“For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do-- living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you.”

Suffering can lead to repentance.  Sometimes suffering is a result of sin or misdeeds, but if we suffer as a Christian, it can also be a purifying experience. I am not saying, like some superstitious people, that we should hurt ourselves to pay for sin, but rather like Peter said in Chapter 1:6-7 “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith-- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire-- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”   

Suffering can purify us causing us to reflect on how we are living and what changes need to be made. The list here depicts the former life. Former friends do not understand. They might get angry that we won't join them in sin or party with them any longer. For many getting a high, getting drunk, having sex, and partying are the greatest pleasures. They don’t understand the joy of Jesus in a proper relationship lasts in the long run and into eternity.

Jesus preached in Matthew 24:36 "As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding in the hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. Therefore, keep watch because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. "           

The message of Noah's day is the same in Peter's day and is the same today. Peter uses the people of Noah's day to illustrate those who continue in their selfish, ego-pleasing, God-ignoring lives. Pleasure is for the here and now. Eating, drinking and making merry is more inviting than the warning to repent of sins. They had no idea how they would be judged by God.           

This is the message of Christ to you. If you continue to live in selfish, pleasure seeking, God ignoring lives; refuse to repent of your sin and seek forgiveness from Christ who died for your sin; then there will be judgment for the living and the dead.     

Application:   Examine your life, confessing areas that are of self.

Prayer:   Lord, I thank you that I can trust Your correcting hand on my life, bringing about sanctification of my life in You.