IV.
Did you notice we are told to

“Rid ourselves … of … so that you may grow into salvation …”

As you spend time with this passage again, notice what we should “rid ourselves of …”

What clues does this passage give you as to how you should do that?

1 Peter 2:1-10 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)

Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in scripture:

“See, I am laying in Zion a stone,
       a cornerstone chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

This honor, then, is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,

“The stone that the builders rejected
       has become the very head of the corner,”

and

“A stone that makes them stumble
       and a rock that makes them fall.”

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Once you were not a people,
       but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
       but now you have received mercy.

VI.
I am not sure I find a “process” or “steps” we can use to free ourselves of unwanted behaviors and character traits, but I do notice some of the descriptors that should characterize who we are.

Let’s see – we are “chosen,” we “have received mercy,” we are “God’s own people,” and maybe we have “tasted” “the pure spiritual milk” that leads to acknowledgement “that the Lord is good.”

Do you find you are comfortable being spoken of in this way?

Does that begin to describe who you are? Or who you want to be?

Can you think of ways in which this “pure spiritual milk” has come to you?

charles
{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}