I want you to open up with me in 1 Peter, Chapter 2. We're going to start where we'll finish virtually, 1 Peter, Chapter 2. I want to just share with you just a couple of scriptures in the Bible that give a real insight to how Jesus handled issues, and when you look at Jesus' ministry, Jesus said this. He said I have come to give you life, and give it more abundantly, so when Jesus came, what He had in mind was that whatever kind of life you're living right now, there is another whole dimension coming, with access to the life of the spirit that you can enter into, that will lift you to a whole new dimension of how you live your life, and run your relationships, and what you do. There are dreams that God has, that when you become connected with Him, you become lifted up inside, and there's a desire to fulfil something you never thought you'd ever do before.
Some of you have got God dreams waiting to be hatched inside you, to be vocalised, birthed in prayer and then begin to be activated in your life. But the Bible says, Jesus come to give life, and give it more abundantly, so He didn't come to take stuff from us. He came to realign us with how we should live our life, so we can position ourself to come up to new levels. It's wonderful. I'd never be doing what I'm doing now. I actually remember saying as a 14 year old boy, I'll never sing in front of anyone, never. Well that was not God's plan, that was just a hurt, and an embarrassment, and shame, and a rejection thing talking, and I was saying words that would have sealed my fate. God gave me the grace to repent of the words and cancel them, and change and discover that there was more in me than I realised. There's more in you than you realise, but you've got to learn how to tap into God's life, the flow of the prophetic spirit, and begin to start to agree with the words of God. Always there's going to be other words that will come to try and knock you down, and that's what we want to do tonight, we want to speak to you about those words, how to deal with those words, and then after this we're going to start to be looking then at beginning to tap into the whole prophetic realm of getting words from God, agreeing with the words of God, begin to meditate in the words of God, speak the words of God, until our life begins to reflect and begins to start to articulate what God has to say about our life. See, there's what you see, and there's what God sees. What you see, well it's temporary, and it's subject to what you can't see, and so we need to begin to understand how the faith realm works.
So in the coming year we want to look at faith, and how faith operates, and how to position yourself in a relationship with God, and how to begin to speak God's word, so that you see things change around you. You're going to love that, but to do that, we have to shift in our heart, and abandon negative speaking. We have to actually let the Holy Ghost help us purify our heart, and our thought life, so that we begin to reflect and speak the way God speaks. You never find Jesus putting anyone down. He spoke the truth, and people didn't like it, but He never deliberately put anyone down. The devil is the one who puts down.
Let's have a look in the scripture here, 1 Peter, Chapter 2. I don't want to draw this out. I want to just give these points just quite simply and quickly. We're going to first of all look at how Jesus dealt with violence, verbal violence. Okay, we'll pick it up in Verse 21. Now for this were you called, because Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example we should follow His steps. He committed no sin, neither was any deceit in His mouth. So He didn't do anything wrong, and He didn't lie or use trickery or anything like that. Now notice this, it says when He was abused, He didn't abuse back. When He suffered, He didn't threaten. See, but what did He do? So you notice here, it's speaking of two things that Jesus experienced in His life in the earth. He experienced many things, but one of them was He was abused verbally. He was abused verbally. Many times when you look at Jesus' ministry, you find Him subject to verbal abuse, constant accusations, constant gossiping about Him, words spoken. The Bible says, they hated Him and wanted to kill Him, because they were envious of His success, so He experienced verbal abuse.