Empowering People to Change the World

Peter’s Principles for Prevailing Over Problems

Steve Holt

© Steve Holt | [Link]

Road Declaration
 1 Peter Graphic:
Peter’s Principles for Prevailing over Problems

1 Peter 1:22—2:3

The Word of God has Activating Power!

The Activating Power of God’s Word

• Today I want to talk about how God births us into His new life and how God
changes us with His new life.

• It is very interesting that in our passage Peter is on the one hand, writing about
love and the importance of having sincere love in our relationships, living in our
true self, and then he ties it to the Word of God.

• He then moves into hypocrisy, which is the opposite of sincere love, telling us to
lay down the false image, the false self, and again he ties it back to the desire for
the Word of God.

• Very powerful passage on how the Word of God works in our heart.

The Word of God—the Bible has the power to activate the life of Christ within you.

When I was born again into the new creation of knowing and loving Christ, as an 18-
year-old, I immediately began to devour God’s Word!

• In my church background, I had never heard about the importance of God’s Word
for my own personal life.

• 1 Peter 2:2, “as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may
grow.” That was me!

• I became hungry for the Word—getting God’s Word into my heart.

• I would read in the morning before class; I would read before gymnastics
practice; I would read at night before I went to bed. I would take my Bible and my
journal at least once a week and go out to a nearby river, sit, pray, and read
God’s Word.

2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old

things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
 • I had become a new creation through the new life of Christ that was living within
me. It was not the reformation of my old self, but a completely new self, birthed
within me. The seed of God, the sperma of God had come to live within me. I was
truly a new creation in Christ. Christ in me; the hope of glory was living in my
heart.

C.S. Lewis, the great writer and professor of Oxford and Cambridge once said,

“God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men
of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man. It is not like teaching a horse to
jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature.” C.S.
Lewis

That’s what’s being talked about in our passage today. The Word is an incorruptible
seed! When you give your heart to Christ, when you surrender to His love, the seed of
God’s Word gets planted within you.

• Just as we owe our natural existence to the Creator’s spoken Word—God spoke
the heavens and earth into existence. God spoke your life into existence.

• So, we owe our new birth to the power of God’s Word and the Holy Spirit’s
activation of His power. You are complete as a human being when you surrender
your life, your heart to Christ. Because our spirits come alive toward Him when
we are reborn!

Ephesian 2:5-6,

“Even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by
grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit
together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

• When you come into Christ, you get the Holy Spirit. Your spirit now has the
Holy Spirit living within you. The Christian life is not about you trying
harder and harder. It’s not about you reforming you; no, it’s growing up in
the Spirit through the Word of God living within you.

• We relate to the Spirit through the Spirit. It’s Spirit to Spirit through the Word of
God. It’s Spirit and Truth.

John 4:23-24,
“…true worshipers worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking
such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in
spirit and truth” (John 4:23-24).

Now let’s look at our passage…

Verse 22

“Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit
in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart.”

God desires that We have “sincere” Love in our Relationships.

• Sincere in the Greek is anupokritos, and the “a” makes it a negative. Hupokritos
where we get the word hypocrite, which at the time meant an actor, one who acts
in a play. It means a faker, phony, or poser.

• This word means the opposite of being a phony. Be sincere. Be a person who is
void of pretension. Don’t put on an act. Be sincere.

• Sincerely love people with a pure heart is your true self.

• Well, you might say, I don’t love people! The reason you haven’t learned to love
people is because you are trying to love with YOUR own soul and spirit. God
wants us having a sincere love because the Word of God is getting activated in
our heart!

• God’s Word is the seed that activates power in your life.

o You don’t naturally have love; God’s Word can supernaturally activate
love.

o You don’t naturally have forgiveness; God’s Word can supernaturally

activate forgiveness.

o You don’t naturally have faith; God’s Word can supernaturally activate
faith.

How does that work?

Verses 23-25
“Having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the
word of God which lives and abides forever, because
‘All flesh is as grass,
And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass.
The grass withers,
And its flower falls away,

But the word of the Lord endures forever.’ Now this is the word which by the
gospel was preached to you.”

The Seed of God’s Word is Incorruptible and Activates Transformation in Your

Life!

• Seed is spora where we get the word spores. Also where we also derive the word
sperma or sperm. A flower is pollinated by the spores.

Mark 4:26-29

“And He said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the
ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout
and grow, he himself does not know how. For the earth yields crops by itself: first
the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head. But when the grain
ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.’”

• This is how the Word of God works in your life. Mark is saying that the Kingdom
of God working in your life is dependent on the Word of God being planted in
your heart, just like in the natural world. The corn seed must be planted but when
it’s planted it grows and grows.

• There is no life without seeds. We think just go to the grocery store.

• It grows out of the ground from a seed. You come from a seed.

• Life comes from a seed. That’s the point. When we are born again, the seed of
God’s Word is planted in our spirit. It’s an incorruptible seed, meaning
imperishable.

• You can’t have a birth without a seed being sown!

• Jesus came forth from a virgin because it was the Word of God, the sperm of
God that gave Him life. “The Word of God became flesh.”

• The Word of God impregnating Mary. The Word is the seed.

 • The seed must be planted! When the seed gets planted in good soil, it
reproduces!

• According to the soil, the seed is activated. The soil—the moisture, the vitamins,
the minerals in the soil, activates the seed as to whether it will grow or not.

Turn to Mark 4:14-20

“’The sower sows the word. And these are the ones by the wayside where the
word is sown. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the
word that was sown in their hearts. These likewise are the ones sown on stony
ground who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness; and
they have no root in themselves, and so endure only for a time. Afterward, when
tribulation or persecution arises for the word’s sake, immediately they
stumble. Now these are the ones sown among thorns; they are the ones who hear
the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires
for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. But these
are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word, accept it, and
bear fruit: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred.’”

• The soil is amazing—either good or bad. If the soil is good, if the heart is good,
then the seed grows.

• You need the seed of God’s Word being sown in your heart. It’s as you cling to
God’s Word, read God’s Word, study God’s Word, then the Word of God begins
to activate within you.

1 John 4:17 says “As He is, so are we in this world.”

o The seed of the Word of God is the mind of Christ—if you are born again,
you already have it! This is your true self.

o The seed of the Word of God is the supernatural power of God to heal the
sick—you have it. This is your true self.

o But you must hear God’s Word, believe it, and let it bear fruit in your life!

If you want Supernatural Growth in Your Life, You must Activate God’s Word
Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than
any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of
joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
 o The seed is God’s Word, but it must be planted and nurtured.

o It’s as you read, study, meditate on, and pray over God’s Word that the
seed of God’s Word grows and grows and grows!

o You may say, why am I not seeing changes in my life? Why am I still
lustful and still angry all the time? It’s because you’re not reading,
studying, and praying over the Word of God.

• You have to first hear it (read it, study it) and then believe it! So many just hear it
but they don’t believe it. You must have both!

Chapter 2

“Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil
speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may
grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.”

• How do we lay aside malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and evil?

• There is only one way! There is only one way! It’s desiring the pure Word of
God to grow in your life!

• Malice becomes love; deceit becomes truth; hypocrisy becomes sincerity;

envy becomes sympathy; evil becomes goodness.

We Grow in Maturity as a Jesus Disciple through Daily Planting the Seed of God’s
Word in the Soil of our Mind and Heart

• We read it and believe it! Read it, believe it! Say to your neighbor read it and
believe it.

• Not just your mind but into your heart.

• Your heart is the soil that activates the seed of God’s Word in your heart.
If you take the seed of God’s Word and sow it in your heart it will, by its very
nature, conception takes place. It’s then just a matter of time, it will grow
supernaturally in your life.
Pour into God’s Word. Sow God’s Word into your mind and heart.

• You will begin to see sincere love for people growing in you.

• You will begin to see forgiveness conceived in your life.

• You will see hypocrisy, envy, and all lying gradually leaving you.

Isaiah 26:3,

“You will keep him in perfect peace,

Whose mind is stayed on You,
Because he trusts in You.”

Daily renew your mind (mental) and your heart (will and emotions) with the seed
of God’s Word and you will be transformed by the Spirit.

Ministry Time after the Worship…

Who wants a deeper passion for God’s Word?

Who wants to have better soil for the seed of God’s Word to grow?