THE PODCAST

When we stand before the judge, how will the Lord find you: guilty or not guilty? We are not to presume on God’s grace but to grow in it. We are to grow and be better people each and every day. The Lord should not find us the same as the day He saved us. We ought to be better.

The world may scoff. The world may mock and ask, “Where is the Lord?” But the reality is that the Lord is coming back; it will be a day of judgment, and it will not be a good day for those opposed to God. However, God is long-suffering, and every day He delays His coming is a display of His patience. The only reason He delays His coming is that men might repent. God values lost people, and we ought to be part of the process of bring men to faith in Him.

The belief that “we can do what we want because we are already saved” is empty. The people that teach that and similar beliefs are like a well without water. They have no depth; their lives are empty. Are you a dry well? If someone came to you would they leave thirsty or quenched? How do you fill your well? By going to Christ every day. He is the everlasting water. We are all subject to other influences in our lives. We can be mastered by God or self, but we can’t be mastered by both. Every time you give in to your own selfish wants and desires, you become more of a slave to self. We can overcome that, but we have to make God our master. We have to love Him, know Him, and want to serve Him.

There is a right way to live, and we all know that our feet have at one point strayed from the good and right path. If we are going to stay on the right path, we need to remember that there is a spiritual battle being waged, and we can never allow pleasure to become life’s supreme goal.

God is going to deliver the righteous, and He is going to punish the unjust. He judged wicked people in the Old Testament, and it is consistent with His character that He would judge the ungodly in the present. However, just as God delivered the righteous in the Old Testament, when trials come in the lives of the righteous, it is consistent with His character the He would deliver them.

There are not just threats outside the church; there are threats within the church. We need to be on guard. In the New Testament church, false teachers had arisen from within the church; the threat remains for us today. We need to be sure that, as a church, we are preaching the whole counsel of God.

Peter is at the end of his life and this is the final letter he writes to strengthen the brethren as Christ had instructed him to do. This is his final, parting advice to all believers. In this increasingly dark world, he exhorts us to remember the Word of God we have been taught. In a world full of things that can't be trusted, it is trustworthy and can be a guide to our lives.