Throughout my life, I have had an unspoken basic view of life –
I expect things to work out.
I expect the car tire not to get flat.
I expect the stain on my new shirt to wash out.
I expect my children to appreciate everything I do.
I expect my tummy to stay flat; my hair to stay blond; and my face to stay unwrinkled.
So as you can imagine, real life has been rather a shock to me.
And it has been a source of disappointment, discouragement, and grief.
But the word of God tells me something different.
I have been studying in 1 Peter and wanted to share some of what I found there.
And it casts a new perspective on my expectations and response to life.
1 Peter 1:6 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. NIV
I saw several points in this verse.
1. Contrary to my inborn ideas, we will go through trials. It isn’t the un-usual but instead the usual. In fact, 1 Peter 4:12 says that we should not even be surprised that hard times happen. Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. So I need to be prepared knowing that it will be coming. And rather than protecting me from hardships, the context of 1 Peter tells me that if I am standing for and walking with Christ, more rather than fewer trials and adversities will happen.
2. Although most difficulties seem to me to last a long time – much longer than we would choose, Peter says something different. He says they only last a “little while”. The Greek word means brief, quickly over. 2 Cor 4:17 calls them “instantaneous and light and easy to bear.”
3. We should “greatly rejoice” about these trials. That word doesn’t mean to smile a little and bear it. It is an over the top word. It means literally to jump, skip, and leap for joy. It a word that is used for someone so ecstatic that they are singing and dancing for delight.
4. And it won’t just be one problem but “all kinds of trials”. Those words mean many variations and actually multi-colored – our troubles in this life will have every sort of color, hue, shade, tint, darkness, and variation to them.
So, if this is what the verse means? How can I LIVE like this? How can I adjust to this way of viewing things?
Let’s talk about that tomorrow.
[...] our last blog, we discussed what the verses [...]