“who are protected by the power of God through faith for a
salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” (1 Peter 1:5, NASB95)
As I was sitting in an empty room at our home church thinking
about 1 Peter and a brief devotion I was to prepare to give Thursday night at
Trail Life USA meeting, my eyes were drawn up to a poster on the wall concerning
the attributes of God. Each of the fifteen attributes listed came with a very
brief description intended to help the children grasp each of them. Among the
attributes were eternal, immutable, omnipotent, omniscient, sovereign, and wise.
And with them were the descriptions….
Eternal – Always was and always will be.
Immutable – Will never change.
Omnipotent – All powerful to do whatever He wants.
Omniscient – Knows everything—past, present, future.
Sovereign – In complete control of everything; does all that
He pleases.
Wise – Does everything perfectly without mistakes.
In 1 Peter 1:5 we read that we are protected to receive our
eternal inheritance by the power of God. I am so thankful that it is not my
power or the power of anyone else that does this. Every created human being is
born and then dies. We are not eternal, and therefore any power that we have cannot
extend beyond the length of time that we have to wield it. We are not
immutable. We are born infants and grow to maturity. We learn, and then we even
forget. We are in a constant state of change. We are not all powerful. Our strength
and ability to do the things we desire to do is severely limited. I don’t’
think we have to dig too deep to figure this one out. We don’t know everything.
Though we may continue to grow in knowledge and understanding, we again are
limited in our ability to know. And, we are definitely limited in our ability
to see into that which we do know, leading only to cloudy speculation. We are
not sovereign. We are not in complete control. We cannot do everything that we
please, regardless of any intense desire or compulsion. We simply are not in
charge in the big “in charge” sense of things. And, we are not all-wise. We don’t
do everything perfectly. We make mistakes, and that’s just the way it is. We
are not God.
But God, He is all of these and so much more without any
limit. He is them infinitely, and when His Word tells us that we are kept by
His power it means that we are kept by a power that cannot be corrupted, eroded,
or changed. God made a decision to call us with perfect knowledge and according
to His infinitely wise plan. He will not change His mind, and we are securely
His, if….
The big “if” is, if we have been saved. We go on to read
that our response to God choosing us is to by faith believe that He will do exactly
what He said He would do. Faith is more than believing that a chair will hold
you when you sit in it. You may have thoroughly examined it, but until you plop
your fanny on it, the chair it will not hold you. Faith is a response of trust
based upon belief. And the belief we have is in the promises of the Word of our
God who cannot lie Who told us that if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ we
will be saved (Acts 16:31). And, the incredible thing is that even this ability
to believe or to have faith is itself a gift from God as we read in passages
like Ephesians 2:8-9. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that
not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no
one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8–9, NASB95)
We have been saved from the just penalty of our sin, which
is death, and we have been saved to life, which is eternally held for us by
God. Every day that we live in between that moment of salvation and the moment
we step into His eternal presence is continued proof of His ability to keep us
according to His power. Sure, we will continue to sin and we may rebel at
times, but we are to remember that we are kept not by our power to hold onto
Him, but by His power to keep us firmly in the center of His hand. As we walk, seeking
Him and growing in Him according to the power of His Spirit in us we are living
proofs of His work—His infinitely powerful and awesome work. We are even blessed
to have those moments where we get a glimpse into the glory that is to be
revealed to us in the last day as we see Him work in our lives and the lives of
those around us. We live with a certain hope because our God has made His
certain promise, and it is not in His character to change His mind or in His
ability to lose His grip. When Scripture says that we are kept, we can believe
that we are truly kept because we belong to Him based upon the salvation we
received as we responded to His choice and call on us by believing by faith.
The past few weeks have been very difficult, and I know of
many others who might echo this. Aside from the current political climate and
signs of social unrest, we all have things in our lives that can push us to the
brink and even give rise to thoughts of hopelessness. But we need to remember in
these tough times that God is faithful and He is in control. Knowing this makes
all the difference. He will bring us through on the other side, and He will do
it in such a way that He is glorified in the process.
Later in this letter Peter wrote, “After you
have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His
eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and
establish you.” (1 Peter 5:10, NASB95) And, the apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians,
“For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory
far beyond all comparison,” (2 Corinthians 4:17, NASB95) Our God is our refuge
and our strength in troubled times, and He is our hope for the future and all
that He has in between.
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