Stay Focused on God's Purpose

The lesson title this week “Stay Focused on God’s Purposes” begs that we set a context of “God’s Purposes,” which needs to be narrowed down to what's relevant for this lesson. You might consider asking members to identify God’s purposes in 1 Peter 4:7-19 as you read the background passage. Have an assistant list these on a marker board as they are called out.

Richard Dodge, writing in the LifeWay Extra, offers a suggestion to open the lesson with a discussion of the meaning of “fan” which leads to the idea of “fanaticism”, but I don’t know if this is a good thing since Peter the apostle suggested that Christians should be zealots in doing good (1 Peter 3:13).