Peter writes to the whole church again, saying all of you - Finally, all of you - then we get to one of these wonderful lists that you find so often in scripture.
I want to pick this apart so that we can understand it - look at all of the parts and see how it functions before we put it all back together.
That is how my brain works. I need to see the things that come together - and especially in a wordy, listy, stack of scripture like this one, its helpful to break it down.
The first thing I believe that we should see - is the why - because it is important.
The reality is, some of the things that scripture instructs us to do are difficult, some of them impossible on our own. Some of them, we aren’t willing to even attempt. But if you can see the REASON behind the instruction, often times the effort becomes less of a burden.
We are capable of incredibly difficult things, if we believe in the why.
So lets find it together.
