The Book of 1 Peter

0:11 As we continue to read through the Bible, I'm sure it's been a great journey for most of you. But probably most of you have gone through periods where you're just reading it, and throughout the day you're not meditating on it. And, you know, there's those times where you read it and it just feels a little bit dry. It feels like, gosh, did I even connect with God this morning? And to be honest, the last couple of weeks have felt a little bit like that for me, where I'm still doing the reading. I'm still praying. I'm saying, God, you know, show me something through this. But there have been so many days where I don't feel connected, like my mind wasn't clear. and as I prayed about it and thought about it, it's like, gosh, why am I so distracted?

1:00 I think I'm going through what a lot of teachers go through, where we have periods where we're studying the Word, and we're so preoccupied with what we're about to teach. Like, how am I going to teach this? How am I going to explain this? That we don't take the time to really internalize it and really be amazed by the passages for ourselves. And I just felt that over the last week, maybe the last two weeks. And so I'm just going to cut this podcast really short because I thought, you know what, let me just put this on hold for a couple of weeks, get my focus back, get my mind back, so that I can really teach the overflow of what I'm experiencing rather than reading the Word of God in order to find something to teach. You know, I will say, first, it would have been impossible to cover James and 1 and 2 Peter and 1 and 2 and 3 John all in one sitting. So that would have been impossible anyways.

2:01 But then I thought, you know what, let me just enjoy it. Let me just read for a couple of weeks for myself and just shut down the podcast for two weeks and jump back in in the beginning of the year. but there is a verse I do want to share because it may shed light on some of this. It's in 1 Peter 4 verse 7 which we read last week. It says, The end of all things is at hand. Therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.

2:34 The end of all things is at hand. And therefore, be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. He says, because the return is imminent, because we know that the end of all things is right there, what should we do? He says, be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. In other words, don't be so distracted. He wants your mind clear. He wants you to be sober-minded, and that involves exercising self-control. That means controlling all of the, and this is something we wrestle with nowadays, because there's so many things to read, so many things to watch, so many things to be distracted by, so many things to do, and he says, show some self-control.

3:29 Get your mind to where it's clear. It's not cluttered by so many things for the sake of your prayers. Like the goal, if Christ is returning soon, the one thing you want to have in order and you can't sacrifice this, the one thing you have to get together is your prayer life. So here he makes prayer the goal. The goal is prayer. A clear, focused prayer. An undistracted prayer. And that's really the goal of this podcast, was to get people in a place where no one else was around and there's no noise and it's just you and God and your mind is clear and you're sanctifying your mind by the word of God and you're reading just for him and then you're praying just to him with no one else listening and so it felt a little hypocritical as I'm leading this and I'm distracted trying to think of what I'm going to say I thought the best thing to do is for the sake of my prayers because I can't sacrifice that.

4:35 Something else has to go. A million other things have to go in order to get my mind focused, sober-minded, so I'm really in the presence of God, just to be in the presence of God. Not to talk about it, not to tell other people about it, but just to enjoy Him. And so as you continue to read the Word of God and you read through the end of Revelation, I hope that it just takes your mind off the things of the earth and all the things that Satan wants to clutter our minds with and just get into his presence. Because the end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.