Prepared Devo
Daily Reading: (1 Peter 1:13): “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
How do we become prepared and what is the outcome of a heart that is prepared? The word “prepare” is found 159 times in the Old and New Testament. There are so many verses that show the importance of this word. When it comes to preparedness let’s read the words written from a man who doesn’t want to wait for Jesus to get to the boat, he wants to walk on water to Him. A man who was ready to fight when the guards came to arrest Jesus. The disciple whose strength at times was also his weakness, in that h was the same one who denied Jesus three times and fled, but also was the first to preach after being filled with the Holy Spirit and three thousand people were added to the church. Now that Peter is Spirit-filled he writes the following: 1 Peter 1:13 “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
“Preparing your minds for action” a literal translation is having girded up the loins of your mind. It’s an image of a person wearing flowing garments who will tuck those garments into his belt so that he can run and move about freely and quickly without tripping over his clothes. Girding the mind is a means to hoping fully in grace. What is the mind to be doing so actively that it produces hope? The answer is truth. Hope happens when our minds are girded up with truth, and active in truth. We discover this from the next verse. “Do not be conformed to your former lusts which were yours in ignorance.” The reason we were once led along by all kinds of lusts instead of being led by hope in grace is because our minds were “in ignorance.” So if we want hope to flourish in our hearts, we must gird up the loins of our minds with truth instead of ignorance. Girding up the mind in truth and letting it be active in truth is the means of sustaining full hope in God’s grace.
Peter tells us what the object of the hope is the grace of God which is Jesus Christ.John 1:14: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only Begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.”God’s delight is not what you can perform for Him with your strength; His delight is that you hope in what He can perform for you with His strength. 1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.” “Hope fully”. Give way entirely to the experience of hope. Be fully carried away with hope. If you hold back hope from grace, you hold back glory from grace. Show the world that grace is all-satisfying. It will meet your every need.“What does it mean to be ready to make a case for your hope from 1 Peter 3:15? We gain insight into the answer when we go to the words of Jesus who taught this very same thing to His disciple Peter who wrote these words. In the last week of Jesus’ life, Jesus warned His disciples, in Luke 21:12, that unbelievers would persecute them and hand them over to prison and bring them before kings and governors. Then He says, “This will be a time for you to bear testimony. Settle it therefore in your hearts not to meditate beforehand on how to make your case. For I will give you a mouth and wisdom which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict” (Luke 21:14). Now at first, it sounds as if Peter forgot what Jesus taught him.
Peter: “Always be ready to make a case for your hope”(1 Peter 3:15). Jesus: “Don’t meditate beforehand on how to make a case for your hope”(Luke 21:12-14).
This makes the question all the more crucial. How are we to get ready and stay ready to make a case for our hope? The clue is found in 1 Peter 3:15 in the relationship between the phrase “be ready” and what comes just before it in the text. Literally, there is no verb in the phrase “be ready” or “be prepared.” You can see that in the King James Version and the New American Standard Bible because the word “be” or “being” is in italics. So literally Peter said, “Reverence the Lord Christ in your hearts, (and in that way) you will always be ready to make a case for your hope.” How shall you not fear when the path of righteousness seems to lead to scary places? Answer: Reverence the Lord Christ in your heart, and your fear will be replaced with hope. How shall you always be ready to make a case for your hope? Answer: Reverence the Lord Christ in your heart, and you will always have a reason to give for why you are hopeful.
This is Such Good News Why Don’t More Spread the Good Word? The reason why so many believers don’t testify about the reality of the hope they have in Christ is that they don’t feel very hopeful. And if our hearts are not full of hope in the promises of Christ, then when an occasion arrives to make a case for our hope, we won’t because we don’t hope anchored in Christ.
What this means, then, just as the text says, is that the way to get ready to make a case for your hope is to get hopeful (1 Peter 3:15). When we spend time with our Savior, we leave with a renewed and lively hope in God’s promises, and we will be ready to make a case for our hope.
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