Peter – A Breath of Fresh Air
Peter, honest and concise, tells it like it is for his day…and ours. Those who manipulate others to get what they want to satisfy self are corrupt. People in positions of influence who dabble in corruption are morally bankrupt. Not everyone of influence who is corrupt is a selected, paid leader. Influential people are those who speak the loudest and longest or silently and skillfully turn the focus from what is right and good to what makes them more powerful. Gossip of others is one of their tools. Watch out for people like this, in and out of the church, who may have an effect on our thinking and of the thinking and behaving of our offspring. These people are dead souls. Dead souls do not give life. They take life.
I once heard a speaker say, “Satan is seeking to have a whole generation of people to himself…who will not know Christ.” This was about 25 years ago at a Billy Graham School of Evangelism. We see the effects of this battle for a lost, dead soul generation. These thoughts quicken my heart beat and ramp up my prayers for the lost who live in and around my life. I cry out to God to save family members who have turned their backs to salvation and/or growing and maturing in His love, grace and mercy. Peter is bold in these words but speaks with a heart for people who need God. Read and see what it does to your heart. Think of those in your life who need to know Christ and ask God to keep the doors open to their salvation. Ask God for wisdom, boldness with behaviors and words to tell His story of salvation, clearly and concisely with pure love in our hearts for others.
Jesus is coming back, you know. Who will be going home, back to the place He has prepared for those who love and follow Him? Dead souls will, indeed, be left behind.
2 Peter 2, The Message
Part Two
Predators on the Prowl
10-11 God is especially incensed against these “teachers” who live by lust, addicted to a filthy existence. They despise interference from true authority, preferring to indulge in self-rule. Insolent egotists, they don’t hesitate to speak evil against the most splendid of creatures. Even angels, their superiors in every way, wouldn’t think of throwing their weight around like that, trying to slander others before God.12-14 These people are nothing but brute beasts, born in the wild, predators on the prowl. In the very act of bringing down others with their ignorant blasphemies, they themselves will be brought down, losers in the end. Their evil will boomerang on them. They’re so despicable and addicted to pleasure that they indulge in wild parties, carousing in broad daylight. They’re obsessed with adultery, compulsive in sin, seducing every vulnerable soul they come upon. Their specialty is greed, and they’re experts at it. Dead souls!
15-16 They’ve left the main road and are directionless, having taken the way of Balaam, son of Beor, the prophet who turned profiteer, a connoisseur of evil. But Balaam was stopped in his wayward tracks: A dumb animal spoke in a human voice and prevented the prophet’s craziness.
17-19 There’s nothing to these people—they’re dried-up fountains, storm-scattered clouds, headed for a black hole in hell. They are loudmouths, full of hot air, but still they’re dangerous. Men and women who have recently escaped from a deviant life are most susceptible to their brand of seduction. They promise these newcomers freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, for if they’re addicted to corruption—and they are—they’re enslaved.
20-22 If they’ve escaped from the slum of sin by experiencing our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ, and then slid back into that same old life again, they’re worse than if they had never left. Better not to have started out on the straight road to God than to start out and then turn back, repudiating the experience and the holy command. They prove the point of the proverbs, “A dog goes back to its own vomit” and “A scrubbed-up pig heads for the mud.”
Dear Heavenly Father,
I love you with all that is in me. Show me your ways. Give us opportunities and the discernment to say the right words at the right time in the right Spirit so that others may find, know and follow You.
In Jesus Name, Amen
