We can be thankful that, as those who have obeyed the gospel and received the forgiveness of our sins, “all things have become new” for us. We are living a “new” life, one that was made possible by Christ’s death and resurrection to life everlasting.
Peter’s answer was right when the Lord asked if he and the other apostles were going to leave Him like the others who had turned away: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Jesus is the “preeminent” source of our salvation.
Integrity means that there is a unity to our character: we live in our daily lives by the same principles we say we adhere to in our hearts. One popular way of describing integrity is to say that we “practice what we preach” (or we “walk our talk”).
By withholding our time-schedules from the Lord, are we not refusing to give up our lives for Him, one day at a time? Jesus was never involved in anything that He was not willing to lay aside in order to serve our needs. We need to think as He did.
We must believe that Jesus is who He claimed to be: the Son of God and Savior of the world. If we are to be saved by Him, we must turn to God in real trust and believe in His Son, committing ourselves to the truth that He can save us from our sins.
One day, we will answer for how we have used all that God has given us. When that time comes, we will want to be able to look back on a lifetime of work that was trustworthy. We will not want to be workers “ashamed” of our work (2 Timothy 2:15).
Paul did not see his sufferings simply as worldly hardships — he saw them as opportunities to honor Christ and influence others. No matter what happened, Paul was always looking for a way to exalt the Lord in dealing with his difficulties.
When the Prodigal Son came to his senses and returned home penitently to his father (Luke 15:20-24), the scene in which they were reunited is meant to tell us what it can be like when we are forgiven of our sins and reconciled to God spiritually.
Working constructively toward peace challenges both our wisdom and our courage. It calls for the highest and best within us. May we be people whose work results in a greater degree of true harmony, based upon the revealed truth of God’s word.
The firm foundation of what God has once and for all revealed stands in contrast to all the opinions of human wisdom about what is “necessary.” As for our own judgment, we should have a healthy skepticism about how reliable our own opinions are.
