A Little Catching Up

On Valentine's Day, I reported that my wife left me. Well, I'm happy to report that she made it back safely. The return trip was not without it's hassles - her flight from Ft. Wayne was delayed, which caused her to miss her connection in Detroit, which required that she be re-booked at another time which put her back in KC about 4 hours later than expected - but she did arrive safely home! It is good to have her back.

In addition, I've been teaching from 1 Peter the last couple of weeks at Forerunner School of Ministry. Monday, we focused our attention for a few minutes on 1 Peter 2:1 - Therefore, putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.

In that study, we discovered that our calling as Christians is to "fervently love one another from the heart." (1 Peter 1:22) And now, reading 2:1 we have discovered that there are some practices that will keep us from doing what we are called to do. The first thing that will keep us from fervent love is malice. We learned that malice is really a desire for evil to come upon someone. We also learned that evil is not the opposite of God, it is the absence of God. So the desire for evil to come upon a person is the result of a void in a person's heart. If I have "malice" toward another person, it is a signal that an emptiness exists in my heart. The only explanation for a malicious thought or action is that I have an emptiness in my heart that needs to be filled.

After malice, there are other hindrances to love listed: deceit, hypocrisy, envy and all slander. Without going into any major detail, it appears that Peter has given us a progression that leads away from love. The progression goes something like this:

1) If the heart is not filled with the fullness of God, that void produces an evil, self-centered desire for self preservation and self promotion and will have no concern for any injury that may come to others (malice). It is truly animalistic.
2) A malicious heart attitude will produce an insatiable need to get ahead of others at all costs. At that point, deceit takes over and no deception is too low in order for me to get what I want by whatever means necessary.
3) I will then begin to play a part (hypocrisies) that is contrary to what I say I believe. I will sink into the depths of hypocrisy. It will be subtle at first and will appear harmless, but if I allow it to run unchecked, it will escalate.
4) In that condition, I will long for what others have (envies) – not just for the sake of having it, but because I will honestly believe that it is a matter of my personal survival – with such intensity that it will literally rot my sense of right and wrong.
5) At this point, I will have no hesitation in saying whatever I have to say, or doing whatever I have to do to displace anyone I perceive as a competitor (slanders). It’s the law of the jungle, kill or be killed, eat or be eaten; survival of the fittest becomes my motto.

So now the question must be, "How do I fill the void that exists naturally in the human heart? How do I fill the void that leads to this destructive progression?"

I'm glad you asked that question, because Peter gives us the answer immediately. In 1 Peter 2:2 he says, "...like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word..." The only way to fill the void is with the Word of God. When we long for the Word of God the way a baby longs for milk, then we will begin to fill the emptiness with the only thing that will be effective. So my prayer for myself and for my brothers and sisters in Christ is that we will have a longing for the Word of God - so that the empty places in our hearts will "be filled with all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:19)