Rise Daily: April 26

Rise Daily: April 26

THIS WEEK’S THEME & PASSAGE

A Movement – 1 Peter 2:4-12

This week’s sermon from the series “Where We are Going: The City and the Mission“

THIS WEEK’S MEMORY VERSE

Memorizing scripture is a way to keep God’s word close to our hearts. Each week we will select one verse of scripture to remember as a community.

1 Peter 2:9

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

THE WORD

Each day’s devotion will focus on one part of the week’s passage.

1 Peter 2:9 (same as this week’s memory verse)

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

MEDITATION ON THE WORD

In our busyness and distraction, it is easy to skim through our reading rather than taking it in. Yet we believe this is the inspired word of God. Take a moment to pause, thank God for the scriptures and ask him to speak to you through them today.

Before defining its mission to the world, Peter wants God’s people, the Church, to know something profound about who they are. They are a chosen people. His readers are not intended to rush past this fact in order to get on to what they are meant to be doing. They are chosen by God. What makes them so is a point that needs clarifying, because a choice always entails a purpose (chosen for what?) and some criteria (chosen why?).

In Ephesians 1:3-10, the apostle Paul explains the purpose. He tells us that the church is constituted of those God lovingly chose to be his adopted children as a primary part of his plan to bring everything that exists into a rightly ordered and flourishing relationship with himself. God is love (1 John 4:8), and in love, he creates a family.

The fact that they are adopted as God’s children tells us a great deal about why they are chosen. It seems trivial to say God is the ultimate parent, although he is, but what bearings do his perfections have upon the way he goes about choosing whom to adopt? Being perfect, God lacks nothing. There is no reason for God to adopt anyone except to lavish his love upon them.

The apostle John describes the church as “children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (1 John 1:13). John tells us that our union with God, including everything that follows from it, is not the fruit of anything that resides in a person, but is the work of God alone. He wills it to be, and anything he wills he has the power to bring about.

But one might still wonder if there is any prerequisite to being the object of God’s love, and whether if lacking in it, would one miss out? God says, “No. Not a thing”:

“The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers (Deuteronomy 7:6b-8a)

God is love, and there is no other explanation necessary for his loving us. The fact that he loves us is the fuel that propels his Church to love him in return, and to carry that love outward into the world.

THIS WEEK’S RISE REFLECTION

Far more than a campaign about money, this season is an invitation to be part of what we believe God longs to do in bringing flourishing to all–starting with you and stretching across the city. How will you answer this call?  Will you take this opportunity to invest yourself more meaningfully in this vision for gospel renewal for New York City?
“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” – Isaiah 6:8

TODAY’S PRAYER

For your Heart: Pray for your  heart and mind to expand in understanding your adoption into God’s family–not by your merit, just purely out of God’s love and grace.

For your Church: Pray that God’s love would fuel and propel his Church to love him in return, and to carry that love outward into our relationships with each other.

For our City: Pray for church plants, existing churches and sending churches all over our city to be healthy and flourishing communities.