Be prepared for battle

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. Having your conversation [behavior] honest among the Gentiles [unsaved]: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. 1 Peter 2:11-12                                       

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

The unsaved love to bad-mouth the church, and if you're a Bible believer, they especially love to lampoon and ridicule you. You must live a righteous, godly life—nothing in your heart and life of what the Bible calls here “fleshly lust.” Renounce that. Abstain from everything that’s wrong. Then embrace everything that’s right.

Since the fall of man, certain things war against our souls. The word “war” here isn’t the idea of hand-to-hand combat, but of a strategy, a conspiracy born in hell, my dear friend, that wars against your soul, the soul of your family, the soul of your church, and the soul of this nation.

We are at war with unseen forces from the very pit of hell. Peter warned the church, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). Be prepared for the battle. You must be absolutely and totally clean. I’m not talking sinless. None of us are. But to the best of your knowledge, there’s no unconfessed, unrepented of, willful sin in your life. A child of God ought to be as clean as the driven snow.

ACTION POINT:

Be mindful every day to live such a godly, clean, righteous, honest, forthright life, that even those who hate you will have to grudgingly admit there’s a difference about you.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers