To Encourage You

1 Peter 4:2 “So . . . live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.”

One of my greatest regrets in life as I look back over the years is how I wasted so much time in my youth living not for the glory of God but for my own wants and desires.  In many respects it was a huge waste, for as my wife said to me one time, “the only thing that really matters in life is what we do for the Lord.”  She was absolutely right, you know, for we are told in the Scriptures that those who live for themselves are “like the chaff that the wind blows away” (Psalm 1:4). It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s a reality that is a part of every person’s life to one degree or another.  

Peter talks about the past life of the believers to whom he wrote his first epistle in the following way: “For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry” (1 Peter 4:3).  He’s telling them in so many words, “enough of that. Don’t dwell in the past, and most certainly, don’t continue to live like that!”  It is an attitude every believer should have, for it was for those past sins that Jesus died.  It’s those past sins for which we’ve been forgiven by the grace of God.  Incredibly, “though (our) sins (were) like scarlet, they (are now) as white as snow; though they (were) red like crimson, they (have) become like wool” (Isaiah 1:18).  It’s such an awesome thing, that we can be born again, that we can begin anew, and that the burden of our sin can be cast into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19) and removed from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). 

It is with this realization that Peter turns our thoughts to “the rest of the time” in the verse above.  None of us knows how much time that is, yet what we do know is that it begins right now.  We are not to dwell in the past. We aren’t to live in sorrow for our past sins. We aren’t to think our life is wasted because of the time that we wasted yesterday and the day before.  Rather, as Paul said of his own Christian walk, “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).  

So, does this describe you?  Is your focus on “the rest of the time” that God is giving you?  Or are you living with the feeling of “what’s the use? I’ve made such a mess of things, why should I think things will be different now?”  As both the apostles Peter and Paul would tell us, both of whom had lots of regrets on which they could have dwelled, “Don’t go back there. Instead, look ahead. Starting today live for the will of God.  For the rest of the time choose to glorify Him.” For you see, whatever the “rest of the time” amounts to for us, whether it be 50 years, a year, a month, a day, or an hour, Jesus said “And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward” (Matthew 10:42).  It’s such a seemingly little thing, yet it’s something that will matter for all eternity. And as we live moment by moment glorifying God in “the little things,” bit by bit it all adds up to “the rest of our time” lived to the glory of God.