Peter commands us to hope, to be holy, to fear God, in order to lay hold of life eternal.

By the evening time that had all turned around. In one day they became excited about the future. They had a clearer understanding. They saw everything that happened in the proper context in order to rightly understand what was going on. They had hope.

Because God is powerful, compassionate, and detail- oriented, He also cares about working out His salvation in our lives.

We think following Jesus is something that we do. Peter says we follow Jesus because of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

To do that I want to start in Proverbs 24:10

Here in Psalm 104 the psalmist meditates on Scripture and what he sees in nature, and he increases his grasp of God’s glory, wisdom, power, and judgment. The meaning is that you live in God’s world.

As disciples we are learning skills. The biggest skill we are learning is how to live for Jesus. That will lead us to living radically, because Jesus is not like us. He’s way beyond us, and in comparison we are backwards to Him.

We have a real problem in evaluating things today because we have such different points of view. The rich and powerful and maybe even some Christians would say that James is crazy. He’s got his values all mixed up.

And you know that discipline is painful at the start, and in the end it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness.

What doesn’t help is that we are convinced we know where it is, and we are wrong. Instead what we pursue makes conflict, while we sincerely work for happiness.