to everything that you have for us. God, we want more of you, a closer fellowship, a

stronger prayer life, a greater faith, a more firm calling, a more powerful equipping. We want to see your name glorified and your strengths shown in this generation and you have chosen Lord us to accomplish things for your kingdom that you have called us specifically for. But we can't do them in our own strength. We can only do them through the grace that you supply. Help us to understand this balance and this dichotomy between a complete dependence on you while we take responsibility over the things that you have given us to be stewards over. Lord use this time to speak into my heart and into the hearts of everyone listening. Speak living words

from your scripture. Holy Spirit overshadow my frailties. Lord forgive my shortcomings and my sins. Lord let this time be edifying to you and to your kingdom and to your people. Let everything bring about your glory, Lord. We love you and bless you. Pray that you would redeem this time in Jesus' name. Amen. There's a slight bit of drama, of course, as we start our passage from 1 Peter 4 in verse seven, beginning with the end of all things is at hand, is pretty direct. And when we look around, people could certainly be forgiven

for imagining the imminence of something like the end of the age. Now, regardless of where you fall in the timing of various eschatological events, I think it's perfectly legitimate to say that in our generation, in our circumstances, we are facing unique trials. Not entirely unique in form,

but with a different modality. When we are looking around at culture and technology and progress and the world and worldviews and interconnectedness and secularism and paganism and all of these different systems, all of these different approaches, we experience things in our generation in a way that generations past have not had to, and therefore there will be unique temptations, unique challenges, unique obstacles. But the solution to all of these things has already been established. And so if I might, when we say the end of all things is at hand, in context we are talking about an epistle from Peter that was

written nearly 2,000 years ago. And so in this age, in the age of the church, the age of the risen Christ, there is no more propitiation that needs to be made. The die has been cast, so to speak. This is the final establishment of the pathway to God's kingdom on an overall basis. And so I don't mean to cause alarm or trouble by beginning our passage with that, but it is a good reminder that it is appropriate for us to hold the things of this world loosely.

It is appropriate to keep our eyes fixed on heaven. It is appropriate for us to understand that one day the heavens will be rolled up as a scroll and there will be judgment and a new heavens and a new earth. There will be eternity and glory and the beginning of something new, something that Jesus is our forerunner and our example for. And so when we say the end of all things is at hand, I'm at least personally not necessarily meaning that the end of the world is going to happen next week or next month or next year or next decade or next year or next decade

or next generation or next century. I don't know those things and it's not my job to know those things and I can look into them certainly and follow things to be careful and discerning and everything else like that. But what I care about more, at least for this moment, in terms of what the Holy Spirit has put on my heart, is this balance. There's a balance that we find between our understanding of our complete dependence on the Lord and yet the obligation that that dependence thrusts us into to take responsibility over the spheres of influence that the Lord has given to us. So we have to on one hand express complete humility and surrender and

dependence and then on the other hand, accept responsibility and duties and obligations. And oftentimes the way that we live our lives, those two directional influences can seem like they are at odds with one another. And perhaps you've felt this at certain points in your life as well. How are we supposed to be completely dependent and submissive and following and not,

it seems, potentially making any of the decisions for ourselves? Everything is outsourced or simply to do as we're instructed, but then we bear the weight of the responsibility, or at least we put that on ourselves. Now again, there are many different ways to go about doing this, but I think we can all think of times in our lives

where we felt, and it would be good to be relieved of this responsibility, or alternatively, perhaps even more frequently, man, it would be good to put my own plan together for once and to be in charge of these things. And so we can rock to and fro, we can go back and forth, straying away in various instances small or large from this narrow path this proper balance that has been set before us and I think getting

to the heart of it is verse 10 in this passage from 1st Peter chapter 4 as each has received a gift use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. Now of course, God has a common grace that is applicable to us all. God has provided a savior, Jesus, his son, who died on the cross for us, paid the price for our sins, rose from the grave, vindicating his claims to divinity, and that grace is sufficient and available

to any and all who would reach out their hands, put their trust in him, turn from their wicked ways, and be saved. But here, Peter is talking about us being good stewards of God's varied grace. When we say that God has a plan for your life, God has known you, he has called you specifically, he has known the way that you would handle the situations that he has put you in, and he sees you and he has positioned you

to accomplish works that were prepared beforehand for you to do. And so God gives varied grace to different people for different tasks. In verse 11, Peter clarifies, whoever speaks is one who speaks oracles of God, whoever serves is one who serves by the strength that God supplies. And that doesn't mean that one person is speaking and the other is serving and that there's no overlap. Let's not be too

wooden in terms of this interpretation. But we know the grace that is given to us is different at times and seasons in our lives. Different things come into focus and come into clarity. Different aspects of God's Spirit, different aspects of Scripture, different aspects of our own ministry and our own place and our own responsibility and our own relationships. God has varied grace in addition to his common grace because we need different things from the Lord in different seasons.

Most of all, we need him and we need a closer relationship with him. And we need to be in the presence of Jesus. We need to be more sensitive to the Holy Spirit. There are common things, and by common here, I mean available to all in the same way that we need, but God may have positioned you as the head of a household. Someone needs specific grace for that task and for that responsibility. but God may have positioned you as the head of a household. Someone needs specific grace for that task and for that responsibility that is distinct from the grace that is needed for someone who is not in that position.

This is not to say that one is better or worse than another, that one should be seen more highly than another, because it's not up to us to make those judgments in a final fashion. Before God will everyone stand or fall, and everyone will kneel and bow and acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord. May that day come in Jesus' name. But let's focus on the idea of a good steward, of being a good steward of God's varied grace.

Well, how could we get in the way of that? Well, number one, by taking things into our own hands. We are instructed and commanded to lean not on our own understanding. We are instructed and commanded to lean not on our own understanding. We need to declare this radical and complete dependency upon the grace of God, for without him we could do nothing. And that should, upon some thought, be understood as literally true. If the Lord himself and his sustaining creative power is what keeps the universe itself held together,

then of course without God's activity in this, then there's nothing we could do because we simply would not exist. So at a baseline level, this is technically accurate in kind of an obvious sense that we should be dependent on God. But even if we acknowledge this, this doesn't stop the body of death

and this world of sin from tempting and contaminating us and approaching us with obstacles and various pathways forward that are designed and structured to appeal to our ego, to appeal to our pride, to appeal to our own personal sense of identity outside of Christ, to appeal to the flesh and to carnality. And when we face these things,

sometimes the light of logic and reason that would say, of course, we should be absolutely dependent on God, sometimes that just fades into the background. And what comes up in front of us is what the world is presenting. And in many cases, myself included, we make bad decisions. We go astray and we sin in those things because we don't refer back. We don't check in with the Lord. We haven't been walking with him closely enough to have that sense of real time feedback

and guidance and communication with the Holy Spirit. That is our birthright and our inheritance. For all this talk of AI assistance and artificial intelligence driving companionship and interactions and becoming more human. I of course don't mean to suggest that the Holy Spirit is analogous to an artificial intelligence because there's nothing artificial about the Holy Spirit. The best thing we can do is a pale imitation

of the supernatural power that he possesses. But what we see out in the world are many, many people becoming dependent upon large language models and other machine-based technology to guide them in their lives. And that betrays something of a deep-seated need and structure that we have. Even if we want to be the ones in charge of our own plans, sometimes we'll take a little help being decisive or exploring options or other

things like that. But as easy as these AI models are to use and to access, we can simply speak into our phones and it will speak back to us. Shouldn't we try to cultivate a relationship with the Holy Spirit that is just as immediate and just as direct? Aren't we going to need that in our lives if all of these other voices become more personalized, more direct, clamoring for our attention, providing us with the things

that we say that we need or that we want to be placated with, Delivering us temptation after temptation into our hands constantly? And the answer should be hopefully, yes, like we want that kind of closeness, but with the Holy Spirit, not with anything false or mechanical or anything else of that nature. we don't want to be misled, but many will be and many have been and many are. And so on the dependent side of things, that's the kind of relationship that we should cultivate. We should seek that kind of support. Understanding that the blessing, the unspeakable benefit of being given the gift of the Holy Spirit as this taste, this forerunner, this guarantee of our inheritance. We've said this before and I'll say it again here, who are we to refuse to exercise such a gift? When I give a gift to one of

my children and I see it gathering dust or ending up in an out-of-sight, out-of-mind sort of thing, it makes me shake my head. How much more, brothers and sisters, when we have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, given the opportunity for the third person of the Godhead to indwell us, and to fill us, and to lead us, and to guide us, to give us comfort, and direction, and knowledge, and wisdom, and giftings and opportunities to glorify God, the thing that would really, really and truly fulfill us and equip us and motivate us and bring us joy and love, the things that we all say that we need. Who are we, brothers and sisters, to turn a blind eye,

to avert our gaze from such an amazing gift. Not just generally but personalized. God has varied grace as this chapter says. Varied grace. Different people need equipping in different ways in different times and it is all done according to God's perfect will. We have been made unique each and every one of us. But there is a guide. There is a God who is with us in a real sense, even up to the point where Jesus himself said, it is better for you if I go away so that I can send you another comforter, so that I can deliver unto you the Holy Spirit, so that I can be with each one of you uniquely always.

And that, brothers and sisters, is an incredible thing. And woe unto us if we don't acknowledge the love that is present in that doctrine and the love that should be present in our lives. If the Holy Spirit is with us, even in the process of us being corrected, put through the refiner's fire, anything that needs to be called out according to Psalm 139, search me, try me, know my thoughts, cleanse my heart. Even when the

Holy Spirit is doing that kind of work in us, there is a loving reassurance because there's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. And we know from scripture that God only chastens and corrects those who he loves. I don't go around my neighborhood disciplining other people's children. I discipline my own. I'm not yelling at everybody else about their kids' table manners. We all understand that that's inappropriate, but it's perfectly appropriate to want to move the people that you have responsibility for into a better place.

And how are we going to do that? How are we going to actually take responsibility and make the right decisions if we are not in the place that God wants us to be as good stewards of God's very grace? We have to follow and to serve, to know how we lead others in the example of service. We have to have this utter and complete knowledge of our own dependency on God

to keep our own flesh and carnality in check so that when something good happens to us, God gets the glory. And when something bad happens to us, God gets the glory because we know that the Lord turns everything for good, even the things that the enemy meant for evil, for those who love him. We want to be those who love God, those who are called according to his purposes.

And we have to understand that when we bounce back and forth between the poles of this dichotomy of complete dependence and then controlled responsibility, we need both of those in our lives if we've been given a position where we have wives, children, family that we're supporting, employees, a community, anyone in our sphere of influence. If we've been given a ministry in particular, separate from, of course, the core ministry

that every husband and father has, to be the representative of the home and to serve his wife and his children. That is a core ministry that is born out of the covenant of marriage. When we swear an oath before God, we are pledging ourselves, not just to our spouse, but to God himself to fulfill those obligations.

So whether you have been trained for ministry or not in a seminary, whether you have a degree in Bible studies or you have your masters of divinity, you, if you are a husband, if you are a father, you are a minister. You have been placed in charge of a critical responsibility, namely the well-being, spiritually and otherwise, of your household and of your family. That is a lot to take on, but when we

acknowledge that the call is for us to be good stewards of God's very grace, we can begin to see that our lives and our comments should be suffused with tenderness, with love, with mercy, and with grace. And if we're all honest with ourselves, we recognize, yes, I have fallen short of this in many different ways, likely even today, this very day, God forgive us of it. But if we are to lead others, then we must understand our own complete, absolute, and utter dependence on the grace of God. God loved us. That is the reason given in scripture as to why God sent Jesus to redeem us. He didn't have to do any of those things out of logical necessity. That is how God chose

necessity. That is how God chose to enter into this reality for the sake of accomplishing his purposes. Jesus is the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world and I think we can take this directly in terms of its implications that this sacrifice, the cross, the resurrection, the new heavens and the new earth, all of the many promises in scripture that have not yet come to pass in full, that this is all part of God's varied grace. When we encounter challenges, when we encounter temptations, let us remind ourselves that it is God, it is the Holy Spirit who will keep us on the right track, who will allow us to strike this balance between complete surrender, submission, and dependence on God and on his grace while we are given the ability

by God's grace to be good stewards, to be decisive, to take action, of course, in consultation with the Lord and with other wise counselors for important matters and with the Lord for everything ideally. And so let us not ignore the grace that God has provided for us. Let us not disdain it by considering it cheap or something to be tossed aside or worthless. It is worth so much. It is worth so much. It is worth eternity. And so, especially a message to my fellow husbands and fathers, let us demonstrate the gentle, patient, graceful love of Christ towards those who are in our care.

How did David keep his sheep? How does Jesus, our great high priest, the good shepherd, how does he lead us? How does he guide us? How has he sent the Holy Spirit to treat us? How much does he love us? to treat us. How much does he love us? Do you know that God wants to be as close to you as possible? He wants to give you as much of his grace as you can possibly handle and maybe even some more? What blockages, brothers and sisters, are in

our lives that are preventing the fullness of this that are coming in. Maybe it's time to pray about those things. Maybe it's time to pray and lift up to God your own situation so that you could receive from him fresh indwelling of the Holy Spirit that you would experience and be given the grace that you need to be the good steward that God has called you to be. grace that you need to be the good steward that God has called you to be. God is going to equip you for these things. I know it because I've seen it in my own life. Scripture says it. It's a consistent moral principle. I see it through many different analogies in my own life, but God knows how to give good gifts to his children. If we, being evil, know how to give good gifts, then how much more so

will God give the Holy Spirit to large measures and extensive extents? How much more will the Lord give the Holy Spirit to those who are seeking him and earnestly desire the Spirit's influence in their lives. We need that, brothers and sisters, and especially to my brothers out there, especially to my fellow husbands and fellow fathers. We need this. We need to be good stewards of God's varied grace. We have a responsibility. It is part of our calling. It's part of what we are hardwired to do, what we were created for.

But in order to do that, in order to accomplish that, we have to set aside and allow the Lord to deal with our pride. It can be removed and excised and transformed extremely quickly if we will let the Holy Spirit do his work. Chances are if we've been fighting with something back and forth, back and forth, back and forth for years or even longer, chances are that we're entering a season where we just need to buckle down and get full victory over whatever that is that's impeding our walks with the Lord. So we began with the scripture, the end of all things is at hand. Again, rather dramatic, obviously, but one day that will be the case. And we don't know when it is. So we should indeed be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of our prayers, so that we're praying in accordance with the will of God,

so that we're seeking first his kingdom. And Peter says above all, even in the context where the end of all things is at hand, above all, keep loving one another earnestly. The Bible says that the love of many will wax cold. Don't let that be you. Lord, don't let that be me. Only the grace of God can allow love for one another

to be permanently and on a daily basis restored and expanded upon. It is not something that we are built for largely speaking. Our flesh recoils at some of that notion and a lot of this will come down to the way that people's lives have been, the way that they have experienced this waking life in this world. And our love for one another should be earnest and it should never go out. But in order to sustain that we should admit very readily that we in our own strength only have so much to go around. We need the Lord's supernatural strength to act as good stewards in this regard,

strength to act as good stewards in this regard. To be responsible with the love and the grace that God has shown us and to show that to others as the Holy Spirit allows and as God gives us grace to do so. As each has received a gift says verse 10, use it to serve one another. That is what being a good steward of God's very grace means. If God has given you something use it to serve one another. That is what being a good steward of God's very grace means. If God has given you something, use it to benefit others. Use it to expand the glory of God's kingdom. Use it so that you will have a testimony that can speak into the lives of others who may soon be demanding a place, be demanding what God has to offer.

When the floodgates open and when the harvest is ripe, nothing can stop what God wants to accomplish in this generation, in your family, in my family. So Lord, let it be so. Help us to be ready as good stewards of your grace, not taking any glory for ourselves, not trying to elevate our own self, not trying to get God's confirmation to run a plan that we put together in our own strength, but rather instead so that God would be glorified in everything

that we do, so that we could be good stewards of God's very grace, doing what God wants with the things that God has lovingly given us. Greater sensitivity to the Holy Spirit is necessary. It's mandatory if we are going to stand before the Lord and say, Lord, you empowered me to follow your scripture in this regard. It's because of you that I was able to be a good steward in any capacity and any fault or misstep or lack thereof is my responsibility, is my sin.

Lord, you have never misled us. You've never done anything that would lead us to doubting your faithfulness to us. I know that I can speak that as part of my testimony. What I have seen in myself and in others, but primarily for myself, that's who I have the most experience with, is failing to come to terms with this balance that we're describing. Complete surrender on one hand, and yet real distinctive moral weightiness to the choices and the positions that we are in with respect to our families particularly but it can also be with respect to other domains as well anything that we have influence or control over. So brothers and sisters will you join me this

season in praying that we would be given the wisdom and the strength and the love from God and the guidance from the Holy Spirit so that He would make us into good stewards of God's very grace? Would you pray and join in prayer with me that the gifts that we have received, that they would be used to serve one another and that the gifts we have would become stronger, that we would grow more sensitive to the Holy Spirit. Would you join me in these things? This is a time where God's power is desperately needed.

It's needed in the lives of so many individuals, it's needed in my life, it's needed in the lives of the churches, in our towns, and in our communities. It's needed in the lives of the churches in our towns and in our communities, it's needed in the body of Christ. But God stands ready with an ample supply of spiritual resources, never wavering, never sleeping, never changing in his commitment, never adjusting his attitude towards these situations. So let us be obedient. Let us seek first the kingdom of God.

And let us be good stewards of God's very grace. Lord, help us. Holy Spirit, be with us. Speak to us now. Show us, Lord, what we have to change, what we have to adjust. Call things out in our hearts clearly and with direct guidance for not just what needs to be

cut away and done away with and forgiveness pronounced over and what Jesus's blood needs to cover, but what are we supposed to do after that? You are the one who guides us. You are the one who leads us. And yes, for us who are in spiritual prisons, whether it's something ancestral or something of our own making or the consequences of sin or anything else like that, Lord, would you please break away those chains and then, just like you did to Peter, lead us out of that prison.

Even if we know the way out, even if we think we understand it, would you lead us in the best way out? Would you show us how we can find the right balance in the dichotomy of being completely dependent and surrendered to your will on one hand, and then carrying out the responsibilities that you have given us on the other. Don't let us lose focus on the full perspective and the full opportunity of what you have for us to do. Lord, you have known us since before we were in our mother's wombs. We have been called and placed here for a time such as this, in a generation such as this,

for a purpose such as the ones God will provide. That is deliberate, it is purposeful. God looks upon you and declares, if you have placed your faith in Jesus, that you are righteous as he is righteous, that you are cleansed as he is cleansed. And brothers and sisters, will God not follow through on his promise to give good gifts to us if we earnestly seek them? Is it the day for you to get back into touch with the Holy Spirit and seek his presence and seek his face? If so, praise God. Lord, let your will be done and let your name be glorified. As Peter writes, to you belong

glory and dominion forever and ever. In Jesus name, amen.