Day 8: 1 Peter 1: 3-6
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you,
5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.
This passage is a great reminder of what Jesus’ death and resurrection really means for us
We have been given new birth, we have been born again, the power of both sin and death have been broken. We are now children of God, co-heirs with Christ, forgiven, set free and will spend eternity with Jesus in Heaven.
Until we go to Heaven, we are shielded through faith by God’s power. This is not a shield from difficulties or pain or suffering but rather a shield of faith protecting our salvation from attacks by Satan, who comes to rob, kill and destroy and who seeks to deceive us in to fearing for the future so that we will stop putting our faith in Jesus.
The passage encourages us to “greatly rejoice” in our salvation and eternal destiny whatever our circumstances. The church was suffering “grief in all kinds of trials” yet Peter encourages the church not to look at their circumstances but instead to look up at God, remembering our salvation and eternal destiny are found by faith through Jesus’ death and resurrection.
As our nation goes through a period of suffering and grief, let’s make rejoicing a key characteristic of how we live our daily lives. Our life is in God’s hands and our eternal salvation is secure in Him so let’s praise Him and rejoice in Him. Let’s remember that the “Joy of the Lord is our strength”. Our faith filled rejoicing will sustain us through the hardest of trials and acts as a witness to the world around us of the power of Jesus to bring salvation.
Paul Thomson
Management Team