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TruthTalks: Pray to God and Love Each Other

Leave a Comment / Blog, Home Bulletin, My Blog, Podcast, TruthTalks / Christopher Peppler

1 Peter 4 :7-11 summarises as ‘pray to God and love each other’

In times of confusion and crisis, it is difficult to know what to do. Are the end times upon us? How do we handle ourselves and speak to others? Should we warn them or fill them with hope? Is this perhaps an opportunity as well as a trying time? Is there good news at the end of this all?

In THIS post Dr Christopher Peppler offers practical advice and good Godly sense on how to get through this new society we have found ourselves in. To listen to the podcast which talks of it and goes into a bit more detail please click on the play button below.

And of course subscribe, like and share with others. Until next time,

Pray to God and love each other,

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Pray to God and Love Each Other

Leave a Comment / Blog, Home Bulletin, My Blog / Christopher Peppler

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If I had to summarise 1 Peter 4:7-11 in seven words it would be ‘pray to God and love each other’.

I have been pondering on this passage for a couple of weeks now and appreciate Peter’s simple yet inspired directives for community living. What he wrote two millennia ago is good for any generation, but particularly applicable in this Corona-pandemic world in which we now live.

This post is more of a short bible study than an article. I have been blessed by studying this passage of scripture and I hope you will too. Here is the text:

1 Peter 4:7-11 ‘The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen’. NIV

The Structure of the Passage

Sometimes it helps to break a passage down into its parts. In this case, a simple structure would be:

Vs 7 (I) The end is near
(II) pray with understanding
Vs 8 (III) Love one another because love covers shortcomings
Vs 9 (III.1) Offer hospitality
Vs10 (III.2) Serve each other with the gifts God has given
Vs 11(III.2.1) Preach as though God were preaching
(III.2.2.) Serve in the strength God provides
(IV) To God be the glory

The End Is Near

Throughout the New Testament, believers are reminded that the end is always near. We don’t know when we are going to die and we don’t know when Jesus is coming again. So, in a practical sense, the end is always at hand. This is very real in these current times when death seems to be lurking everywhere around us.

Peter wrote this letter just seven years before the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, so the end of the Jewish religion as they knew it was very much at hand. In some ways, our situation today is similar in that our daily lives and the practice of our church life will probably never be the same again.

The way we meet and interact will be impacted for a long time by the new reality.

There is something else in the first words of this passage that we need to note. The word ‘end’ in ‘the end of all things is at hand’ is the translation of the Greek word ‘telos’, which is equally well translated in other contexts as ‘goal’. This reminds us that there is a bigger picture to be seen. Creation is moving rapidly towards a divine goal, the eradication of evil and the creation of a new HeavenEarth. These present times are trying, and in some cases heart-breaking, but they are part of an escalation towards the ultimate good. This escalation includes warnings and tribulations as well as spiritual revival. We are part of it; we are the witnesses and the interpreters of God’s great purpose.

Pray With Understanding

The second part of verse 7 is complex, but the essential meaning is that we should be clear-headed and alert to what is happening around us to be able to pray with understanding. Prayer is communicating with God and seeking his heart, mind and will. The Lord Jesus included in his model prayer the request that God’s kingdom should come and that his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We can best pray this when we are aware of what is happening in our world. The current pandemic has brought with it a degree of irrationality and fear that is not clear-headed. We need to guard our minds and hearts against this.

Another way of understanding this complex verse is the way the NLT puts it as,

‘be earnest and disciplined in your prayers’. In times like this, we can’t do much to change our circumstances, but we can pray; so now is a time for disciplined prayer.

Love One Another

Verse 8 starts with the words ‘Above all’, which is best understood as, ‘most important of all’. The verse then goes on to instruct us to love each other deeply, indicating that the injunctions that follow are not superficial, but deep and meaningful expressions of Christian love.

I am pretty sure that the phrase ‘for love covers over a multitude of sins’ does not mean that acts of love pay for the sins in our lives. We cannot earn God’s favour as this is freely given in Christ Jesus. My understanding is that Peter was drawing from Proverbs 10:12, which reads ‘Hate stirs up trouble, but love covers over all wrongs’. If we love someone enough then we are prepared to overlook offences, moods, and irritations. In this way, we can get along with each other and express a genuine attitude of self-giving towards them.

Offer Hospitality

One way to love one another is to offer hospitality. In normal circumstances offering accommodation or meals to other Christians is natural and an expression of our love for them. In these times of social-distancing, face masks, and special restrictions, this form of hospitality is mostly impossible. However, what we can do is:

Contact others by Zoom, Skype, WhatsApp, phone etc. just to say we are thinking of them, praying for them, and wanting contact with them. Many people are experiencing loneliness and isolation right now and we can help with acts of techno-hospitality.
We can also organise the delivery of food or treats for folk we know are deprived; in times of great need, this form of hospitality is almost as good as a supper around your table.

Serve Each Other With The Gifts God Has Given

The manifestations and ministries of the Holy Spirit in and through us are administrations of God’s grace. The first example Peter gives of demonstrating love is to offer hospitality and the second example is to serve each other with the ability God gives. Peter then provides us with two applications:

Preach As Though God Were Preaching

The word chosen in verse 11 is ‘speaks’ but the context indicates that preaching rather than just general talking is in mind here. Peter uses phrases like ‘uttering the oracles of God’, which the NIV translates as ‘the very words of God’. Not all are called or equipped to preach, but those who are should express deep love to the children of God by committing themselves, as much as they can, to speak as though God himself was speaking. The greatest joy for any preacher is when someone says to them after a sermon, “It was as if Jesus were speaking directly to me”. More than anything else we need in these days is to hear God speaking directly to us.

Serve In The Strength God Provides

The second application of ministering to others is to serve them with the strength that God provides. Preachers speak under the anointing of the Holy Spirit so that others may hear as if God himself were speaking to them. Those who serve others in the strength that the Holy Spirit provides, lovingly minister as though God himself were ministering. Only some of us can preach, but all of us can serve.

To God Be the Glory

Peter ends his instruction to us by stating that the purpose of speaking and serving is that ‘in all things, God may be praised through Jesus Christ’. Then he ends with the words

‘To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.’

The anointing that enables a preacher to speak as though God himself were speaking is from the Holy Spirit, not the preacher. The power to serve others in a way that they become aware that God himself is ministering to them is from the Holy Spirit, not the one performing the service. When people realise this, then it is not the preacher or the server they praise, but Jesus Christ the Lord.

Conclusion

So, what can we do in these days when the end seems palpably near? We can:

Pray with understanding and with minds and hearts cleared of fear and confusion.
Love one another by:
Offering caring contact and techno-hospitality
Serving each other with the Holy Spirit’s gifts, by:
Preaching as though God himself were speaking
Serving in the strength he provides.

In this, God and not fear and confusion will be glorified.

May God bless us and be with us.

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When Darkness Falls

Leave a Comment / Blog, Home Bulletin, My Blog / Christopher Peppler

‘When Darkness Falls’ is an appropriate title for this article because all of us living in South Africa have once again been subjected to rolling blackouts, euphemistically referred to as Load Shedding.

It is not just that this is inconvenient, annoying, and disruptive to us as individuals, it is also hugely damaging to our nation. Businesses lose sales, industries lose production, labourers lose jobs, and the country will very soon lose the last remnant of its investment-grade status. Of course, all this is the tip of the proverbial iceberg because Load Shedding is but one symptom of a nation in crisis. Sigh!

In the midst of this ‘controllable crisis’, as the government minister calls it, the jokers, quippers, and cartoonists are emerging. Many of their efforts are really funny and I wish I could see the smile on my wife’s face when she reads them on her smartphone, but I can’t because it’s too darn dark (just kidding). Making light of something is one of our ways of dealing with fear and hardship. If we can’t get the lights on, we can at least get lighthearted, right?

However, humour doesn’t help to actually solve our problems, personal or national. What we need are visionary leaders, well-conceived plans, competent managers, and a national will to make things work. But we need even more than this, we need both realism and faith, hope, and love.

Why realism?

We need to be realistic in our expectations. Eskom is not going to transform into a model energy provider in a few months or even a few years. As a nation, we will undoubtedly fall fully into the ‘junk’ investment status and that will add another blow to our staggering economy. The political smog of war will not suddenly clear revealing a great saviour figure. Rather, the ruling party will continue for quite some time to wage their internal power-struggle and the opposition parties will continue to be opportunistic snipers and disruptors. Crime levels will not even stabilise until a great number of jobs are created and the police and judicial systems cleaned up and revitalised.

Yes, it’s dark now, and it is bound to get darker before the dawn. And after that, well, I am still optimistic that with God’s grace and help we can realise our hope for a just and prospering South Africa.

Love

Ok, so much for realism, but what about faith? The three prime virtues of the Christian Faith are Love, Hope, and Faith Love for our nation is called nationalism and whilst pride in and love for our nation is a heart-stirring ideal, it is more the result than the cause of transformational change. Our politicians can make any number of nation-inspiring speeches (even if we had inspirational leaders), but talk does not create reality. However, we can and should love our fellow citizens of all races, genders, and religions and help each other through the dark times. This we can all do, and perhaps “many hands make ‘light’ work” after all.

Hope

Hope is the anchor of the soul (Hebrews 6:19); an anchor cast into the future that we grasp to pull our life-boat forward. However, hope must be based on trust and trust is based on positive past performance. Hope in something or someone we cannot trust is just wishful thinking and a ‘paper anchor’. But, there is one person we can trust, who’s past performance makes Him worthy of our trust, and that is Jesus Christ. We can and should put our hope in Him – in what He has done in giving us new spiritual life, in the example of His life and works, and in what He teaches us to be and do. We can place our hope in Him, and we can try as best we can to share this hope with those around us, both Christians and non-Christians alike.

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 3:15)

Faith

The third of the golden-three is Faith. Christian faith goes beyond the more reasoned concept of hope to fully embrace the goodness, reliability, and divine perfection of God. It is a certainty that yields unconditional surrender to the object of our faith. And that object of our faith is not wealth, or education, or a politician, or ourselves, or even faith itself. The ‘object’ of our faith must and can only be the Lord Jesus Christ, God incarnate and eternally with us. This faith comes in part from a rational appreciation of the biblical evidence, but more so from the witness of the Holy Spirit within us. We can share this faith with others in our nation by helping them to ask for and receive the rebirth of their spirits in and through Jesus Christ.

So what can WE do in these dark times? We can be realistic about the prospects and time frame of national reconstruction, and we can be those who practice, share, and teach Faith, Hope and Love; and this we can do. And guess what? As we do this, WE can play a part in restoring our nation and making it a great place for our grandchildren.

Two scriptures that speak so powerfully to us in these days are Isaiah 60:1-2 and Matthew 5:14-16. Here they are. God bless you, dear reader. Be encouraged as you end 2019 and enter the new year that lies ahead.

Isaiah 60:1-2 “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you. NIV

Matthew 5:14-16 “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” NIV

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Three Myths concerning Christianity

1 Comment / Blog, Home Bulletin, My Blog / Christopher Peppler

Critics sometimes claim that Christianity is based on myths and that it is an unreasonable, exclusive, and unloving religion. However, these claims are the actual myths.

The myth that Christianity is an unreasonable Faith.

Atheists and secular philosophers are very fond of levelling this accusation. Even when they don’t say it, the implication is that Christians are ignorant folk who can’t or won’t concede that their faith is in something unscientific and illogical. They usually cite biblical creationism and claim that evolutionary theory discredits and disqualifies the naive claim that God created the universe. The theory of evolution is elevated, without observable, measureable, or repeatable evidence to the status of ‘fact’. Creationism is written off as a ‘non-fact’ without much, if any, consideration of the genre of the book of Genesis, which contains the record of the creation, or the several different legitimate ways of understanding the biblical account. Critics also disparage biblical miracles as unscientific and focus especially on the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the biggest ‘whopper’ of all. Ironically, the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is arguably the best attested and certainly the most researched and written about event in human history.

To anyone, atheists included, who take the trouble to honestly study the scriptures, examine the volumes of research available, and carefully weigh the evidence, he or she will find that Christianity stands on very reasonable intellectual ground. Believers need never think that their convictions are based only on blind faith; faith, yes, but also facts.

For those interested in verifying what I have said, and more, I give just two of the many reliable sources:

The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict – Fully Updated To Answer The Questions Challenging Christians by Josh McDowell, and the extended video of one of his lectures on this subject.
William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith website that contains a lot of excellent material.

The myth that Christianity is an exclusive Faith

In an age where it is deemed improper to claim exclusivity for any belief, or to hold dogmatically to any contention, Christian dogma declares boldly that only in and through Jesus is there salvation. Religions like:

Hinduism and Buddhism set out their paths to blessed eternal life but do not claim that theirs are the only paths.
Atheists are offended by Christianity’s claim because they don’t believe in eternal life and
agnostics generally don’t care enough about such things to be more than just irritated by Christianity’s claims.

It is true that Jesus taught that He is ‘the way, the truth, and the life’ (John 14:6) and then immediately went on to say that “No one comes to the Father except through me”. So yes, Christianity presents just one means of salvation but all who genuinely wish to may avail themselves of this means. Jesus likened himself to a gate and said, “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved” (John 10:9). One ‘gate’ but ‘whosoever’ may enter through it.

The claim that Jesus is the only means of blessed eternal life is based on simple logic. The biblical revelation is that Jesus is God incarnate, and He has declared that faith in him alone is the ordained means of salvation. Christianity’s contentions are not elitist or attempts to exclude anyone from being ‘one of us’, but simply a belief in what God had revealed as truth.

Despite many futile attempts over the millennia to disprove the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, or to ‘prove’ that the Bible is unreliable, both stand as well attested truths. The two resources I have already cited give ample and compelling evidence of this.

The myth that Christianity is an unloving faith.

In our day, Christians are often accused of being unloving towards those who do not conform to biblical standards of behaviour or lifestyle. Words like intolerant, prejudiced, and even hateful are flung in the faces of those who believe that the Bible condemns certain human attitudes, actions, and lifestyles.

In the Old Testaments the prophets often spoke as God’s direct mouthpieces, and here are some of the things that God declared that He hates:

Isaiah 61:8, “For I, the Lord, love justice; I hate robbery and iniquity”.
Amos 5:21, “I hate, I despise your religious feasts”.
Zechariah 8:17, ‘ “do not love to swear falsely. I hate all this,” declares the Lord’.
Malachi 2:16 ‘ “I hate divorce,” says the Lord God of Israel’.

So, God hates robbery and iniquity, insincere religious feasts, false swearing, and divorce. All of these are things that some people do, but they are behaviours and not the people themselves. The New Testament revelation is even clearer. Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44). Paul wrote that ‘Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good’ (Romans 12:9).

Christianity cannot be accused of being an unloving Faith because love is one of its central tenets. In fact, the Bible, Christianity’s foundational document, declares that love is the dominant characteristic of God himself. John wrote that ‘God is love’ and then immediately wrote that ‘whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him’ (1 John 4:16).

The claims that Christianity is unreasonable, exclusive, and unloving are simply unfounded myths. So, have confidence in the fact that our Faith is logically defendable, open to all who will repent, believe and confess, and is loving to its very core.

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When the flame flickers low

Leave a Comment / Articles, Published Articles / Christopher Peppler

I have to confess that I am amazed when I hear someone who has been married for forty years say “I am as much in love with my wife now as I was when we first got married.”

I would relate more to “I love my wife more now than I did when we got married” because love does mature. To be ‘in love’ though is something else altogether. The words evoke memories of a heady hormonal euphoria when everything was new and utterly charming. But this fades as the relationship deepens over time and, whether good or bad, we tend to fall into a comfortable rhythm of life with our partners.

Something similar happens in our spiritual life, and this is not surprising because Christianity is also relationship based. We love the Lord and we love His people but it all seems a little routine and stale. We pray, we read the Bible, we attend church, and on occasions we speak to unsaved people about Jesus. Yet the flame that once burned so bright now seems to be flickering low.

When we are honest with ourselves we realize that we aren’t altogether satisfied with a stale yet comfortable relationship, either with our spouses or with the Lord. But what is to be done about it?

In the book of Revelation Jesus address seven local churches and to the Ephesians He writes, ‘You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.’ (Rev 2:4-5) NIV. In this one succinct statement the Lord Jesus sets out what is needed to rekindle the flame of a relationship, either matrimonial or spiritual. Remember – Repent – Repeat.

Remember when you first met Jesus as savior and lord? How did you feel? What engaged your attention? What was it about this relationship that intrigued and fascinated you? We need to remember so that we can appreciate the difference between then and now. Once we realize that what we have now falls short of what we had then, we repent. To repent means to change one’s mind and so we say, “I am sorry Lord. I want to be different. I want to return to the vitality of the relationship we once had.” But having remembered and repented, we still need to repeat.

Jesus said that we should do again the things we did at first. What do we need to repeat? What did we do when we first met Him? How did we behave? What took priority over our time and energy? I remember how I was as a new Christian. I couldn’t get enough of the Bible. I read it eagerly and studied it diligently because I knew that it was God’s Word to me. I was filled with wonder every time I learned something new about the nature and character of Jesus. I was determined to obey what it said and take seriously its guidance. Another thing that characterised those early years was deep desire to talk to other Christians about the scriptures, faith, and particularly about Jesus. I would sit them down at a table, get them a cup of coffee and then say “Now tell me, what does the Bible mean when it says….?” And I was so totally engaged in my relationship with Jesus that it was natural for me to talk to unsaved people about Him. I didn’t Bible-bash or systematically evangelise, I simply witnessed, and chatted, and shared. Anyway, that’s how I remember it and I am sticking to my story.

So, if the flame is flickering low, then a way to fire it up again is to repeat the activities of the early years.

Read and study the Bible prayerfully and with expectation. Spend time with other Christians speaking about Jesus, not just about rugby or the economy. And witness to those who do not yet have a relationship with Him. Talk to them about Jesus as you would about your much loved life partner.

I know this is good advice when our spiritual flame is flickering low and I am pretty sure it also applies to other relationships, like marriage – Remember, Repent, and Repeat.

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