(1 Peter 1:6-12)
September was a hot, dry month for us here where I live. Smarter people than me talked about record years, but all I know is that it hasn’t rained much. As the month neared its end and now that October is here, it’s time for the farmers to get to work.
Harvest time has arrived for tobacco. Although I don’t particularly like what the plant produces, it is beautiful to watch it grow. As the summer comes to an end, the leaves of the tobacco plants turn a beautiful lime green. All around the fields are full of row after row of lime green glory.
But drive by the next day and the fields tell a different story. Lime green stalks stand bare, stripped of all their leaves. Limp, ragged leaves lay strewn haphazardly across the road, having blown off the trailers hauling the tobacco harvest. The once beautiful fields now just look dusty and forlorn with rows of naked stalks.
As I view field after field whose grandeur has been wiped out, I wonder if I don’t look the same in affliction. Trials are real. They leave us stripped bare, limp and scattered, barely upright. I admit that given the choice, I would choose an easy, tension-free, peaceful to the point of boredom life. But Jesus promised trouble would inevitably come (Jn. 16:33).
Peter too recognizes God’s power to guard us (v. 5) does not shield us from all difficulty. Our lives and our circumstances are bound up in troubles and trials that grieve us (v. 6) and test our faith (v. 7). We are burned out and burned up, the flames licking our faith, warping it and scarring it as we walk through suffering of all kinds.
Yet the trials are not without purpose. God’s priority for us through the trials is to prove the genuineness of our faith (v. 7). I imagine this isn’t so much proving our faith to him, the one who knows everything about us, but proving our faith to ourselves. In the trials, our faith burrows deep as we struggle to determine if God is truly worthy. And we discover he is endlessly faithful, wholly able, always willing. Even in the wrestling with him, he proves our faith in him is never misplaced and will never be let down.
And when we have proven our faith genuine and at the revelation of Jesus Christ, God himself will praise, glorify and honor us for this tested and proven, but not perfect, faith (v. 7). I imagine approaching God to offer him my dinged, charred, warped, smudged faith, and receiving his joy that I used it long and well. Clinging to this faith through the turmoil says I believe it is worth it, I believe he is worth it. To survive with that faith intact at the very end, however mangled it may be by then, proves that I deemed it a treasure and a priority, and proves it is real and genuine because it was tested, tried, and used. This is the faith that lets loose God’s salvation in our lives (v. 9), since it is through faith we are saved (Eph. 2:8).
From the original sin of Adam and Eve, God has been plotting and moving and preparing this plan of salvation until finally ushering in Jesus to secure this for us through his death and resurrection. The prophets of the Old Testament wrote of it, searched for it, inquired God about it (v. 10-11), sought it desperately, and yet it wasn’t the time. Even the angels long to know this salvation, since salvation is for man and not angel (v. 12). God has come to rescue us from our sin, death, and ourselves, and we usher him in by faith. This extraordinary salvation is ours, our blessing and our privilege.
Knowing this salvation, what can we do but love the Father who gifts it (v. 8)? What can we do but rejoice with joy that our hope is secure (v. 8)? In knowing God and receiving his salvation, we are marked with love and joy, now and forever. Whether in trials or not, confident in the salvation we have now and the completed work of salvation that is to come, knowing our full inheritance awaits us, along with God’s own praise, glory and honor for our faith – in this we rejoice.
Father, the trials are real, the weight, suffering, indignity, and brokenness in them. But yet you are there, calling us to yourself and inviting us to experience more of who you are, the author and perfecter of our faith. Although we face trials, you have already obtained for us our greatest need, salvation, and secured our eternal future with you, that we may know you and enjoy you forever. What love, what goodness, what grace and mercy! How great you are, how good you are, how you love us. You are worthy of all the glory, all our praise and worship, all the honor, and even more, now and forever. Amen.
