Walk Thru the Life of Peter: Growing Bold Faith...Continued from page 1

His second epistle was a warning against heresy, and it contains harsh words about the false teachers who infiltrate God's people and lead them astray. While the first letter addresses the external battles we face, the second addresses the internal battles of the mind—specifically the battle against diverting our attention from the one true God and the gospel he gave us. It's a war cry against the lies we believe. 

The words of these letters are profound in any season of life, but during an intense crisis, they are life-giving truths. We hang on to them because we have to—and because God wants to fill us with light even in dark moments. And, according to Peter, there's even a hidden benefit in a believer's suffering: it refines faith and proves its authenticity. Pretenders and compromisers don't bear up under persecution and deception. True believers do. Those who count the cost and follow Jesus anyway can know that they are truly his friends. 

Peter would live up to his own words. He held fast to the truth. Around ad 64 or 65, he was executed for his faith in Jesus, and he made a major statement when he was. Feeling unworthy to die in the same manner as his Lord, tradition has it that he asked to be crucified upside down. The one who emphasized peace during persecution and hope in the worst of circumstances embraced the truth he wrote about and embraced an eternal perspective. 

That's our calling too. When life gets intense, when the pressure builds to unbearable extremes, we are told to embrace the inheritance that can never perish, to set our hope fully on the grace given when Jesus is revealed, and to remember that we are born of imperishable seed. In other words, a Christian focused on his or her true identity and on God's truth will be indestructible—maybe not as the world defines "indestructible," but certainly as God defines it. In a crisis, whatever form it takes, there's no truth more reassuring than that. 

Adapted from A Walk Thru the Life of Peter: Growing Bold Faith, a small group study guide from Walk Thru the Bible and Baker Books. This small group study and others can be found at www.walkthruguides.org.