Living in Holiness and Hope Amidst Trials

1) "And so we're thankful that they are here today to worship with us. We are at First Peter chapter one. I hope that you will join me there and we're continuing this series, walking through First Peter. And this is message five. I've had so many positive words from our guest Frank Harbor speaking last week. And I'm so thankful for that. Appreciate you sharing that. And we'll have him back sometime. We were texting yesterday and he said, man, I want to come back to First Baptist Palestine. And I said, we're going to make that happen someday. He is an expert in apologetics." [25:30] (33 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2) "And so he's talking about, at this point, moving from this to that. And we'll talk about that transition in just a minute. But I know over the last couple of weeks, we have been faced with a lot of difficult news in our country and in our world. Hurricane and all the resulting damage of that. Continuing to hear stories and trying to filter through all the stuff that's true and not true. Obviously the bombing across the pond there. And our brothers and sisters being attacked. And certainly we, our prayers go into that situation as well. That's something that causes us some unrest for many reasons." [26:49] (37 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3) "So, child of God, do not be discouraged. Know that these are things that God has told us from the beginning are going to happen. And He has not left us. He will not forsake us. He's got a plan to carry us through all of those things. In fact, I would even say it may get worse before it gets worse. But when it gets better, and when it gets better, it's going to get real good for the child of God. I want to encourage you with this, if you've been bogged down in some of that." [28:22] (26 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4) "And so we want to celebrate today, rather than get bogged down in the sadness. Certainly we want to pray for those situations. Reach out and all that kind of stuff. But let us not get discouraged. If you're physically able, I invite you to pray. I want you to stand together with me in honor of the reading of God's word. And we're going to read 1 Peter 1 verses 13 through 16. Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." [29:18] (29 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5) "In verses 1 through 12, the text tells us that we've been born again to a living hope. That there is an inheritance for us that is imperishable, that will not die, will not be changed, will not be tarnished. There are trials that we are going to go through. Some of them very, very difficult. I'm not going to try to minimize the fact that the trials that we go through sometimes are very challenging. And we also see that there's prophets' words that have been given for us. The Old Testament prophets are speaking truth into us for us to be encouraged today." [30:57] (31 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6) "We've been given the promise of eternal life. Our eternal life, as we talked about a few weeks ago, has already started now. We've been given the promise of a Christ that's going to return. We've been given assurance that this resurrection is going to be ... We're going to get to receive that as well. That we're going to be going home with Christ and he's with us in every day of our life. We know all those things. And so it tells us here in Luke chapter 12, everyone to whom much was given of him, much will be required." [32:31] (30 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7) "Prepare your minds for action. Get the instruction in that you need. We spend our time getting into the word, putting the good stuff in. We spend that time making sure that we are prepared to do whatever we've been called to do. That is for us this daily living, living for Christ in this world that is increasingly opposed to him. We need to pour in the stuff that needs to be there. Romans 12 says it this way, do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." [34:59] (37 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8) "Fix your hope on grace. In verse 13 he says, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Amen. That's what I'm talking about, church, about looking forward. You are a receiver of the grace of God. Now, if you are a child of God, if you've been saved, no one can take that away from you. It is yours forever, permanently. And so when that happens, then don't put your hope in the things of this world. Don't put your hope in that raise or that new house or that opportunity or that inheritance that's coming." [38:27] (38 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


9) "Be holy in all behavior. Verse 15 of our text says this. It says, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. There's several times in the Old Testament where this is referred to and this is taken from any number of those, but I'll quote Leviticus 1144, be holy for I am holy. Now let's understand something here because what sometimes Christians get bogged down in on trying to do the right thing is we say things like, I've got to do this. I've got to do better. I've got to ... I'm working at it, but I'm not quite there, but I'm trying to get better." [45:07] (42 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


10) "Garbage in garbage out. I started hearing this concept frequently when computers started to be a more common thing when I was in like the seventh grade they took us to computer class and we all thought we were going to have to learn to program these things we didn't know we were going to be able to to download software at that time and so what it what it was telling us is that if you program it bad that's what the computer is going to do so you put garbage in garbage is going to come out so in the same way when you put garbage in garbage is going to come out so as we're trying to focus our minds as we're trying to prepare our minds for action to commit our commit our minds to sobriety we remember that whatever we allow in it's going to come out in some way in a behavior and an action in words whatever it may be so we need to guard the things that we allow in so let's remember until he returns garbage in garbage out" [48:31] (59 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)