1 Pedro 2
John MacArthur · Citado em PreceptAustin
1 Pedro 2:2
MacArthur - Scripture is our source of spiritual growth. A newborn baby was abandoned in a pile of trash in a city alley. The mother had obviously left it there to die. The infant was near death when someone heard its faint cry and summoned medical help. The child survived, but only because it received the attention and nourishment it needed. That situation has a spiritual parallel, which Peter used to illustrate the believer’s dependence on God’s Word. If a baby is deprived of nourishment, it will soon die. Similarly, if a Christian doesn’t feed on the Word, he or she will languish spiritually and will become ineffective for the Lord. On the positive side, a believer should long for God’s Word as intently as a newborn baby longs for its mother’s milk. For a Christian, neglecting the Word is spiritual starvation. Warren
1 Pedro 2:2
MacArthur - To become more like Christ you need to know the Word of God (1Pe 2:2). You need to know how Christ lived when He was on earth, and the only place to learn that is the Scriptures, which are the revelation of Christ. The Old Testament sets the scene for Him, creates the need for Him, and predicts His coming. The gospels record His arrival. The Book of Acts describes the immediate impact of His ministry. The epistles delineate the long–term significance of His life and ministry. And Revelation details His future return and judgment of earth. Christ is the focus of the entire Bible, and you need to study it to know what He is like. Too often we study the Bible for the sake of theological arguments or to answer questions. Those things are important, but the main point of Bible study is to know more about Christ so that you can be like Him. (Truth for today : a daily touch of God's grace) Spiritual Famine - In the novel No Blade of Grass, a destructive virus attacks the grasses of the world. Not just the grass in lawns but all grasses, including wheat, barley, rye, oats, and rice. In a matter of months, the world is plunged into famine and its brutal companion, violence. People begin by fighting, then killing, for food. The novel depicts a scene that has been lived out in the real world in recent famines and is terrifying when seen on TV news networks. Yet I can only imagine what it’s like. The prophet Amos spoke of a different kind of famine. He called it a famine of “hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11). While a lack of food can lead to disease and death, a famine of the Word can produce eternal consequences. Without access to God’s Word, we lack wisdom for life and the message of eternal life in Christ. As Christians, we need “the pure milk of the Word, that [we] may grow thereby” (1Peter 2:2). We can identify with the prophet when he said, “Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart” (Jer. 15:16). The world is starving for the knowledge of the God who can satisfy the needs of the human heart. Let’s help fill their hearts by sharing His Word. --Bill Crowder Give us, O Lord, a strong desire To look in Your Word each day; Help us to hide its truths in our heart, Lest from His path our feet would stray. —Bosch Without a heart for God, we cannot hear His Word. Adrian Rogers - Let me tell you what Ethel Barrett had to say about Dwight L. Moody. Now, boys and girls, Dwight L. Moody was the Billy Graham of his day. And, she said that when Dwight L. Moody became a Christian, he developed such a hunger for God’s Word, spent so much time reading it, and was so quick to obey it, that he became a menace to some believers. His rapid spiritual growth was an embarrassment to certain people who, though they had been saved for years, never grew up in Christ. Week after week in the church Moody attended, he would share a new experience that he’d had with the Lord. Finally, some of the older saints, humiliated by his exemplary life, who just couldn’t stand feeling this way, went to Moody’s uncle and urged him to quiet down his nephew. That is, they were intimidated by the fact that he grew so fast. And then, Ethel Barrett drew this conclusion: she said, “His robust spiritual health and bounding energy disturbed their napping. He was just too much. So, while they were sucking their thumbs, he was growing until he left them far behind. He grew more in a few years than they did in thirty” How? He just consumed the Word of God. Another man that has been a great, great blessing to the Christian world is a man named George Müller of Bristol, England. He was a man who saw God work miracle after miracle, supplying the need of children in the orphanage that he ran in England. And, when people think of prayer and faith and power, they think of Müller. Let me tell you what Müller said. Now listen, you want to grow? Listen to what he said—and I’m almost finished: “The first thing I did”—he’s talking about having his quiet time. He said—“The first thing I did after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessings upon His precious Word was to begin to meditate upon the Word of God, searching into every verse to get a blessing out of it, not for the sake of public ministry of the Word, not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated on, but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. Now, what is food for the inner man? Not prayer, but the Word of God. And, here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God so that it only passes through our minds just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.” Do you hear what he was saying? He was saying that if he only had time to pray or to read the Word of God—and, of course, no man has to make such a choice—but he would start with the Word of God. God’s Word is what speaks to us and teaches us how to pray. Jeremiah 15:16: “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me [as] joy and rejoicing of mine heart.” (Jeremiah 15:16) Word Hunger - I had just completed a night of Bible conference ministry in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and was chatting with some of the people who had attended. At the end of the line was a young man in his twenties. He shared with me that he had been a Christ-follower for only about 4 months, and he was eager to learn more of the teachings of the Bible. I referred him to the RBC Web site with the Discovery Series topics as one possible resource for his personal study. The next night the young man returned to the conference and shared that he had stayed up until 3:30 reading and processing the biblical truths he discovered in that online resource. With a big smile on his face, he declared that he just couldn’t get enough of God’s Word (1Peter 2:2). What spiritual hunger! That excited young man is a reminder to us of the wonder of the Bible and its heart-enriching truths. It’s all too easy for us to ignore God’s Book in a world filled with voices screaming for our attention. But only in the Bible can we find God’s wisdom for our struggles, God’s answers for our questions, and God’s truths for our understanding. These truths are worth hungering for. Bill Crowder Study the Bible to be wise; Believe it to be safe; Practice it to be holy. ILLUSTRATIONS OF BIBLE TRUTH by Harry A.