Today we come to the end of Peter’s second letter, and we’ll be looking at Chapter 3 vs10-18, with a focus on some of the words from verses 11, 14 and 15:

“What kind of people ought you to be?  You ought to live holy and godly lives……. Make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.  Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation.”

REFLECTION:

At the moment Alan and I are leading the Raising Children course via Zoom, and we have 19 people taking part.  Last week we looked at setting boundaries and tomorrow evening – week 3 of the course – we are going to look at the parenting challenges that occur when those boundaries are pushed, broken, or just blatantly ignored and ripped up.

We call the session ‘Communicating when things needs to Change.’  We like to think that it’s a positive, polite and optimistic title, but we recognise that we could just as easily call it “Help! What can I do when I’m tearing my hair out and am at my wits’ end with my kids?”

Although it’s quite a big or serious topic, there are always lots of people on the team who are happy to teach it, because we all have so many examples of when our toddler drew a rainbow in 20 different colours of felt tip pen right in the middle of a carpet that had been fitted less than 48 hours earlier; or when our child stole a dinosaur fossil from school but claimed they had found it by chance in a gutter in Walkley; or of the time when you picked up your teenager from a party and they sat in the back of the car, rather than the front, because they thought that then you won’t be able to smell the alcohol on their breath!!

Parenting children, no matter what their age, takes a great deal of patience.  Parenting children when they are either persistently pushing the boundaries or acting as if they didn’t even exist, takes even more patience.

But as earthly parents we still strive to be patient with our children, because we know that they need to learn and develop certain skills, attitudes, and behaviours in order to thrive and flourish, as they grow to maturity as young men and women.  And sometimes this is so hard, and we feel like we are being stretched and pushed to our limits.

God is our heavenly father, and we are his children.  And just like all children, we push the boundaries that he has given us, we even ignore and disobey them completely.  We think that we know better, or we just want to do things our own way all the time.

However, despite this, God never has to strive to be patient.  He is always, constantly, and consistently patient with us, as he longs to see us come to maturity as a follower of Christ.

God’s patience with us never wears thin or runs out, because God’s heart is always, constantly and consistently longing for his people to repent and to know and experience the salvation that comes through a relationship with Jesus.

Peter really wanted his readers to take this on board, as verse 15 of today’s passage echoes what he wrote just a few verses earlier in verse 9, that we looked at yesterday.

On both occasions Peter describes God as patient; and being patient for a purpose.

However, in today’s verses, it becomes even clearer that God is not slow or delayed because of procrastination, but because he is having to be patient with us.

We are the purpose or the reason for his patience.

Yesterday we looked at what our response to God’s patience and heavenly timescales should be in terms of our approach or attitude towards waiting, or how we react when we feel God is being slow or delaying something.

Today, Peter’s words direct our attention towards how God’s patience and heavenly timescales should impact our behaviours and our actions.

Repentance means to change or to turn around, to go in a different direction.  Salvation means to be saved from something.

By being patient God is giving us the chance to change our beh...