Episode 1313: Fullness of Joy

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,313 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:07] Brian Steele: I'm Brian Steele, author of the Kingdom Field Guide, and I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world. How by using your time, your talent, and your treasure to live out your calling.

[00:00:25] Discovering how to seek first God's Kingdom is key, and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott Maderer.

[00:00:44] Scott Maderer: And out of that love we can be remade and we can stop feeling fear and hatred and feeling persecuted whether we are or whether we aren't. We don't have to feel that way. We can be saved to [00:01:00] live as Christ lived.

[00:01:05] Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, who will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your.

[00:01:27] So that you can impact the world.

[00:01:39] In today's spiritual foundation episode, I talk with you about one Peter chapter one, verses three through nine. I share how the joy comes even in the midst of troubles, and I also share how that doesn't come from fear and hate, but rather from. First Peter, chapter one verses three through nine. Blessed be the God and [00:02:00] Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[00:02:02] By his great mercy, he has given us a new birth into a living hope, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading kept in heaven for you who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last.

[00:02:21] In this, you rejoice even if now for a little while, you have had to suffer various trials so that the genuineness of your faith being more precious than gold, that though perishable is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him.

[00:02:45] And rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy for you are receiving the outcomes of your faith, the salvation of your souls. First Peter is maybe not a portion of the Bible or a [00:03:00] letter from the Bible that you read too often. It towards the end of the New Testament and just sits there out of the way, like maybe it, it's even wanting to be overlooked a little bit.

[00:03:13] At this point, if you think about it, Peter had been through the ringer and was probably a little skittish himself and this letter, maybe it's not really for us don't get me wrong, it is of course a, a useful and inspired by God sort of portion of the Bible, and it's useful for building up.

[00:03:34] But at this point, this letter is written when the church was under constant threat, when the benediction was spoken in a whisper because everyone knew when they gathered again, someone would likely be missing. They'd been caught up in the cleansing deportations and ims. You may hear now this feeling in certain countries where Christians are under that same sort of threat.

[00:03:58] You, you hear about the [00:04:00] threats in a place like America, but that threat is a very different one. It's not really one where we're caught up and deported or put together are imprisoned because of our. But at this time in this history the Christians were afraid of their neighbor, afraid that they might discover that they were practicing this minority religion, this suspected faith, and therefore their neighbors might turn them in to the authorities who were making the nation safe and purifying it of this.

[00:04:35] Pagan faith, they were looked at as sus with suspicion and looked in turn at their neighbors with suspicion. They didn't even feel safe in their own town, their own places of work. They would often act, in fact, as model citizens, they do the jobs that no one else would do. Christians were often the only ones who cared for the dead, who would [00:05:00] treat the body with respect for burial.

[00:05:03] And because of that was looked at as odd and icky and scary and different. So questions were being raised in the Christian communities of faith. Should we go underground? Should we hide or should we blend in and act like them? Would it be safer to pretend that we aren't saved by grace through faith?

[00:05:23] Should we act as though we weren't asked to pray for our enemies and pray for those who persecute us? Because after all, that's risky. And that's. Should our faith move inside, inside our heads and inside our hearts and become a personal faith that keeps us safe and warm where it really matters in inside our head, inside of our inner life, but we wouldn't have to show it externally.

[00:05:48] And this seems to be the question that is being answered in this letter. By Peter or whoever wrote it there, there is actually a debate about whether it was written by Peter. doesn't [00:06:00] sound right, it doesn't use the sort of vocabulary that Peter would probably use. The timing was wrong. At this point.

[00:06:06] He was being called Simon, not Peter. And all of that's probably true or very possibly true. But regardless it does sound like something Peter would do. I, if he didn't write it, then maybe he had spoken words like this and later they were written down and his name was put on it. And if he did write it, I'm sure he did it without a sense of irony.

[00:06:31] Here it is, this question, should we hide is being addressed and Peter is the one that's answering it. And who better than? If you go back to the Easter story, Peter professes his loyalty to Jesus with moral conviction, and then when things got heated, he ran away and denied his Christ. Peter, who claimed with loud protest this is it, and then claims to not know [00:07:00] Jesus whenever that moment comes and he's challenged.

[00:07:04] Peter's been. He understands this idea of saving your own skin. He understands the fear and how this can change our grasp on reality. And he's rather pragmatic at the end of the day, and Peter says, I've learned my lesson. We shouldn't stay safe and just do the safe thing, but Peter. Even in these opening verses is saying, our gift here is a new birth, a new chance, a new life based, not on our merits, not earned by what we do, but through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

[00:07:46] And because that gift is ours, nothing can diminish it, nothing can take it away. It is ours. As sure as the air that we breathe, assure as the light that we. It is ours. It is our hope. It is our gift, [00:08:00] it is our life, but it should affect the way we see ourselves and the way we see all of creation around us.

[00:08:08] And because of that, there's only one response and that's joy. Rejoice. Rejoice. That is the response to this understanding and that joy found an obedience in finding our place and finding our living joy. That is our relationship with our God and our creator. Therefore, my heart is glad and my soul rejoices.

[00:08:33] And at first thought, you think of course. There are times I feel that joy, I feel happiness. I feel. All of those things, when things are going well, it's easy to be content. It's easy to give up joy and say, thank you, God, for giving me these blessings. But Peter is saying, no. That's not what I'm talking about.

[00:08:52] I'm talking about rejoicing. Even in suffering, even when things aren't going well, [00:09:00] then too, you need to rejoice and that is not going to compute. But Peter says, here's the thing, even in that moment, you are alive, and your answer may be, yeah, and I'd like to stay that way, so I'm going to blend in.

[00:09:19] And he says no, not just living. You are alive. Which means that anything that happens to you is just a momentary blip in the larger picture of eternity. So those fears that you have, they don't really mean. Those things that are against you, they can't really diminish you. They can't break you.

[00:09:39] You're alive. You're alive because of love. And that's the truth. That's the love. The love starts with Christ. It starts with the one that Peter turned his back on, but even when Peter turned his back on Christ, Christ [00:10:00] didn't turn his back on. It comes from the love of one that loves so deeply you, that loves you no matter what.

[00:10:11] And out of that love we can be remade and we can stop feeling fear and hatred and feeling persecuted whether we are or whether we aren't. We don't have to feel that way. We can be saved to live as Christ lived. Thanks for listening.

[00:10:38] Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your. If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor. Go over to [00:11:00] facebook.com/inspired stewardship and like our Facebook page and market that you'd like to get notifications from us so that we can connect with you on Facebook and make sure that we're serving you to the best of our abilities with time and tips there.

[00:11:20] Until next time, invest your. Your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.