Welcome back my friends. I am glad you were joining me today for the morning mindset.

You and I have a job to do right now in the next four to five minutes and that is the job of getting our minds

ready for the battle that will face us today. As we've been reading first Peter, he's

made it very clear that we face a kind of warfare every day.

And it's not a warfare against those people out there or the world around us.

It's a warfare against our own desires that come up that are

prompted by our flesh. Desires to go contrary to the way God wants us to live in the world.

That's our warfare and that is our opportunity right now to get our minds

aligned with God's truth and with God's way of thinking so that we can be successful in that

battle.

We've been looking at 1st Peter chapter 2 and we read a section yesterday where Peter instructed us to be submitted to every human institution,

governments, leaders in our community, those kinds of things.

And he's not necessarily saying we have to agree with everything that they say,

or even with the laws that they pass.

The reason I can say that with such confidence is because

Peter himself lived in a culture where there were many gods and Peter was

encouraging and teaching that people should worship only one God, the true God who sent his son Jesus Christ.

So Peter was not submitting himself to the ideas and the practices of the culture.

But in his action toward the government, toward those in authority, he did not rebel.

He did not stand up and lead a military battle. He did not lead some political rally.

Peter was saying the battle we fight is not against our culture to transform it. The battle we fight is against our own

sinful bent and when we do that successfully we'll be able to draw others to the change that God is making in our lives.

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