The Practical Pursuit of God’s Pleasure – Reward for Suffering Well

This week, we return to the pursuit of God’s will and His pleasure.

In recent weeks, this journey has taken us into the realm of suffering, where we have found that His will may well include undeserved suffering, and that He is pleased when we handle these experiences well. His pleasure is not sadistic, but is a Fatherly pride. When we behave this way, we look like one of His children – like His Son.

What are the defining characteristics of this likeness?  Well, when treated wrongly, we don’t retaliate, either in word or deed. Instead, we guard our words, speaking no evil and avoiding deceit; we turn away from evil and do good; we seek peace and pursue it.

Why?

So far, we have been given two strong motivations.

First, God called us so that He could bless us with things like life and good days. But those blessings are reserved for those who turn away from evil and do good, who seek peace and pursue it. Our own evil words and deeds cannot be justified in the name of retaliation. We must stand firm in righteous conduct if we want to experience these blessings from God.

A second motivations is the opportunities this kind of response creates to explain the hope that motivates us. Just as Christ’s unjust suffering brought us to God, so our unjust suffering can be instrumental in helping others learn of the hope available through Christ.

This summarizes Peter’s exhortation in 1 Peter 2:11-3:18. But he is not finished. There is one benefit remaining to be explored, perhaps the most significant of all – the benefit that will be ours when we move from the physical to the spiritual realm.

This is a major theme of 1 Peter, and he returns to it in 3:19-22 – a difficult passage. Read more

Waiting On God

Well, it’s 1:56 am on Tuesday morning and I have been working since before noon to get this week’s article out.

The words have come in spurts, sometimes after much struggle. And I have words on paper. Many words. But I am not sure they are God’s words.

As I was asking God to help me complete the article, the following passage came to mind -

“As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Whoever speaks, is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God; whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever.”

(1 Peter 4:10–11 NAS95)

Looking at the words I have written, I’m not sure they are the utterances of God. I’m not sure that God will be glorified in them. So, I am going to obey God’s prompting. Rather than following my first instinct and pressing on, I am going hang on to the words I have written until I can be sure they are His words, ready to be shared.

In the meantime, I sense He wants me to leave you with this passage and this thought -

How many of our struggles are the result of us doing “God’s work” independent of His provision?

A Pause In The Journey

 

As I begin this week’s article, I am traveling across the plains of New Mexico with the Wild Bunch, a group of guys who are a significant part of my journey. We are returning from a backpacking trip to the Pecos Wilderness in the mountains northeast of Santa Fe.

As I was anticipating this trip, I knew it would complicate my regular writing schedule. My original plan was to get this article written before I left, and was feeling some pressure around that. But then God reminded me that these articles are about sharing my journey, and that I shouldn’t get ahead of that journey.

So this week, we are going to take a detour from our ongoing discussion for a retreat into the wilderness with God.

Thanks for joining me.

This little expedition was intended to be a trial run for a longer, fast and light trip we were contemplating next summer. The plan was to attempt a 15 mile loop in a little more than three days. I knew that our goals were ambitious, especially since we would be setting out the first day, after having driven all night from sea-level to 8200 feet elevation. The combination of sleep deprivation and extreme elevation change would certainly stack the deck against us. But we wanted to get an idea of how our legs would respond to consecutive days on the trail under pack. Read more

The Practical Pursuit of God’s Pleasure – Benefits of Suffering Well

In our pursuit of knowing God’s will and enjoying His pleasure, we have discovered that undeserved suffering may be a part of His will for each of us, and that He is pleased when we handle these experiences well. His pleasure springs, not from the fact that we are suffering, but from the family resemblance that is evident in those times. Because when we behave this way, we look like His Son. Like one of His children.

This family trait is so significant that Peter devotes his entire first epistle to it.

Last week, we looked at a major portion of chapters 2 and 3 of that epistle. In 3:8, he summarizes everything back to 2:11 with the exhortation to “be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit, not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead.”

The reason? We were “called for the very purpose that [we] might inherit a blessing” (v.9). He expands on this by quoting a significant portion of Psalm 34 (vv. 12-16), which is also written to those facing affliction. Like 1 Peter, it accepts affliction as a normal part of life, and does not give a false hope that God will keep us from suffering, acknowledging that “Many are the afflictions of the righteous” (v. 19), but assures us that “the Lord delivers Him out of them all.”  Read more