The First Letter of Peter
In these months after Easter, as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, St Peter’s amazing letter helps us put that hope into practice. Written in challenging times, its life-giving wisdom is just as relevant today!
Tuesday 2nd June – 1 Peter 5:1-4 ‘True shepherds of the flock’
Serving in an ecumenical church I get called all kinds of things! Those from a Catholic or high church background will call me ‘Father’, Anglicans may call me Reverend, and those from an evangelical or Pentecostal background usually call me ‘Pastor’. I don’t really care, they’re all valid terms – but the last one is particularly important, as it means ‘Shepherd.’ But very few people are actual shepherds nowadays – what does it really mean? How do we make best use of it in a modern church?
‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.’ Probably the most famous verse of the bible – the beginning of Psalm 23 and David’s heartfelt description of his relationship with his Lord. And this iconic Psalm gives us a good guide to the role of a shepherd, in both a literal and a spiritual sense. The shepherd provides, protects, guides, nourishes and leads; ultimately the shepherd is simply there – always with his flock, seeking their flourishing.
All good stuff, and integral to how we might define a minister, even now. Today’s passage, however, takes our understanding of a true shepherd, a true pastor of God’s flock, a bit further; in verses 2-3, St Peter defines the work of a spiritual shepherd primarily in terms of character:
First, a shepherd leads out of desire, not duty: ‘not because you must, but because you are willing.’
Second, a shepherd seeks to give, not to get: ‘not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve.’
Third, a shepherd practises humility, not hubris: ‘not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.’
Our model, as always, is Jesus, whom Peter describes as the ‘Chief Shepherd’ (v4). In a sense, all church leaders are only Under-Shepherds, serving the Chief. And sadly, we all know of leaders who have fallen prey to any of these pitfalls: lifeless duty, or the temptations of wealth or pride. It takes discipline and resilience to keep eagerly choosing the path of humility and service. We can only do it in the strength of the Chief Shepherd, allowing His Spirit to keep transforming our hearts. We carry always before us the example of Christ, our inspiration and our challenge.
Today, let’s pray for our pastors/shepherds, that they might model this kind of life and ministry. May each of them daily remind themselves that, despite the cost, the prize is eternal: they will ‘receive the crown of glory that will never pass away.’ (v4) The Lord truly is their shepherd, too; they shall not want. Amen.
Monday 1st June – 1 Peter 4:12-19 ‘Committed to our faithful Creator’
Some years ago, I read an interview with a Chinese pastor, who described the challenges the underground church had suffered in his country. Towards the end of the interview, the interviewer assured him of the prayers of many Christians around the world that the persecution would end. The pastor was shocked. No, he said, don’t pray for it to end, for our suffering has caused the amazing growth you want to hear about today!
This kind of attitude may seem strange to our ears, and to many in the West, where we rarely have to face real persecution for our faith. But the attitude of this pastor echoes a strand of our discipleship which goes right back to the first church and its original leaders. After being flogged and ordered not to speak about Jesus, ‘the apostles left the Sanhedrin rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.’ (Acts 5:41)
St Peter, of course, was one of those apostles referred to in that verse, so as he writes this letter many years later, he knows exactly what he is talking about, when, in today’s passage, he draws together the strands of a theme which has occupied much of the letter: that of how we respond opposition to our faith – and especially the suffering we might experience for holding fast to what we believe and practise. Let’s clarify here that, in this case, the suffering to which St Peter is referring is not the general suffering of, say, illness or bereavement; rather, this is specifically what we experience as a direct result of our faith and witness.
As he summarises everything he has taught on this subject, he reminds his readers – and us – of two things: first, suffering is unsurprising (v12) – it is part and parcel of following Jesus. This is a sobering truth, but the second thing is its antidote: if suffering is unsurprising, suffering is also glory (v13). Jesus identifies most closely with those who suffer for his Name, and those who experience this kind of trial often testify to how close Jesus is to them, how often they see miraculous answers to prayer, how many ‘divine appointments’ they receive.
If these are the two realities of life as a follower of Jesus, there are also two practical bits of advice from someone who has ‘been there and done it’; bearing all this in mind, Peter draws this section of the letter to a close with two very simple principles which enable us to meet this kind of suffering head-on (v19): first, we ‘commit ourselves to our faith Creator.’ Ultimately, we can trust in the character of God: He made us, and He is faithful. He always has our best interests at heart.
Second, we ‘continue to do good.’ It may be hard when we face opposition for this, but, as Peter has said several times previously, we should keep doing it anyway, because we’re doing it for God, not for anyone else. As we begin our week, may the Lord grant us all grace to continue doing good, as a sign of our faithful commitment. And may we do so, trusting that ‘the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.’ Amen.
The Week After Pentecost 2026
Saturday 30th May – Acts 2:37-41 ‘In the name of Jesus’
The Sunday after Pentecost (in the traditional church calendar) is Trinity Sunday, a day when we celebrate the fact that the God we love and worship is one being with three natures: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. On this Sunday of the year we reflect on why this profound idea is such an amazing thing: it means we worship a uniquely 3-dimensional God, someone we can relate to in many deep ways – a magnificent monarch, a wise teacher and judge, an inspiring example, a comforting presence in our lives, a close friend. God is both up in heaven and in our hearts. If God had only one nature, think what we would lose!
Today though, we remind ourselves that there is a ‘way in’ to this extraordinary relationship. God is Christlike – and Jesus (the Son) is also the way to the Father and the Spirit. The Christian faith is ultimately a Christ-centred faith: we trust in, and follow, Jesus. And this idea runs throughout the last part of Peter’s sermon:
- We are forgiven in the name of Jesus (v38)
- We are baptised in the name of Jesus (v38)
- As a result, we receive the Holy Spirit (v38: noting it was Jesus who received the Spirit from the Father and pours it out on us – v33)
- Ultimately, we are called by God (v39) to believe in the promises fulfilled by Jesus.
It’s all in the name of Jesus. This is how we change our lives (the meaning of the word ‘repent’ – a word sadly obscured sometimes by too much religious baggage).
What always touches me when I read these amazing stories of the early church is how much Jesus is at the centre of everything – how much the apostles loved Jesus, and built everything they said and did around this love. Every time I read them, I think to myself: I want a bit of that! Maybe you do, too.
The good news is that this is not just a historical record. As Peter insists, this kind of life is available to everyone: us, our families, and even those who are far off. No-one is too young or too old, too good or too bad, too cynical or too gullible. Jesus is for all of us. And in his name we have forgiveness, a new life, and power by his Spirit to live that new life. May that new life be ours today, this week, and for eternity.
Friday 29th May – Acts 2:29-36 ‘God had promised’
Promises, promises. It’s something we all find ourselves doing, but fulfilling them is not always straightforward. During the covid pandemic, so many promises have had to be postponed or cancelled, through things outside our control. Is it better not to promise at all?
Interestingly, God doesn’t have an issue with making promises or vows. Jesus’ teaching on not swearing oaths in the Sermon on the Mount is more to do with abusing language to manipulate people than the idea that we shouldn’t make firm commitments. Indeed, our integrity should be such that a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is enough for people to know that we will do what we said we will do.
And God makes promises to us, too. Indeed at the heart of what we call ‘faith’ is that sense of trust that God will do what he said he will do. That God does wonderfully forgives us, fully and freely; that God does send us the Holy Spirit – what Peter indeed calls in this passage ‘the promised Holy Spirit’; that God will take us to enjoy eternal, abundant life in heaven. Faith rests on the promises of God.
And God also promised many centuries ago that a new anointed rescuer would come, a king to sit on David’s throne. ‘God had promised’ this to David – and it is now remarkably and perfectly fulfilled in Jesus.
The result of these promises: ‘God has made this Jesus…. Lord and Messiah.’ (v36) Our great rescuer and now the One we can worship and follow.
When life is tough it’s easy to get weary of commitments and promises. But a deeper truth is at work: a certain foundation on which our lives can rest. God’s promises never fail. He has not forgotten you. He still loves you. He is still with you. And you are still with him. Take a few moments today to call to mind some of the great promises of God. And may that lift your heart and soul in praise.
Thursday 28th May – Acts 2:22-28 ‘Death cannot keep its hold’
I spent time looking at my patio today. A strange thing to do, you might wonder. About 50 slabs of paving stone, grey and uniform. Pretty dull, I guess. But what I was really looking at were all the things pushing up between the cracks. Grasses, weeds, the occasional wild flower. Every few months we clear them – and they always just grow right back again.
For those of you who love order, it’s a mess – perhaps a headache you’re aware of in your own garden. But I like to look at it another way, and not just because I’m a lazy gardener. What I love about seeing all those plants pushing their way up and out into the fresh air is the sense of irrepressible life. However hard we try to destroy it, abundant life just keeps reappearing.
This has long been a passion of mine. Until we moved to MK, I’d lived virtually all of my life in urban areas, many of them on the rough and ready side. My world was concreted, bricked and paved. And yet, what was remarkable was how often life would push out through the cracks – up the side of a wall, through a crack in the pavement, peeping out through a fence. We usually dismiss them as weeds – but in the city, I used to call them beautiful. Signs of irrepressible life, no matter how hard we tried to stamp it out.
‘This is the testimony: God has given us life, and this life is in his Son.’ These words of St John remind us of a simple but profound truth. God is the author of life – and as people made in God’s image, we are made for life, too. Where God is, there is life.
So when God comes to earth, how does this play out? At one point, not as we expect: the author of life dies. Wrongly charged, corruptly convicted – innocent and betrayed, alone on a cross. But this could never be the end of the story. How can you destroy irrepressible life? Or as St Peter says in today’s reading: ‘But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.’ (v24)
The agony of death for Jesus was not so much the physical process of dying, but momentary separation from his Father. And yet it could only be temporary, because life cannot be held back forever. The resurrection reminds us that God has life within himself, and God’s purpose, not just for Jesus but for all of us, is life. Death is not the final answer – the ultimate destiny of all those who choose to live their lives in God is life.
May our prayer today be David’s cry of joy at the end of this passage: ‘You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence.’ And, perhaps, take a look at the weeds on your patio or your path and give thanks for irrepressible life! It’s what we were made for.
Wednesday 27th May – Acts 2:14-21 ‘On all people’
We all love a bit of ‘secret knowledge’. Access to information that others don’t have. A couple of years ago I watched a documentary about the group of spies who created the deceptions that allowed the Allies to carry out the D-Day landings. It was absolutely fascinating to see how this group of five (codenamed Treasure, Tricycle, Garbo, Brutus and Bronx; great names!) played on a very human trait – our shared love of insider knowledge – to achieve something remarkable.
For most of us, it’s not that glamorous. A bit of gossip here, a tip about a sale item there. Early in 2020, as the pandemic took hold, we swapped endless stories of which shops had anti-bac or toilet rolls. And in the religious life most cultures have always been drawn to the idea of special people, or secret wisdom. Call them seers, shamans or senseis, it’s thought that certain people have privileged access to the spiritual realm.
At one level, we can recognise the value of this: humans have always needed leaders, in the spiritual life as much as in other spheres. But – humans being what they are – this brings with it the risk of unhealthy control, manipulation or downright deceit. God is the Lord of the whole earth, and every human being is made in God’s image, we carry the divine imprint. Is it right in the spiritual life to grant privileged access only to some?
At Pentecost, amazingly, the answer is ‘not any more’. The great gift of the pouring out of God’s Spirit is not just the new power it brings, or the energy for mission, or the birth of God’s great community (the Church) – it is the possibility of direct access to the presence of God for all people. ‘In the last days,’ Joel prophesies on God’s behalf, ‘I will pour out my spirit on all people.’ (v17) Young and old, women and men.
God’s Spirit has always been at work in the world – but until Pentecost, it tended to be for particular people at particular times. But from now on, all of us can encounter the presence of God, can have Jesus dwell in us by his Spirit, can know the joy and intimacy of a real and close relationship with the Almighty Lord of all creation. Or to use St. Paul’s words 25 years later: ‘By the Spirit we cry “Abba, Father”.’ By God’s grace and the gift of his Spirit, we can all become children of God.
So today, give thanks that this gift is for you. Not just for the great and the good, for the specially chosen and those privileged with ‘secret access.’ The secrets of the kingdom of heaven are laid open to all! Ask God to draw close to you again, to fill your heart and to grant you the joy of sharing in this remarkable gift with hundreds of millions of people across the world. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Tuesday 26th May – Acts 2:1-13 ‘What does this mean?’
Many of you will be familiar with the scene at Pentecost. A group is gathered, praying, and suddenly the place is filled with wind and fire. On Pentecost Sunday we usually look at what it means for God’s Spirit to manifest as fire and wind – how we need the fire to ignite our passion for God and whatever God calls us to; how we need the wind to blow us to the places God wants to be and the people God wants us to love. And that is vital.
But let’s look today at the immediate aftermath. This dramatic experience was not for its own sake. It set about a chain of events. The outcome for the disciples is that many of them received the gift of new languages. The gift of tongues is usually understood now to relate primarily to a form of ‘heavenly language’, unintelligible to most people – and that is the most common form of the gift today. But here at the start these were actual languages. What the disciples spoke was understood by a large multi-lingual crowd who had gathered from across the known world to celebrate a big Jewish festival. No Google Translate in those days: God was equipping a group of largely ‘unschooled’ people (Acts 4:13) to do his work in a remarkable way.
The second link in the chain is perhaps not surprising: this large crowd was ‘utterly amazed’ (v7) to hear their own language being spoken. More than that, they were ‘perplexed’ (v12). It is almost inevitable that they ask the million-dollar question: ‘What does this mean?’
A lot is spoken – and mis-spoken – about spiritual gifts. Some make them a requirement of real faith, others a dangerous distraction. All I can say, from my own experience, is that such gifts are not faked, or forms of self-deception: they are absolutely real, and wonderful – but they also have a purpose. They are never given just to provide us with an ‘experience’. They are Jesus’ gifts – and as such, they are there to do Jesus’ work in the world. The exercise of such gifts in a Christlike way always prompts people to explore further: ‘What does this mean?’
Faith in Jesus is not just true, it’s real. And sometimes people need a divine prod to back up what we speak and how we live. Most of the most ‘noticeable’ gifts of the Spirit happen in the context of mission – in other words to demonstrate that Jesus is real, and exactly who he says he is…. just as we see here. This chain of events in today’s passage sets the scene for Peter’s great speech that comes next.
You may or may not have experienced this kind of thing. It doesn’t matter – there is no place either for pride or a false sense of inadequacy in the journey of faith. But perhaps we can all take a step today to pray for more of God, for openness to whatever gifts he may graciously want to give us – and for opportunities to meet those asking: ‘What does this mean?’ Our God is the same, yesterday, today and forever.
Monday 25th May – Acts 2:1-21 Introductory Reflection: ‘Weak made strong’
Pentecost, the pouring out of the Spirit in a new and glorious way: on all people, for all time.
There’s so much we could say about this wonderful passage. How the manifest presence of God came to Jesus’ friends in wind and fire. How it ignited mission, and fulfilled what we looked at yesterday, as the gospel could now reach ‘to the ends of the earth’. How it came at just the right moment, when multitudes of nations were gathered and could take this good news back to their homes and neighbourhoods. How it was mistaken for drunken behaviour and ridiculed, as sadly it sometimes still is today. How it represented a ‘new law’ for God’s people, which is what Pentecost had traditionally celebrated. How it brought Joel’s famous prophecy (day 17) to life….
And we can celebrate all of those things. But as we spend this week in Acts ch2, celebrating this world-changing moment, let’s begin by looking at what it meant for the disciples, and how that might speak to us. I’ve been reminded recently of something profound written about St. Peter by the great Christian writer, G.K. Chesterton (and please forgive the non-inclusive language, Chesterton was of his time):
“When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its cornerstone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob, a coward – in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it. All the empires and the kingdoms have failed, because of this inherent and continual weakness, that they were founded by strong men and upon strong men. But this one thing, the historic Christian Church, was founded on a weak man, and for that reason it is indestructible. For no chain is stronger than its weakest link.”
At the heart of our story today is Peter, who stands up before the crowds as a person transformed. Chesterton is right to note that Peter is essentially someone like us, and that this is why he proved such a great choice to lead in the upside-down kingdom of Jesus.
But this Peter has a new power inside him. He is no longer operating solely out of his human weakness, but in the power of Christ, which fills and equips Peter by His Spirit. Which means we can now look at Chesterton’s insight two ways: not just celebrating that God uses weak people (like us) to achieve His purposes. But also, since Christ indwells every Christian, then in fact every ‘weakest link’ is now far stronger than we could ever dare to imagine. Not our strength, but Jesus’.
Pentecost may have been a unique occasion, an unparalleled experience. But it speaks to a deeper truth for each of us: that the Spirit enables us to do things we could never have imagined possible. The Spirit is still enabling us today. What does – or might – that beautiful truth look like for you?
Ascension to Pentecost 2026: ‘Thy Kingdom Come’
Thy Kingdom Come is a global wave of prayer, which runs for 10 days from Ascension Day (Thursday 14th May) to Pentecost Sunday (24th May). This year’s reflections are largely based in St John’s First Letter (‘1 John’), and written by Rev. Bob Key. In particular, each day will give us the opportunity to pray for 5 people: to bring five people before God – friends, family, neighbours or colleagues who are not yet following the Lord Jesus. It is an encouragement to pray that the Holy Spirit will open their hearts and minds to God’s love, forgiveness, and peace.
We hope you will join us as we pray, ΄Come Holy Spirit.΄ And, if we can, let’s pray daily for our 5 people during this season.
Sunday 24th May, Pentecost – Acts 2:1-4 ‘The God of the whole world’
The wait was over. Pentecost had arrived but whatever they had expected this wasn’t it. Pentecost was originally a Harvest Festival. You can read about it in Exodus 23.
The Pentecost story is all about signs, and God uses the sign of the Harvest Festival to point to a new harvest: not of crops but of people. It is a theme that Jesus employed in the Gospels when He loved to use farming imagery. He so often used pictures people would understand to teach the truth of God’s love and the urgent need of a response of faith to the good news He was bringing.
There are three signs for Pentecost: wind, fire, and languages.
The wind blew the infant church out of its comfort zone and into the streets of Jerusalem. The picture of the dove as a sign of the Holy Spirit is only ever used of Jesus at His baptism. The sign of guiding the holy, obedient Son of God is a gentle dove of peace. The sign for moving the church, which is so often comfortable in committee rooms discussing things that don’t matter, is a powerful wind.
The fire speaks of holiness. It’s a sign of God’s holiness that goes all the way back to Moses and the burning bush. Fire to burn away past failures, resentments, sins, and fears. Living the Kingdom means a longing for the Spirit of God to make us more like Jesus, to enable us to the be the people we just can’t be in our own strength.
Languages. Most people in Jerusalem that day would have known enough Greek to get by, but it wasn’t their mother tongue … and that’s what the languages or ‘tongues’ of Pentecost are all about. God gave the whole world the right to hear the Gospel without having to learn another language or a whole load of theological shorthand. So often our language is aimed at insiders, those who are already members of the club. Jesus didn’t do that and Pentecost sends us to do the same.
Continue to pray that the precious people we have been carrying to Jesus in our prayers these last 11 days may respond to His great love and receive His new life. Pray that we may Live the Kingdom clearly and simply ‘So the world may believe.’ John 17:21.
Saturday 23rd May – 1 John 4:13 ‘The God who empowers’
I think of it as the Niagara effect. If you have ever been to a great waterfall like Niagara on the Canadian-American border, or the Victoria Falls on the Zambezi river, or even if you have just seen pictures, you can imagine the limitless flow of water. The quantity, the power, the glorious array of colours of the light on the water combine to give an awe-inspiring picture of the beauty of God’s creation.
Now join me in taking that picture one stage further. Imagine you have a cup or a glass at the bottom of the falls. It would enjoy a never-ending supply of thirst-quenching power-giving water. That’s the Niagara effect and that’s a picture of the Pentecost power of the Holy Spirit.
Pentecost, which we celebrate tomorrow, is the day when what Jesus calls ‘the gift my Father promised’ (Acts 14) arrives. The Holy Spirit blows the early Christians out of their comfort zone and into the world to share the Good News of Jesus Christ. They were filled with the fullness of the Holy Spirit, who came with great signs full of significance and power.
Luke tells us being filled with the Spirit was something that happened several times over as new opportunities for the Gospel opened up or new situations arose. The phrase St Paul uses to talk about that filling of the Spirit translates literally as ‘be being filled’ (Ephesians 5:18). This is a Greek present tense suggesting a continuous action. We are to go on and on being filled with the Spirit. It’s the Niagara effect. As the glasses of our lives are held under the limitless, dynamic, powerful provision of God the Holy Spirit, then there is enough to meet our every spiritual need. Perhaps even more importantly, there is overflow to show Christ’s love, grace, power and salvation to those around us.
That’s how St John structures today’s verses. The Spirit comes to the believer and the outcome is that we see and share that Jesus is the Saviour of the world. Christ in us and the Gospel in the world. That’s what tomorrow’s feast of Pentecost is all about.
We pray that the Holy Spirit of God will open and fill the lives of our five folk today.
We can’t ‘Live the Kingdom’ in our own strength. But, with the Niagara effect of the Holy Spirit, anything is possible.
Friday 22nd May – 1 John 2:6 ‘The God who challenges’
God, our loving Father, not only wants the best for us, He wants to enable the best in us. He longs that, in the life and power of the Holy Spirit, we live the most productive, most effective Christian lives we can.
Today’s verse from 1 John seems blunt and hard-hitting, but that doesn’t mean it’s negative. A football manager roaring encouragement to his team as they battle difficult opponents is trying to spur them on to success. That’s what is going on here. St John knows that as the Christians in the churches try to live for Jesus in a very difficult world, he needs to encourage them to remember whose team they are in. It is still true, in the twenty-first century world, that Christian faith does not set the moral guidelines in public life, business ethics, or the way in which governments operate. We need the same encouragement.
We are playing in Christ’s colours and the standards by which we live must be His and not those of the prevailing culture. St John’s words are powerfully relevant in our world where there are many forces seeking to air-brush Christian faith out of the public arena and to ridicule Christian moral standards as out of touch with modern thinking.
What St John calls for is straightforward Christian integrity. There is to be no place for saying one thing and doing another. Hypocrisy is a real problem for Christian evangelism. As we seek to share our faith with those who know us, it will not help if they know that Jesus’ pattern of care for others is not one we follow.
The word John uses means not just ‘walk’, but ‘walk about’. It could be used of the clothes you choose to put on in which to ‘walk about’. Paul uses the same word when he encourages us to ‘walk in the Spirit’ in Galatians 5.16. From John and Paul, the daily challenge is to walk about in the character of Christ produced not in our own strength but by the Pentecost power of the Holy Spirit.
As we pray for our five folk today, pray that the lives of the Christians they meet will be Christlike and attractive in the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit. Living the Kingdom means that we can’t be cardboard cut-outs: looking superficially Christian but with little inner depth and reality. God has given the world the right to look at us and see the character of Christ.
Thursday 21st May – 1 John 1:8-9 ‘The God who forgives’
Psychologists, authors, celebrities, and saints all encounter guilt and deal with it in different ways. Some people see guilt as something we learned in childhood. Others think it is a positive thing that stops mankind from doing worse things than we actually do. Yet others think of it as a negative emotion that stops us realising our full potential, even if our success is at the cost of derailing the lives of those around us.
St John is wonderfully simple, straightforward, realistic, and practical. He invites us to look in the mirror and admit the truth. We’re not perfect, none of us is; and if we think ‘sinner’ is just a term that applies to other people, then we are simply wrong!
Even in prisons there is often a grading of offenders so that non-violent criminals see themselves as better than violent ones. Violent criminals can think, ‘Well, at least I didn’t kill anyone.’
Inside or outside prison, it is so easy to make ourselves feel better by finding someone else on whom we can look down.
For St John there is a great sense of release in a correct diagnosis. Reading today’s verses is like going to the doctor and being told that there is bad news and good news. The bad news is that there is something seriously wrong. The good news is that there is a never-failing cure.
St Augustine said, ‘Repentant tears wash out the stain of guilt.’ We claim the peace, forgiveness and atonement of the Cross and the restoration and resurrection of Easter morning when we confess our sins and believe into Christ. That’s what we are praying for as we think of our five people today. Pray that the Holy Spirit will open their eyes not to negative guilt that leads to despair but to the hope and joy of forgiveness in Jesus.
Living the Kingdom, as those who know themselves as freely loved and forgiven by God, leaves no room for feelings of imagined superiority like those in the prison. There is nobody for whom Christ had to die more than He had to die for me. So, in the power of the Holy Spirit: humility replaces pride; responsibilities replace rights; and service takes the place of selfishness.
Wednesday 20th May – 1 John 4:11-12 ‘The God who understands’
The disciples were not a naturally cohesive group of people. Left to themselves they were unlikely to have chosen to set up business together or even share a holiday. Matthew was a tax collector working for the occupying Roman authorities. Simon the Zealot belonged to a group that opposed paying taxes to Caesar, some of whose members had been involved in a revolt.
James and John, partners in a family fishing business on Lake Galilee, were known as ‘sons of thunder’, probably because of their fiery tempers and desire for power. This same John who refers to himself as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’ in the Gospel that bears his name becomes the ‘apostle of love’ in this Letter. His life has been utterly transformed, his character turned inside out by his relationship with the Lord Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.
We see divisions all around us: gender, race, language, education, upbringing, nationality. Things that in themselves could contribute to the diversity of God’s creation become grounds for misunderstanding, strife, enmity, and even violence.
Our Heavenly Father, like a master artist, has a palette of rich and varied colours which are designed to paint a beautiful picture of His creation but which, in our sinfulness and selfishness, pride and fear, we fashion into an unholy mess. In this mess, so often, the poor pay the greatest price of our inability to be God’s reliable gardeners in His world.
John calls us, in today’s verse, to be defined by the love of God: not by anything else. St Paul puts it very plainly in Galatians 3:28: ‘There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’
Pray that your five may find their identity in who they are in Christ.
Living the kingdom must mean building churches and communities where ‘Love one another’ doesn’t mean merely liking people who are like us. We are called to something much more radical, much more attractive. We are designed to be a community of servants: serving and being served by each other across all the manmade barriers that so often divide and discriminate.
Tuesday 19th May – 1 John 3:1 ‘The God who gives and goes on giving’
St John has a ‘WOW!’ moment in today’s verse. It is encouraging that even the apostles sometimes struggle for words to express just how great God is. His love, His compassion, His glory, His understanding, His coming to us in the Lord Jesus Christ leave John almost lost for words. He finally settles on a way to sum up God’s giving in creation and His giving of Himself. The expression he uses means something like, ‘love from another world’.
Our human understanding can’t get our brains round it, but the wonderful thing is that we can know it, receive it, rest in it, enjoy it, and share it. Genesis tells us that mankind was made in God’s image. John is now telling us that we have, if we have believed in Christ, been born again as God’s children; and that truth simply blows his mind.
My own father died when I was five, so I have few memories of him. In photos, we look quite alike; but if I am ever tempted to doubt whose child I am I have only to open the filing cabinet and read my birth certificate. Today’s verse with its great, ‘And that is what we are!’ is the Christian’s birth certificate. Our assurance is based not in our own feelings, but in the effective word of God. No wonder the modern translation uses ‘lavish’ to describe the generous, costly, self-giving love of God.
Pray today that the five you are holding in your heart will receive and rest in the love of the Father, which constantly calls them home to become His children. Pray that they will find in Him the peace and place in His family for which we were created and redeemed.
Living the kingdom, living as sons and daughters of the king, means sharing that generosity. At the feeding of the 5,000 there were 12 baskets full of the leftovers. Jesus tells His disciples as He looks at the hungry crowds, ‘You give them something to eat.’ He still does. As we live out the generous overflowing love of the kingdom then the hungry will be fed, the lonely befriended, prisoners visited, and the poor understand the good news.
Monday 18th May – 1 John 4:9-11 ‘The God who saves’
Imagine you can’t swim. For some of us that may not be very difficult. Imagine you are in deep water, you can’t touch the bottom, you are exhausted, scared and beginning to panic. What do you need? Imagine somebody offers to read out the introductory lessons from ‘Teach yourself to swim’. Another friend offers to swim near you so that all you have to do is copy how they do it. Neither would be much help. You don’t need a book of instructions and ideals you can’t follow, and seeing someone else apparently doing it perfectly will not be any use either.
What you need is a lifeguard. You don’t need educating, you don’t need inspiring, you need rescuing.
St John is quite clear that this is the whole point. This is why God’s Son came into the world. The motive was love, the purpose was eternal life, and the means was the cross. For two thousand years Christians have found different ways to express what the Lord Jesus’ death on the cross means. Like facets of a diamond, the various ways of looking at God’s actions in making us right with Himself reflect a different colour of the spectrum of God’s love. In these verses, John uses language that would have been very familiar to his audience: the sacrifice. All the background of the Old Testament comes into focus. There, people offered sacrifices of animals to God in order to find forgiveness. They show that the sacrifice died so the worshipper lived.
The cross works, not because we can ever fully understand it or perfectly explain it, but because our holy and loving God says it does. The person in the sea doesn’t need to know the physics of swimming or where the lifeguard learned to swim, he just needs to trust himself to the rescuer. As St John puts it in his gospel, we need to believe into Jesus. We give up self-reliance or trying to be good enough for God and allow ourselves to be rescued.
The thief who turned to Jesus as he hung dying on a cross next to the cross of Jesus and simply said: ‘Lord, remember me’, didn’t know much theology but he knew his need. In response, Jesus promised him paradise.
Pray that your five will allow Christ to rescue them and find that peace that comes from knowing you’re safe in someone else’s arms. As we Live out the Kingdom, there can be nothing of imagining we are better than anyone else. Instead, our lives and our words are, as the great theologian Paul Tillich put it, ‘One beggar telling another beggar where to find food.’
Sunday 17th May – 1 John 4:9 ‘The God who shares’
‘You don’t know what it’s like!’ is a cry of despair, frustration and pain. When we feel misunderstood, when it seems that friends simply don’t ‘get’ the pressure we’re under, when we feel unjustly judged or criticised we want to yell: ‘Try walking in my shoes. Try living my life.’
As we think of God, who He is, especially His greatness, majesty, glory … all those great biblical words that emphasise the ‘Wow!’ factor of the creator of all things, it is easy to slip into thinking: ‘So what can He possibly understand of my life in 2026?’ Isn’t God a spectator, an observer, all-knowing perhaps, but far away and uninvolved?
In this letter, St John underlines the greatness and glory of the great creator. He stresses His triumphant relational love which drives the whole story of salvation. Now it gets even better. In today’s verse we are assured that this Lord is no distant disinterested onlooker but one who understands what it is like to live our life, because He Himself came in the Lord Jesus Christ. This coming into the world is the guarantee that God understands us through and through because He has shared our life and walked in our shoes.
The one without whom, as St John’s Gospel puts it, ‘nothing was made that has been made’ ( John 1.3), was content not only to be a carpenter in Nazareth and a member of a downtrodden race in an occupied country, but also a microscopic foetus in Mary’s womb.
As we pray for our five today, we pray that they may catch a glimpse of what theologians call the transcendence and immanence of God, His glory, and His closeness. Pray that they may find Him a friend who understands them, and a Lord who loves them.
This verse is a wonderful reminder that love is not just a feeling, but a decision of the will. It shows itself in positive action as we Live the Kingdom. We love the hungry with food, the lonely with companionship. We love those who don’t yet know Christ by living and speaking for Jesus with humility and integrity.
Saturday 16th May – 1 John 4:7-8 ‘The God who loves’
Life can be seen as a search for love. We long to give love and to receive it. The New Testament, written originally in Greek, uses different Greek words for love. They express the variety of ways in which we find and understand what it is to love and be loved.
In these verses just one word is used. The Greek word ‘agape’. John uses it six times in just two verses. This love is special, different. This love has the heart of God as its source, the cross of Christ as its sacrificial expression, and the power of the Holy Spirit to produce in Christians that same quality of selfless love.
This is the love of God, the Holy Trinity, which calls from us a response of love which only His grace and power can produce in us. This agape love expresses the heart of the God who is love. This is the love that Jesus demonstrated as being greater than any other love. That selfless love touches the lepers, embraces the outcast, welcomes those whom polite society condemned, and opens His arms on the cross to encircle the world.
John is not content merely to soak up that love from God. He does want his readers to rest in that love, and to find in it the assurance of sins forgiven and the powerful liberty of the Holy Spirit to set them free from slavery to selfishness and sin; but He looks for more. As Christians, we are to be channels of that love which comes from God and which so demonstrates His nature that John says ‘God is love.’
It is a tragedy when any congregation fails to demonstrate that divine love in its relationship with the Lord, with fellow Christians, or with the world Christ came to save. St Paul wrote, ‘The greatest of these is love’ (1 Corinthians 13), and in Revelation Jesus writes to the Church at Ephesus, ‘You have lost your first love’ (Revelation 2). Let’s take a look in the spiritual mirror of God’s word and ask Him to make our love complete.
As we pray for our five folk today, let us remember their need of love. Let’s bring their emotional and physical needs to God and pray that they may open up to His eternal love, His healing, life and light. Living the Kingdom today is obedience to a straightforward command from the Apostle: ‘Friends, let us love one another.’ It was the mark of the life of the early church that convinced others of the truth of the good news.
Friday 15th May – 1 John 1:1-2 ‘The God who is’
First things first! ‘In the beginning God’ are the first words of the Bible. ‘In the beginning was the Word’ starts St John’s Gospel. In the opening verses of his first letter John brings the two together. Eternal Life is God’s good news. It is the free gift of God: Father, Son, and, as John makes clear in this Letter, the Holy Spirit.
God is complete love. As Billy Graham, a well–known proclaimer of the Christian faith, put it: ‘God didn’t create mankind because He was lonely; but because He is love.’ God loves us and loves relationship. Creation is pictured in Genesis as God speaking.
He speaks and things happen. Universes expand, worlds take shape. Light, darkness, colour, and texture combine in the beautiful wonder of creation. Microorganisms too small to see, galaxies too vast to comprehend, all have their place in God’s plan. Scientific theories may help us with the how of creation, but the Bible tells us the who of it. God created the world. He created us.
As the lens of Genesis focuses in on one planet and one species, we see that God makes human beings in His image to love and be loved. We are made for relationships – not only with each other but also with God.
After relationship comes responsibility. We are to be responsible for the creation that God places in our care within the context of our relationship with God. God loves us and created us for deep communion with Him.
This is why, in the picture-book of Genesis, God comes looking for Man and Woman in the garden, ‘in the cool of the evening’ (Genesis 3.8). After all, that is the time of day when work is over and friends gather to share and to talk.
John doesn’t present God as an interesting ‘add-on’ to life for those who enjoy religion. God is God. The Great ‘I AM’ from the beginning (the title He used to introduce Himself to Moses in Exodus) to the end ( Jesus applies it to Himself in John 8.58). He is the one who made us, loves us, welcomes us home in Jesus and is there whether we like it or not, believe it or not, want Him or not. He is the God who IS.
Take time today to pray for five people you know and love to know God’s love for them. As you pray for them remember we are the pictures of Christ in the world; icons of His love in the way we care for creation and minister to the needs of those around us.
Thursday 14th May, Ascension Day – Acts 1:10-11 ‘The God who reigns’
Angels get some crazy lines in the Bible. Gabriel appears to the teenager Mary in her simple house in Palestine and says, ‘Fear not!’ The shepherds outside Bethlehem, a group not known for their religious devotion, are told there is good news of great joy for them. The Ascension story is the same. The angels (young men in white) ask the disciples: ‘Why are you standing here looking into the sky?’
Surely one of the Apostles must have thought: ‘Why do you think we are? Jesus has just gone there and in the last six weeks our world has been turned upside-down. We have watched Him die, met Him alive again, had a wonderful time with Him of forgiveness, renewal, and teaching. Now He isn’t here anymore.’
My sympathy is entirely with Peter, James, John, and the others.
The angels are quite clear. Jesus has gone and He has told the disciples what to do. They are to wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Then, in His power, go into the whole world, even those parts they didn’t know existed. They are to proclaim the good news of God’s saving love in Jesus Christ. They are to call people to repent and believe in the Saviour.
That was, is, and always will be the task the church has been given to do. That’s it, in all its biblical clarity and simplicity. The Lord who ascended to heaven and reigns in glory has given us one great commission. We are to show and tell the good news of Jesus. In the book of Acts, St Luke shows us that this wonderful good news is demonstrated in every healing, every sermon, every breaking down of cultural barriers, in the provision of food for the poor in Jerusalem, in Paul taking on the philosophers in Athens, and so much more.
As we journey from Ascension to Pentecost, we follow the example of the first disciples. They prayed as they had never prayed before (Acts 1:14) and they planned for mission. Praying for our five folk who are not yet following Jesus is one way of getting involved in what God, the God who reigns, is doing. Just as those first disciples in Acts, we are to be living out the Kingdom. Everything we say and do becomes part of the proclamation. We are to be God’s adverts, living icons of His love in the world.
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