1 Peter 3, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

Max Lucado Daily: BOUGHT WITH A HIGH PRICE

The Christmas tree hunt is on! The preferences are different, but the desire is the same – we want the perfect Christmas tree. You search for the right one, you walk the rows, you examine them from all angles. This one is perfect!

God does the same. He has picked you; he knows just the place where you’ll be placed. He has a barren living room in desperate need of warmth and joy, a corner of the world needs some color. He selected you with that place in mind. God made you on purpose with a purpose. He interwove calendar and character, circumstance and personality to create the right person for the right corner of the world, and then he paid the price to take you home.

1 Corinthians 6:20 says, “God bought you with a high price.” The Christmas promise is this: we have a Savior, and his name is Jesus.

1 Peter 3

Cultivate Inner Beauty

 The same goes for you wives: Be good wives to your husbands, responsive to their needs. There are husbands who, indifferent as they are to any words about God, will be captivated by your life of holy beauty. What matters is not your outer appearance—the styling of your hair, the jewelry you wear, the cut of your clothes—but your inner disposition.

4-6 Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God delights in. The holy women of old were beautiful before God that way, and were good, loyal wives to their husbands. Sarah, for instance, taking care of Abraham, would address him as “my dear husband.” You’ll be true daughters of Sarah if you do the same, unanxious and unintimidated.

7 The same goes for you husbands: Be good husbands to your wives. Honor them, delight in them. As women they lack some of your advantages. But in the new life of God’s grace, you’re equals. Treat your wives, then, as equals so your prayers don’t run aground.

Suffering for Doing Good
8-12 Summing up: Be agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble. That goes for all of you, no exceptions. No retaliation. No sharp-tongued sarcasm. Instead, bless—that’s your job, to bless. You’ll be a blessing and also get a blessing.

Whoever wants to embrace life
    and see the day fill up with good,
Here’s what you do:
    Say nothing evil or hurtful;
Snub evil and cultivate good;
    run after peace for all you’re worth.
God looks on all this with approval,
    listening and responding well to what he’s asked;
But he turns his back
    on those who do evil things.

13-18 If with heart and soul you’re doing good, do you think you can be stopped? Even if you suffer for it, you’re still better off. Don’t give the opposition a second thought. Through thick and thin, keep your hearts at attention, in adoration before Christ, your Master. Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you’re living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy. Keep a clear conscience before God so that when people throw mud at you, none of it will stick. They’ll end up realizing that they’re the ones who need a bath. It’s better to suffer for doing good, if that’s what God wants, than to be punished for doing bad. That’s what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others’ sins, the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God.

19-22 He went and proclaimed God’s salvation to earlier generations who ended up in the prison of judgment because they wouldn’t listen. You know, even though God waited patiently all the days that Noah built his ship, only a few were saved then, eight to be exact—saved from the water by the water. The waters of baptism do that for you, not by washing away dirt from your skin but by presenting you through Jesus’ resurrection before God with a clear conscience. Jesus has the last word on everything and everyone, from angels to armies. He’s standing right alongside God, and what he says goes.

Our Daily Bread reading and devotion   
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:

2 Timothy 3:14–17

 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Footnotes
2 Timothy 3:17 Or that you, a man of God,

Insight
When Paul spoke of the “Holy Scriptures” in 2 Timothy 3:15, he referred to what we know today as the Old Testament. Yet, he noted that such sacred writings “are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” In Luke 24, Jesus essentially said the same thing to His disciples after His resurrection: “ ‘This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.’ Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures” (vv. 44–45). The apostles preached about Jesus from the same Scriptures. “[Paul] witnessed to them from morning till evening, explaining about the kingdom of God, and from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets he tried to persuade them about Jesus” (Acts 28:23).

Curling Up with the Good Book
All Scripture is God-breathed.  2 Timothy 3:16

The small country of Iceland is a nation of readers. In fact, it’s reported that each year this nation publishes and reads more books per person than any other country. On Christmas Eve, it’s a tradition for Icelanders to give books to family and friends and then read long into the night. This tradition dates back to World War II, when imports were restricted but paper was cheap. Icelandic publishers began flooding the market with new titles in late fall. Now a catalog of the country’s new releases is sent to every Icelandic home in mid-November. This tradition is known as the Christmas Book Flood.

We can be thankful God blessed so many with the ability to craft a good story and to educate, inspire, or motivate others through their words. There’s nothing like a good book! The best-selling book of all, the Bible, was composed by many authors who wrote in poetry and prose—some great stories, some not so—but all of it inspired. As the apostle Paul reminded Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” and equipping God’s people “for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). Reading the Bible convicts, inspires, and helps us to live for Him—and guides us into the truth (2:15).

In our reading, let’s not forget to find time to curl up with the greatest book of all, the Bible. By:  Alyson Kieda

Reflect & Pray
What have you read lately that helped you learn more about or draw closer to God? What helps you to spend time in Scripture?

God, thank You for inspiring creativity in the authors of “many books.” I’m especially thankful for Your Book.

To learn more about the book God wrote to us, visit ChristianUniversity.org/SF105.

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
The Drawing of the Father

No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him… —John 6:44

When God begins to draw me to Himself, the problem of my will comes in immediately. Will I react positively to the truth that God has revealed? Will I come to Him? To discuss or deliberate over spiritual matters when God calls is inappropriate and disrespectful to Him. When God speaks, never discuss it with anyone as if to decide what your response may be (see Galatians 1:15-16). Belief is not the result of an intellectual act, but the result of an act of my will whereby I deliberately commit myself. But will I commit, placing myself completely and absolutely on God, and be willing to act solely on what He says? If I will, I will find that I am grounded on reality as certain as God’s throne.

In preaching the gospel, always focus on the matter of the will. Belief must come from the will to believe. There must be a surrender of the will, not a surrender to a persuasive or powerful argument. I must deliberately step out, placing my faith in God and in His truth. And I must place no confidence in my own works, but only in God. Trusting in my own mental understanding becomes a hindrance to complete trust in God. I must be willing to ignore and leave my feelings behind. I must will to believe. But this can never be accomplished without my forceful, determined effort to separate myself from my old ways of looking at things. I must surrender myself completely to God.

Everyone has been created with the ability to reach out beyond his own grasp. But it is God who draws me, and my relationship to Him in the first place is an inner, personal one, not an intellectual one. I come into the relationship through the miracle of God and through my own will to believe. Then I begin to get an intelligent appreciation and understanding of the wonder of the transformation in my life.

WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS

To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.”
The Shadow of an Agony

Bible in a Year: Micah 6-7; Revelation 13

A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
Christmas Far From Home - #8857

On the TV news shows during the Christmas season, it's so heartwarming to see those men and women in their combat fatigues sending Christmas greetings home from wherever they've deployed in the world this season. It's one of the hard things about Christmas really, and it's been true every Christmas for a long time; soldiers who won't be able to be home this Christmas, men and women for whom "I'll Be Home for Christmas" is just a song.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Christmas Far From Home."

You know, at Christmas, many people are on a mission that has taken them far from home. Ironically, the Christ of Christmas knows that feeling all too well. The baby born that first Christmas was really far from home. Listen to our word for today from the Word of God. It's from the first chapter of John, and several verses beginning with verse 1.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God." That's referring to the Son of God, Jesus. It goes on to say, "Through Him all things were made, without Him nothing was made that has been made." And then as you go on later in the chapter, it says, "He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:1, 3, 10, 12).

Now the angels who brought His first birth announcement didn't want us to miss who was in that stable. They said, "A Savior...He is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:11). The "Savior" is God's Rescuer, sent to save you and me. "Christ" - that's the Messiah God promised. Then it says He's "The Lord" - the word means the Controller, the One who runs everything. And what we just read from John makes it clear that He literally created everything that is, and then came to this little speck of dust called earth in the middle of all these galaxies He created.

But this Son of God had to leave heaven and come to a world in rebellion against Him; a long way from home. He came on the most important mission in history - to give the people He had created a chance to get right with the God that we hijacked our lives from. Like a person trapped in the rubble of a violent earthquake or in a burning building, we're going to die unless a rescuer comes. We can't dig ourselves out. If any religion, if any good thing that we do could pay our sin-bill with God, believe me, Jesus would never have left home. He'd never have carried His rescue mission all the way to that brutal death on a cross.

His mission is described in 25 of the most important words in the Bible, in John 3:16. You may have heard these words a thousand times. You may have never heard them. Would you listen to them this time as if your life depends on them? Because it does.

"God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). It's a verse you need to put your name in, and put it in the blanks I'll leave there. Listen... "God so loved _________ (there's your name) that He gave His one and only Son, that if _________ will believe in Him, then __________ shall not perish but have eternal life." You're the reason He left home. You're the reason He went all the way to a cross. He loves you. You were His mission.

He was far from home in that manger that first Christmas. He was even farther from home on Good Friday. The Bible says He actually "carried our sins in His body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). He was actually cut off from God His Father so you would never have to be; so you could have heaven. Our sin is why our heart has been searching for home all these years, because home is the love relationship with God that only Jesus can give us.

You know that stirring you're feeling in your heart? That's the man who died for you, drawing you to Him. You can't come to Jesus when you feel like it. You come when God's drawing you or you don't come. And this season when we celebrate His coming to earth for us, He's working in your heart to open your life to Him.

This Christmas season could be the celebration, not only of Jesus' coming to earth, but of Him coming into your life today. Just tell Him, "Jesus, I'm Yours." You want to begin this incredible love relationship with Him? Go to our website and get the information that will help you get there - ANewStory.com.

Wherever you are this Christmas, your heart can finally be home, because you finally belong to Jesus. See, He left home so you could find home.