We want to possess everything that God has set before us. To that end, let us revive our hopes and visions and dreams. Let us leave our foxholes of passivity and charge over the top!
In his first Epistle, Peter tells us how we can do this. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (this is where it starts: we must be born again to a living hope), to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.
The ultimate goal is not just to be born again to a hope, but to possess what we are hoping for. This inheritance will be ours, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. I Peter 1:3–5.
The end of this age is seeing great deliverances wrought in the earth. In the meantime, God is helping us until we really inherit all that is reserved for us. We are being protected by the power of God. We may be facing difficulties and problems, but we are not becoming casualties.
Like Paul, we are persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. We are carrying about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ, but the life of Christ is also being manifested in us (II Corinthians 4:9–10). Some days do you feel as if you are only hanging on by a thread? Then remember that an inheritance is being reserved for us, and God is protecting us until we receive it.
The Lord is giving us a measure of protection until our inheritance comes forth. We are believing God for more faith. In the meantime, we already have faith that we will have more faith. We begin with faith to receive more faith. We keep reaching for it, knowing that it will explode into something that will not be short of our expectation. Rather, it will exceed our expectation.
In the meantime, we do not say that we have all we are hoping for, but we know that we are being protected until we can get hold of it all. We are being protected in the battle so that we will not become casualties. We are drawing grace until we move into the great manifestation of grace at the revelation of the Lord.
In this you greatly rejoice. I Peter 1:6a. We are rejoicing that salvation is ready to be revealed in the last time (verse 5). The Lord has it all ready for us. The Lord has our deliverance already gift-wrapped. In fact, He has had it prepared that way from before the foundation of the world. Now He is protecting us until that moment when we reach in to possess it fully. A salvation is ready to be revealed. It is already gift-wrapped for us.
GREAT THINGS ABOUT TO HAPPEN
1 Peter 1:6 In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials.
God has a way of accomplishing His purposes through our trials. The Bible story shows that all of life seems to follow that pattern. While a baby is in the womb, the mother is usually without much pain. But when that baby is being delivered so that he can live as a separate individual apart from his mother, then the mother experiences pain. Everything in her body is disrupted and changed. A woman’s body changes completely at the moment that she brings forth a child.
Great things will be happening to us, but the process of getting into them will follow a pattern similar to that of a child being born. We want to move into the new dimension of life, but first we must be prepared for that new realm. Therefore, for a little while, we are distressed by various trials, in order that we have the faith and the working of God within us.
We have experienced this process from the beginning of this restoration walk. Whenever the Lord prophesies a ministry or gifts of the Spirit over an individual, they are immediately thrown into testing’s and trials under the hand and dealings of God.
Romans 12:3 tells us that God gives to everyone a measure of faith, but that amount of faith is not enough. When God gives faith to a a person, He tests that faith so that it will expand, or you appropriate more faith to meet the situation.
The growth of faith depends upon your initiative. As God orders your steps, your faith is tested by circumstances in your life. Your reaction to those testing’s will lead to one of two courses: You will either abandon faith, or else that faith will become great enough to meet the situation of testing and bring you into what God has intended and willed for you.
When the two blind men came to Jesus asking for healing, He told them, “According to your faith be it done unto you” (Matthew 9:29). There are other accounts of healings in Matthew, in which Jesus said that it was faith which brought about the healing (Matthew 8:10; 9:2, 22; 15:28). All the provision is there! It is gift-wrapped, ready to be delivered from heaven. All you do is believe! No doubt you will be tested to see whether you will settle for something less, or whether you will believe and contend for everything that your faith first embraced.
Determine that at no time will you settle for anything less than what God has set before you. When your faith is tested, do not compromise by accepting a partial deliverance or a lesser victory. It is time that we all walk in an absolute declaration of our faith!
The various trials come so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. I Peter 1:7.
Verse 5 speaks about salvation “revealed at the last time,” and verse 7 speaks of the “revelation of Jesus Christ,” because this end time is to see the culminating point of fulfillment.
We have believed this for years, but now we may find it easy to draw back and say, “Let’s postpone it for another five years. Then we do not have to worry about believing for it now.” We must believe that this is the critical hour in the history of the world when the great fulfillment, the great manifestation, the great breakthrough comes.
Our faith has a responsibility. We must walk up to the threshold of this present moment and start loosing things and claiming them in the name of the Lord. Satan would like to bring delays if he can, and often he has done so. The prophecy of Jeremiah stated that there would be seventy years of captivity. When more than seventy years had passed, Daniel prayed about it (Daniel 9). Gabriel came to bring an answer, but the prince of the power of Persia prevented him. Then Michael came and together they broke through (Daniel 10:13). God told Abraham that his seed would live in Egypt for 400 years (Genesis 15:13); but Exodus tells us that the Israelites went out of Egypt at the end of 430 years, to the very day (Exodus 12:40–41). Have you ever wondered why they had to stay that extra thirty years? Perhaps their faith was not vehement enough nor their prayers insistent enough for deliverance. Maybe Moses lingered in the desert too long, trying to find out what God looked like or running from God. Do you think the Israelites could have been delivered from Egypt thirty years sooner?
How many years have we lost? We are trying not to lose any time. We are trying to press in; we are interceding. Do you ever feel, “There are prophecies over me, and how constrained I am in my spirit to get them into motion, to find myself flowing in the perfect will of God! How I would like to break into a deep worship, into the greater works (John 14:12) that will bring glory to God in the earth. How I yearn to see the Kingdom come. We know it is time. It is the time for it to happen!” The great fulfillment will come in the praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Verse 8: And though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory. The greatest testing of faith comes when you cannot see the Lord or even His handiwork in your situation. Then it is easy to become discouraged and depressed. You fight the principality that brings a feeling of depression. When you wake up in the morning, you may already be wondering what you have done wrong; and before long, you find yourself in a state of self-condemnation and depression. Whenever that happens, determine somehow to break through to the joy inexpressible and full of glory. That is what God wants for you. Your joy, however, will not be caused by the fact that everything is working out for you. You will be joyful because you have faith. Even though you may not see God’s hand in your testing, believe in Him anyway, and greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.
What will be the result? You will break through to the deliverance that God has for you. You will obtain as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. I Peter 1:9. The joy inexpressible and full of glory leads to the soul’s deliverance. All of your emotions are in your soul. You must reach the place where you do not react and respond to your circumstances through your emotions; instead, you rejoice in the Lord with great joy because you believe Him, even though you may not understand what He is doing. Then you will attain the purification of your soul. After that, nothing will ever move you again.
I Peter 1:10–12: As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful search and inquiry, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—things into which angels long to look.
This passage indicates that the Bible was written primarily for the saints in the end time. We are the ones for whom it was written! The prophets in Bible times were not prophesying for themselves, but for us. All of their words, all of their visions, and all of their experiences were not for themselves—and they realized this. They were not serving themselves, but us. The Bible was written by the Holy Spirit through men who experienced all of these things just so that we would have the Book, and know that it was written for us. Yet human thinking usually tends to reverse that truth. We try to emulate the men in the Bible, saying, “O Lord, let us be like Daniel. Let us be like the three Hebrew children. Lord, we want to be able to suffer like Paul.” These men did not have those experiences so that we could emulate them, but so that we could be fortified and strengthened, so that we could be given the basis of pure faith which trusts God. They were not doing this for themselves, but for us.
Does this teaching give you a new sense of the importance of the end-time moving of God’s Spirit? It is not declining or dwindling away; it is increasing and growing day by day. The Word says, “The end of a matter is better than the beginning thereof” (Ecclesiastes 7:8). I believe that greater prophets will come on the scene in this end time than appeared in Bible times, because then they did not have as much truth to draw on as we have today. We have all that they had, plus the words that they themselves spoke, from which to learn.
Paul tells us that these things happened to them as examples for us. The things they experienced happened to them to teach us and admonish us. They were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come (I Corinthians 10:11). The ends of the ages have come to us. Upon our shoulders rests the mantle for the end of the ages. That is why we are so age-conscious and dispensation-conscious. We are aware that a new age has dawned. It is time for the sons to come forth. When people in past generations read the Scriptures, somehow they drew comfort from them as they lived through similar experiences. However, it was for us that these things happened. Isn’t it time that we realize the destiny that God wants to fulfill through a humble people?!
All of these things happened to these people for our sakes. Even the angels of God desire to look into the blessings that belong to us (I Peter 1:10–13). They are probably asking God, “What will You do for those people down there—the maimed, the halt, and the blind?” Let not one of us say, “I am inadequate. Because I am one of the maimed, the halt, and the blind, I can never enter in.” We are the ones for whom these words were written! (Luke 14:15–24.)
Peter tells us in verse 13 what we should do. Therefore, gird your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Notice that we are to set our hope on grace—not on our ability. We are to draw the grace of God that will come at this revelation of Jesus Christ.
The things that God has promised will never come to pass if it is dependent upon us; we must appropriate the grace of God. The entire end-time message is wrapped around grace. God will bring forth His will through a people who are not even as worthy perhaps as some of the generations before us. But He will make us worthy by His grace. We will be encouraged, enabled to reach up and appropriate it. The grace of God will rain upon our hearts so that we can walk in God, and be and do everything He sets before us. Gird your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Before God, determine that you will fix your hope on the grace of God. I dare not look to myself and my abilities, and you dare not look to yourself and your abilities. All of us have failed ourselves, and God, and those around us too many times. Our total inadequacy must be part of God’s revelation to us. We remember Paul’s words in II Corinthians 3:5–6: “Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who also has made us able ministers of His new covenant.” This means that there is nothing in me or in you that is sufficient. In ourselves, all we can do is let God down, let ourselves down, and let one another down—even those we love the most. If we look to our own abilities, we are not even able to walk in His truth when it comes to us.
Can you say that you have never failed God? or failed yourself? or failed those you love the most? Are you proud of your record? Are you proud of your human abilities? In yourself, do you feel as if you can reach your full potential in God? Is your attitude one of self-sufficiency: “I am not at all impressed with my prophecies; I can fulfill them easily.” Or is it just the opposite? “I am being tested in faith, because my faith will be fixed on the hope for the grace of God to come.” The testings, the trials, the precious faith—better than gold which perishes—all bring us to the place where we fix our hope completely on the grace of God.
Do you feel rejected? Who doesn’t? Do you feel condemned? Perhaps you have experienced times when you even felt shamed. You had done the best you could, but that may not have been good enough. Look at the situation honestly. Recognize that there is nothing good within you, except Christ. Only to the extent that His nature has come forth in you is there anything decent in you at all. What must you do? Fix your hope on the grace of God.
Ask the Lord to help you with this, so that you will never look at yourself as though it were your adequacy that can bring to pass His will for your life. Realize that it will only be done as you have faith. And that faith will be tested and tried. Even when you cannot see God in your situation, believe that the revelation of the Lord to you will bring His wonderful grace to you. Let your heart be filled with joy inexpressible and full of glory.
Why not throw off your limitations right now and declare: “I will no longer believe to be defeated. I am believing to be an overcomer. The will of God will come forth in my life and God will be glorified in me.” Be sure, however, that you start with a sense of humility, that you evaluate correctly the inadequacy and insufficiency of the flesh. If you begin there, then as you reach into the grace of God, you will be able to walk with Him without torment.
We do not want to walk with our inadequacy predominant, harassing us, because we are trying to accomplish God’s will in ourselves. Face each difficulty with this attitude: “Here is one more situation that I cannot solve in the flesh, one more circumstance within the scope of the humanly impossible. Now let the deliverance come through the grace of God. Let the glory of God come. Let Him be glorified! I fix my hope on His grace!”