“Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body has finished with sin.” NIV

We saw yesterday that an attitude can be an armament. Peter is calling his readers to fortify themselves with a certain ‘’attitude’’ towards ‘’suffering’’. People who follow Christ, He who suffered so intensely to do away with sin, cannot expect to lie back in a warm bath of ease. Suffering is part of normal Christian experience. Christianity is ‘cruciform’ in shape.

But I have been struck by the idea that the principle of arming yourself with a certain attitude can be applied to other areas of discipleship. I believe C.S. Lewis furnishes an excellent example of this in his book ‘Mere Christianity’:

‘The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at your like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day…We can do it only for moments at first. But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our systems because now we are letting him work at the right part of us.’