unthankful

Second Peter was written to a group of believers who had gone beyond the initial stages of a church. These believers were good people. Time had passed and in that time there came to be things that needed to be addressed. Peter was looking ahead to the literal last days and he saw things on the horizon that he felt were critical issues of the closing hours of time. Peter begins by stating his purpose to do everything he could to stir a people. The literal translation of the word in the original Greek was to wake up fully. He wanted to remind the people about the things that had come before by way of the prophets, and apostles and from Jesus Himself. In particular he says he wants to stir up their pure mind. In the Greek the word pure referred to something that had been sifted so thoroughly that there is nothing but pure grain left in the mix. Peter was not writing to a back slid people. He was not writing to a church that had turned away from the truth. Peter is writing to a people who have lived for God for a long time. They were the saved and sacrified. They were the best of the church. As pure as these people were, Peter understood that no man is beyond the danger of deception, disillusionment or corruption. Peter knew that the flesh is corrupt. Even those who are the most connected can become disconnected because their worship becomes a matter of habit. There are people who know more about church than anyone, but they cannot be stirred to move in their relationship with God. None of us are exempt from this danger. We must not get to the place where we act of of habit not out of heart in the kingdom of God. The familiar becomes a trap of complacency. We must guard against becoming complacent on our worship or our relationship with God. None are lost in an instant. It is a gradual progression of eroding. We need a stirring because we need to be reminded of what we already know lest those things slip away. We need to be stirred because we become cold without even knowing it. Not only do we need to be stirred to keep from getting cold, we need to be stirred because we forget. Time has a way of erasing memories. We must stir up those memories to keep them active. Time has a way of dulling the importance of things. We sometimes must be stirred to remind of of the importance of things. Peter knew that there were two dangers that he wanted to alert his people about. One was a doctrinal issue. Even in the early church, there was an effort to alter the truth about one God. The Romans believed in multiple Gods and persecuted the church because of their one God belief. The other issue was their lifestyle: The way that they lived and were viewed as a people. We must embrace our separation from the world more than at any other time. We must not allow our culture to cause us to embrace or allow to seep into our life, those things that God has declared as a abomination. We live in perilous times. In times like this, we must stir to our remembrance those things most of us know, but perhaps have fallen aside. We must be stirred.