Use these for group work, or to assist your personal reflection.

1. Does this passage of scripture help you understand your own baptism? If so, how?
2. What is truth? In the light of this study, see if you can answer this famous question posed by Pilate (John 18:38)
3. Discuss what you mean by the phrase the ‘Word of God’, and what does this phrase say about Jesus?

Use the programme which can be found on the link ‘discipleship challenges’. The ‘worksheet’ will help you follow through anything you feel is right to take up. The following notes are for your interest and consideration.

Personal comment: As one who is a preacher myself, I can almost hear the preacher coming out in Peter’s words here! Yet these words seem to have a power which rises above the setting for which they were originally planned, and they raise the spirits of those of us who read them so many years later. I find these words to be a real inspiration for study and prayer.

Ideas for discipleship programme

• Read through the quote in verse 24 and 25 from Isaiah. Learn this and recall it from time to time during your day or during the week ahead. You will find that this verse will speak to you more and more as you use it.
• Try to find out what your church’s policy is on baptism. Measure it against what is said here in this text and what other great passages of scripture say about baptism (e.g. Romans 6) say.

When our time comes to stand up and do Your will, may we not be found wanting. Give us courage, Lord God, when we hear Your voice, to act; and when we sense Your call, to follow. This we pray through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN