The text for this morning's sermon comes from 1st Peter, chapter 2,

verses 1 through 3.

It can be found on page 1, 139 of the Pew Bible.

1st Peter 2 verses 1 through 3.

Therefore, putting aside all malice and all guileial, and hypocrisy, and envy, and all slander, like newborn babes long for the

pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation if you have

tasted the kindness of the Lord. The text is so replete with prophetic words for Bethlehem, it's really hard for me yesterday

to know where to jump in.

And as I was praying, I just picked one that the Lord really pressed on my heart, and I want to go straight to it, and then, after I deal with it, briefly kind of step back and get the bigger picture in these

three verses and try to see it in its wider context and let some of the other words, perhaps

just have a brief exposure that the Lord might use them powerfully for us.

The one that came home to me, perhaps with greatest strength, I would put under the banner of spiritual fatalism, spiritual

fatalism. It's a deadly thing in the church. It's a tragic thing in the church. It's the belief or the feeling that you're stuck with the way you are.

Spiritual fatalism says,

this is all I'll ever experience of God,

where I am right now my Christian life.

This is the level of spiritual intensity that I have and I will never have anymore.

I see other people with strong desires I hear the way they pray I see the way they love their

devotions I watch their intensity of obedience I will never be like that. Why? Well just because. Just because, just because that's the

way I am. Spiritual fatalism.

It's the feeling that genetic forces,

families of origin, present circumstances are just too strong to allow me to ever become

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