In these challenging and uncertain days, God is calling His people to stand strong, grow in maturity, and thrive — not just survive. In this powerful sermon, I explore what it truly means to build Godly character that endures through perilous times.
We look at biblical principles from 2 Peter 1 for developing resilience, integrity, faith, and Christ-like character in an increasingly difficult world. Discover how the Holy Spirit equips us to shine as lights and remain anchored in God’s truth no matter what comes our way.
Full Transcript:
Well, if you’ve got your Bible with you, would you turn with me to the book of Second Peter, chapter 1. Second Peter 1 is where we’re going to start this morning.
I’ve been battling a bit of a cold the last few days. You can probably hear it in my voice. Yesterday, I was really struggling to even speak; every few minutes my nose was needing clearing. For goodness’ sake, you’d have thought it would just clear itself. But I said to the Lord last night, “There’s no devil that’s going to stop this voice from speaking today to bring the word of the Lord to the church here.” So, praise the Lord. I woke up this morning and the nose can breathe. This thing has been given its eviction notice. It’s on the way out, and yes, we’re going to return to full health in Jesus’ name.
Let’s open in a word of prayer.
Father God, we thank you for the precious gift that is the church. We thank you, Lord, for the precious gift that is every single one of us here, Lord, that makes up the body of this local expression of the church. And Father, we thank you, Lord, that we don’t just wander in the wilderness, but we have your word. We have your Holy Spirit to lead and to guide us and to show us the way. And so, Father, as I speak these words this morning, I pray, Lord Jesus, that the words that come from my lips would come directly from your throne room; that they would penetrate even the hardest of hearts here this morning; that not one person would leave here unchanged; that every single person would leave changed by the truth of your glory and to the glory of your name. We ask all this now in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So, 2 Peter chapter 1, and it says here:
“Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have attained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ: May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. For in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Therefore, I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able to at any time recall these things. For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when we received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the majestic glory, ‘This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased,’ we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all: that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
Amen. And may the Lord bless his word to us here this morning.
I’ve entitled today’s message, “Built to Thrive: Developing Godly Character for Perilous Times.” And I don’t think you need to really look far to see that we are living in extraordinarily perilous times.
If we look at the state of our own nation, yes, we had this wonderful victory there on Tuesday night in the Scottish Parliament over assisted suicide. And what a great turnaround—I call that a divine turnaround. The result at the previous stage of that bill was pretty much exactly the same in reverse of what it was at the final stage. Twelve MSPs switched their votes in order to vote against this bill that would have been dangerous. It would have seen some of the most vulnerable people got rid of in society just because they’re deemed worth less than others. What a sorry situation.
But as great a victory as that is, we cannot and we should not rest on our laurels because actually the fight is still going on. And they have already said that they will bring this thing back and we need to be advancing the positive case for life in advance rather than just constantly being on the back foot. We’re pretty good at standing up and saying, “This is terrible. This is terrible.” But the horse has bolted and he’s 500 yards down the road and we’re not going to catch him.
This was an opportunity given to us by God to stand up now for the truth and to stop these things from happening. But the question that I want to be asking right from the start is, are we going to be taking this opportunity?
Then, of course, on Wednesday, that great relief of Tuesday night was quickly snuffed out down in Westminster when the House of Lords voted to allow full-term abortion. Now, whatever your view on this situation, the Lord is the giver of life. Life is a gift from God, and life is a gift that is made by God. We are made in his image and therefore have unique value. It is not our place to be taking life at the beginning or end of life, and certainly not at full-term birth.
I think the vast majority of people—the polls suggest that only 1% of people in the whole country are in favour of this absolutely abhorrent situation—and yet what does our parliament do? They just go ahead and ram it through after only a couple of hours of debate. This is the situation that we are seeing. We are seeing these demonic spirits rising up within our parliament. But I believe this is judgment for a nation that has rejected God.
You see, it’s judgment for a nation that’s rejected God, but it’s not all over. There is still hope. Why? Well, we’re going to see that today.
We see the wider spiritual context of the nation. You only need to look out there today. We struggle to get into church today because people have prioritised running down the road rather than running to the church. What exactly are they running for? Who are they running towards? Just a bit of tape at the end. Yay, yippee, we completed a run. Well, you know, just come and run to the house of the Lord next time.
I think next time they do this, we might just take church outside and get them all to join in. Maybe that’s what we need to do because people sitting there, I could see them looking at me as I came in thinking, “You’re not dressed for running and you don’t look like a runner.” I could see the look on their face. I’ll tell you, I do run, but normally only to the buffet. It’s got to be for a good reason, right?
But in all seriousness, we look at the state of the nation, and that just is a great picture of where people’s priorities are. It is a great picture of the state of the nation—of the fact that it doesn’t even cross people’s minds that it’s Sunday morning and they should be in church, because they’ve so rejected God and they’ve gone so far away from God that it didn’t even come into any form of consideration in their lives.
And so we see that gradually over the course of time, our nation goes down and down and down. This nation is at the bottom of every league chart that it should be at the top of, and it’s at the top of every league chart it should be at the bottom of.
Right now there’s a military campaign to take out one of the most evil regimes in the world. And what’s our government doing? Sitting there idly by, just sitting. “We’ve got nothing to do with this.” And there are dark forces out there. This country that has stood for light and good and truth for so many years is just standing there and having votes to kill the unborn. We’re killing the unborn rather than killing the truly evil people. What on earth has gone on with our moral compass?
And then we look at that international context. What is going on? Even just a couple of days ago, now they’re saying that Iran has fired missiles that can go 4,000 km. That could reach us here. That’s the reality of the situation. We see rising prices. Petrol seems to have gone up another 10p just in the last couple of days. All this leads to great uncertainty. It leads to great turmoil. It leads to a lot of people being very worried and very concerned.
But there is a spiritual vacuum, and this is why we see these things rising. In this spiritual vacuum, the devil leaps into it. Because where the church has evacuated the public square and stopped preaching the truth and stopped proclaiming the truth, it creates an empty space and the devil just leaps into that. There is a need for bold, unashamed, uncompromising truth to be proclaimed into the chaos of confusion that we see in our society today.
And you might sit there and say, “So where is the church in all of this?” I wrote an article this week asking exactly that question. We’re meant to be the bride of Christ. We’re meant to be this prophetic voice speaking into the culture and shaping it. But what happens is we end up being in lockstep with the culture and end up being shaped by the world rather than shaping the world.
We’re meant to be the salt and light that preserves and exposes the darkness. Yet so often today the church is just simply an additive that blocks the light of Jesus.
And then even if you have good people in the church, we’ve got—so many weak leaders out there. So many weak leaders that are so compromised in their own lives, compromised in their own beliefs, that they stand in pulpits and they preach absolute heresy. They refuse, or they’re just complicit in silence by refusing to speak out on the key issues of our day.
Where has the church been on the issues of assisted suicide? Where has the church been on the issue of abortion? The reason why we could get so close to where we have got with these laws going through is because the church evacuated the public square. It’s because the church stopped speaking out on these things. It’s because the church stopped speaking the truth into these dark situations.
I can’t blame people out there that don’t know any better and they sit there and say, “Oh, well, isn’t it better that people are free from pain? Who would want people to be in pain?” Absolutely. But what happens when we place a greater emphasis on quality over value of life? Everything becomes subjective rather than objective. Everything becomes whatever the current circumstances are rather than there being an objective truth of life having an inherent and infinite value to it.
So many churches have prayer meetings that are totally empty. Statistically speaking, the smallest meeting that a church has is a prayer meeting. And yet there’s power in prayer when the church comes together.
Today, if you advertise a great worship night with a whole exciting band, you’ll get a couple hundred people there and it’ll all be very exciting. But the minute that you say we’re going to come together for 3 hours of prayer, you maybe get 10 or 15 people turn up.
What about Bible studies that so often just seem to focus on the scriptures that we already know and that we like, but don’t really actually challenge things? Cozy coffee mornings that are devoid of the gospel. Food banks that are great in and of themselves, but if they don’t present the gospel, they don’t present an opportunity for transformation. You’re just basically congratulating people in their misery.
Yet we’re meant to be salt and light. We’re meant to be presenting a better alternative. We’re meant to be leading people to Jesus, which will see transformation in their lives.
And so much of the church we see is going through good motions of doing some good stuff, but it lacks the power of the Holy Spirit. And so consequently, it lacks impact.
I watch a YouTube channel called Sailing Zatara. It’s about an American family that sold up the house and everything, bought a boat and went sailing around the world. A couple of years ago, there was an episode where one of the boys was on night watch and he fell asleep. During that night watch, the autopilot broke. If he had been awake, he would have noticed it and kept the boat on course. But because he was asleep, the boat spent 6 hours just going round and round in circles.
It’s much like parts of the church today. They were going through the motions. The boat’s not sinking. The church is not sinking. It looks outwardly like it’s doing some good stuff, some lovely things, but it’s just going round and round in circular motions. It’s not really going forward; it’s not really advancing.
There’s so much talk about revival in society today. It is exciting what we see going on, and we are on the cusp of things. We are very close to a major revival breaking out. And we’re seeing things happen even here at our church. But we won’t get there to the fullness of revival unless we really push in, unless we really press into the Lord. Unless we stop just carrying on going around in self-congratulatory circles, we won’t actually see this nation turned around.
I don’t want to settle for third or fourth best. I want us to go for the best. The state of the nation grieves the Lord, but the state of the church—which should be so much better—grieves him even more. And so we have got to get back to doing what we are called to do.
My whole calling and ministry is about being a watchman. It’s about discerning the signs and the seasons, speaking into the culture, providing clarity in the midst of chaos, and pointing the way to Jesus.
And I want to tell you this morning that as I step into this new role as assistant pastor, I pledge to you, Eastgate Church, that I will serve you the best I can by helping you to become that spotless bride of Christ that we are all called to be.
And we see this here in verse 1 of our reading. The fourth word in verse 1 says “servant.” Peter is a servant, and that’s who I am. I am a servant of God to this church.
So here’s my pledge to you today: I will not back down. I will not be quiet. I will not be cowed. I will not be silenced. Instead, I will speak loudly, boldly, unashamedly, and uncompromisingly the glorious truth of Jesus until every corner of the earth, until this whole nation is saved. My mission is to plunder hell and populate heaven. That is the sum total of the ministry.
And I’m going to do this all without compromise. I will do it without ceasing until I’m called home by God. Why? Because the world needs to hear and receive that clear moral and spiritual leadership today. Because the hour is late and the need is great. The world needs people who are prepared to come out from the crowd, prepared to put their hand up and say, “I don’t care if I’m the only one left standing. I’m still going to stand for my Lord and my God and my King and my Savior, Jesus Christ.” Amen.
So today, when we look at this passage, how can we develop godly character to stand firm in this hour? Not just coping or getting by, but thriving.
Well, we find some key character traits in this passage. We need to develop good character. We need to build up our strength in Jesus in order to get through these days. And if we do, then we’ll stand—having done all, as it says in Ephesians 6, still to be standing. But if we don’t, we’ll crumble and fall.
There are warnings here in this passage as well. You see, 1 Peter deals with persecution from outside the church coming in. 2 Peter addresses matters within the church itself. This first chapter is his urging to stimulate Christian growth. The second two chapters deal with false teaching within the church and urging the church to be watchful.
I looked up a definition of the word “character.” It says, “the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.” We will all have character shaped by something or someone. We need to choose wisely, therefore, who we listen to and who we’re influenced by.
If someone was to ask you today to describe your mental and moral qualities, I wonder: what would they say about you?
Too many in the church today have been subtly shaped by the dominant worldly spirits of our age, such as cultural Marxism and liberal ideology, which leads to liberal theology. Then they develop the outlook of these sorts of people, and it leads to these nonsense lines that we hear nowadays in certain sections of the church: “Jesus was a Palestinian refugee.” He wasn’t. He’s the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Don’t belittle him.
Or worse still, we get the endorsement of LGBTQIA++ and every other “ism” under the sun.
Being a Christian does not mean running with what is popular today in the world and tacking God onto the end of it in some vain exercise to be relevant, inclusive, or acceptable. It means reading the Bible and seeing what the consequences are for us and how we think and how we talk and how we act.
Christianity is relevant to the world today because it has the answers to every single problem that our world faces. It’s inclusive because the invitation that Jesus gives us is open to every single person. And it’s acceptable because we, through Jesus’s death and resurrection, don’t have to go through what he went through.
The world is a fallen place and you won’t find how to develop godly character from people who have rejected God. We must instead turn to Jesus and the Holy Spirit, who shapes and molds our character into what he intends us to be.
We were made to be perfect, made to inhabit and exhibit all godliness. But sin came in; it got in the way. It defiled us and it made a block between us and God. It made us into poor, wretched creatures. We were essentially becoming good-for-nothing social failures on a southbound train to nowhere.
And it pained God because, as his creation, we are the apple of his eye. We are created in his image as objects of worship unto him. Yet here we are, worshiping everything and everyone but God.
So God intervened through Jesus. His death and his resurrection opened up the potential to come back into right relationship with God again. We’re going to celebrate that again in just a couple of weeks’ time at Easter. But you can also celebrate that today; you don’t need to wait until Easter.
I remember when I was at university, I moved into this lovely flat in the West End of Glasgow. There was a letterbox on the front door that looked black. As we cleaned it, the paint started peeling off and we realised it was actually pure brass underneath. So we took the whole thing off, scrubbed it all down, polished it all up, and it looked amazing. We had this phrase: “We’re restoring it to its original condition.”
That’s what God is in the business of doing with us. He’s in the business of taking us, scrubbing off that muck and that yuck and that grime, and polishing us up to make us, from the inside out, what we were always intended to be before sin came in and defiled our character.
So our whole life now as followers of Jesus is about getting back to being restored to our original condition and intention.
And we see here in verse 3 that the Holy Spirit gives us everything that we need to lead and thrive in a godly life, for the Holy Spirit brings us to the knowledge of Jesus. There’s no secret to salvation; there’s no need for deep theological understanding, just a simple childlike faith in Jesus. It’s a heart thing, not a head thing.
Verse 4: Jesus provides us a way to escape the corruption of this present world. We end up operating in but not of the world. We are still human, but we have the Holy Spirit operating in and through us, which gives us access to the divine. It is therefore possible for us to live a holy and a righteous life now with the Holy Spirit’s help.
Then, in verses 5 to 7, we see these descriptions of what a godly character looks like. The first is faith—this is our starting basis. It moves on to virtue, meaning the excellence of God expressed in our actions. Knowledge: having a clear understanding of what we believe and know to be true. Self-control. Steadfastness (or patience). Godliness. Brotherly affection. And finally, love—sacrificial love.
The order here of these qualities is not an accident; one leads to another. It starts with faith and it ends with love—true love.
Verse 8 says that if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful. These qualities need to keep increasing; it’s a lifetime of transformation. We must develop all these character traits simultaneously throughout our lives.
Verse 9 says that if we lack this character, we become blind—nearsighted—so focused on the little things right in front that we miss the bigger picture, ultimately fall back into sin, and can even lose our salvation.
Verse 10 talks about how we avoid falling: we continually press into Jesus, being diligent in practicing these qualities as proof of our calling in Jesus.
The wonderful prize is the reward in verse 11: the reward of eternal life as a result of being changed from the inside out.
We need to be continually reminded of these things. That is our job as pastors: to teach the flock, to lead you into places of truth. My commitment to you is to teach you according to the truth as laid out in Scripture, not erring or compromising from it, not tacking my own things onto it, not bowing to the spirit of the age, but boldly proclaiming the pure and unadulterated gospel of Jesus Christ, regardless of the cost.
Then we see the pastoral responsibility to stir up the church. Our job as leaders is not to congratulate you in sin or endorse you in a life that’s leading you to a bad place, but to lovingly lead you into the truth.
Verse 16 is a bit of a swipe at other religions and false belief systems. Peter was an eyewitness to Jesus. This is not some kind of third-person account that’s been passed down through whispers. This is Peter’s own account of the man he knew, the man he walked with, the man he saw crucified, buried, raised, and ascending to heaven.
Only Jesus is the real deal. Jesus is the only way to the Father.
We are to be the carriers of Jesus until he returns. We are the lamp that shines in the darkness until the sun rises and the Son returns. We’re charged with the responsibility not to hide our lamp under a bushel, but to shine brightly.
Our character will always be shaped by someone or something. I ask you today: who will you allow your character to be shaped by? Will it be the YouTube algorithm? Or will it be the word of God?
We have this grace through Jesus to be saved. Justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. Grace is getting what you don’t deserve. Grace is the freedom from sin, not the freedom to sin.
It is time today to shun the ways of the world. It’s time to stop looking to the world for the answers. It’s time once again to be the true salt and light.
To thrive today, we need to develop godly character. We need to be equipped. We need to build up that good, strong, godly character. These are the character traits that I will seek to display to you in this role. But these are also the character traits for all of us as followers of Christ.
I’m not there yet; I’m the first person to put two hands up and say, “I’m not there yet.” But with God’s help, I will be.
If we ignore this, then ultimately we’ll just come to destruction. But if we seek after these character traits, then we will thrive.
And as the world around us becomes more perilous by the day, as the times become even more uncertain, let us be built up in godly character, standing firm and thriving both now and in the life to come.
Let’s pray.
Father, we thank you that you came in the form of your son Jesus to die for us so that we could be rescued from our own peril. And we thank you that you want to be involved in our lives every day and every minute of every day. Thank you that by the power of your Holy Spirit you come to be a part of our lives every day.
Lord, I pray that you would continue to shape and renew and transform us. Lord, I pray that you would help us to continue to develop these godly characters; that these traits would become part of our character that shines as light into dark places and exposes the darkness of this world. May people look at us and say, “What is it that they’ve got? I need that.”
Lord, I pray that you would help these words to dig down deep within us. I pray this day that you would come and fill us afresh with the power of your Holy Spirit. Lord, I pray that you would deal with the church in this hour and help us to be that spotless bride that you have called us to be.
Thank you that you’re not coming back for a compromised church, but you’re coming back for a glorious, spotless bride. We thank you for your word to us today. We ask that you’d bless it to us as we go from this place in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.
