LifeLink Devotions

Wednesday, August 10, 2022

I am strange. I will give you a moment to recover. But here’s the best part. I want to be strange. Sometimes my strangeness is unintended. But there is one very specific area in which I work hard to be strange. The precedent for such behavior is set in Scripture by the Apostle Peter.

1 Peter 1:1  “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect, strangers in the world…”

I desire to be set apart from the world and considered strange to them. 

We who are followers of Christ should stand out in our world. We are to be strangers wherever we are, no matter how long we have been there. The only reason not to be a stranger is if we have already won our world to Jesus so that we are all known to God and thereby known to each other.

Strangers. None of us enjoys being one. Some of us have a head start because we are already strange. But in the opening sentence of his letter to the followers of Christ dispersed all over the world, Peter calls them strangers. Many of them were strangers because they had been forced to move to a different land. All of them were strangers because in Christ they did not identify with the world.

The love of the world will fail. The love of people will fail. No matter how familiar and friendly we become with them it will not last. Only the love of God will never fail, because God will not let us go. In Christ and by Christ we have been placed into the hand of God and He will never let us go.

When we come to Jesus for salvation, we become the friend of God. No longer are we strangers to Him. No longer are we on the outside longing for what only those on the inside can experience. In Christ we are included in the great company of faithful servants of God who have discovered the wonderful abundance of life found as God’s friend.

Never again will we be called a stranger to God. But as the friend of God we must be considered a stranger to the world. Much energy is wasted trying to be the friend of both.

As for me, I desire to be strange to the world, so that I might be strong for Jesus.

Pastor John