Today, we return to the epistle of 1 Peter where the Apostle Peter is giving us a blueprint on how to navigate through this life that presents us with many multifaceted trials. Essential are these trials because they aid at helping us to know God more intimately. We think that trials should not be a natural thing for us as Christians but they are musts in order for us to grow in our walk with the Lord. These trials serve to force us to seek with the Lord with all of our hearts, something we do not naturally do on our own.
In v.8 of today's passage we read, "Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy."
Part of our difficulty is that we think that if we are given enough tangible evidence of God's existence, we will believe in Him easier and more. The Apostle Peter saw the Lord Jesus with his own eyes, and yes, he believed in Him and loved Him. But, as the Lord Jesus told His disciples in John 20:29 before ascending into heaven, "Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed."
You and I believe in and grow in our love for the Lord Jesus, even though we do not seen Him with our eyes. In order to aid us in seeing Him with our hearts, God has given us His Holy Spirit who enables us to anticipate His involvement and purposes in our lives, especially through our trials. He has also given us His word which enables us to recognize His voice when He speaks to our hearts. Of course, we do not hear His voice audibly, our hearts hear Him when He speaks to us. And, the more we are in His word, the more modulated our hearts will be to His voice.
Biblical faith, which is a product of our response to God's faithfulness is becoming more convinced that God is in control and is rendering His will in our lives. There are no more dangerous people in the world than those who have no fear of the outcome! Because of this, we can realize and experience a radical, counter cultural life because we have courage in Him. When we leave everything in God's hands we will eventually see God's hands in everything.
Biblical faith, which is a product of our response to God's faithfulness is becoming more convinced that God is in control and is rendering His will in our lives. There are no more dangerous people in the world than those who have no fear of the outcome! Because of this, we can realize and experience a radical, counter cultural life because we have courage in Him. When we leave everything in God's hands we will eventually see God's hands in everything.
In the rest of this epistle, Peter unpacks what it means to live faithfully and courageously in this world. He tells us to be holy as God is holy. To be holy is not to be perfect in our behavior, it is to be perfect in our position in Christ which He earned for us. In Christ, we have arrived as perfect before the only One who matters, even when we have utterly blown it.
Sometimes we think the answer is to have enough of whatever this world offers us but Peter is saying there is nothing in this world that can compare with the greatness of knowing Christ. The surety of God's promises gives us an amazing contentment right now, because everything we will ever need or could ever need is ours in Christ. The key is that God defines us, and He uses discomfort to get us to this place. Our trials perform an integral part of our joy. When we experience trials, the good thing they do for us is to prove the genuineness of our faith and the development of our love for the Lord. The combination of these two: trust and love result further in His joy come to bear in our lives.
The word "joy" appears 158 times in the Bible, the word "rejoice" 199 times. Altogether words like "gladness," "joy," "joyful," "rejoicing," appear almost 500 times in the Bible. In Psalm 4 we read, "You have put gladness in my heart." In Psalm 37 we read, "Delight yourself in the Lord." In Psalm 5 we read, "Let all those rejoice who put their trust in you; let them ever shout for joy." In Psalm 32 we read, "Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous; and shout for joy, all you upright."
Then when we get to the New Testament, we read such a verse as: "Rejoice in the Lord." That imperative was written by the Apostle Paul when he was in a Roman prison. For him to be able to write that in those circumstances and give a command, that tells us that joy has little to do with what's going on around us and a lot to do with what's going on inside us. And the reason we are not more joyful is because we lack the ability to see the connection between our trials and our faith, love and joy in the Lord.
This inexpressible and glorious joy that Peter speaks of is the product of the trials doing the work in our souls they were intended by God to do. In fact, these trials deliver the very joy of the Lord into our existence, even when life seems to be falling apart all around us. This joy is so foreign to us that we find it difficult to gather words to describe it. And, it pronounces the very presence of God in our lives.
Horatio G. Spafford was a lawyer in Chicago in the late 1800's. It was he who wrote the hymn, "It Is Well With My Soul." Spafford wrote that hymn after his children died at sea. After their deaths, Spafford went to the very spot where their sea vessel went down and he wrote the oft treasured hymn. One of the verses reads, "Oh Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll; the trump shall resound, and the Lord will descend, even so, it is well with my soul."
These are the words of a man who had grown to love and trust the Lord Jesus. It is when we have developed trust and love in the Lord that we are positioned to experience His joy. Coming to the place of giving to God the control of our lives, frees us to move forward in our sanctification or as Peter puts it "the salvation of your souls."
The arena of our justification is our spirits which is where we are born again; having believed on the Lord Jesus as our savior, our spirits have been made alive to God. The battlefield where our sanctification takes place is in our souls. Sanctification is the changing of our minds, wills and emotions by the thoughts of God. Our sanctification leads us to the kind of life God is calling us to live for our benefit and the benefit of others. It is God's desire to use our lives in the process of others coming to know Him, and He rarely blesses us with only us in mind.
