These last couple of weeks have been a little busy. Writing for my doctoral studies, Oshkosh for the air show (great time with my small group), and preparing for and presenting at a distance ed conference. I’m glad I was on a study break from work, though I was pulled in a lot more than I had planned. Oh well, that will allow me a a little more time to ponder and write at a later date.
All that to say I have not had as much time to ponder or blog as I had hoped. What I have been pondering is the beginning of 1 Peter 4, where we are told to have the same attitude as Christ as He suffered, not live as the world around us lives, but rather live out the will of God. So what does it mean to not “live for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God” (1 Peter 4:2). I understand the first part. There are things in our life that we need to put to death, borrowing some Pauline wording there. Things we have done or things that we are doing that do not honor God, enhance our relationships with God and others, or that cause other to ask why we don’t do the things the world does. I get this. I don’t always succeed but I get it.
This putting things behind us is a process. When we begin it is easy to peel away the things we don’t want to do, but as we dig deeper it gets tougher. Here I am not really talking about the behavior, rather we need to get to the root, the belief and values that result in an unwanted behavior. Change these or replace these with Biblically ground beliefs and values and desirable behaviors will follow.
What comes next will take a little more pondering. How does one live for the will of God? Is there a universal “will of God” or is this different for each individual? I think that it is a both/and. More thoughts on this in my next posting.