Hope kept for you: the imperishable inheritance kept for you is...
Praise, glory and honor FROM Jesus!
“Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
According to 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,
uncorrupted, and unfading,
kept in heaven
for you.
You are being protected by God’s power
through faith for a salvation
that is ready to be revealed
in the last time.
You rejoice in this,
though now for a short time
you have had to struggle
in various trials
so that the genuineness of your faith —
more valuable than gold,
which perishes though refined by fire —
may result in praise, glory, and honor
at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
--is this Jesus getting praise glory and honor? No He already had this! This is our receiving what Jesus died to give us! For the joy set before Him He endured the cross to give us what He had with the Father!
“keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that lay before Him (we are that JOY!) endured a cross and despised the shame and has sat down at the right hand of God’s throne.
For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself,
so that
you won’t grow weary and lose heart.” (Love is powerful when certain)
Hebrews 12:2-3--
You love Him,
though you have not seen Him.
And though not seeing Him now,
you believe in Him
and rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy,
because you are receiving
the goal of your faith, (praise, glory, honor!)
the salvation of your souls.”
1 Peter 1:3-9
“As the Father has loved Me,
I have also loved you.
Remain in My love.”
John 15:9
Because when suffering or hardships hit, you will need to be in a place of power, a certain and secure love!
“Still, you did well by sharing with me
in my hardship.”
Philippians 4:14
Hardship is good if it shows the genuineness of your faith, because it's too serious of a matter to just THINK you are saved and believe in Jesus. Are you really saved?! This is important to know! It is about your soul! It is about your eternal future, it's pretty serious since all of eternity hangs on this. Hardship is the fire that refines your faith. Hardship is what reveals to you the realness of what you believe. If you try to avoid hardship or hide or run from it, rather than endure it, you miss an opportunity to build your faith up to be more evident and genuine.
Don't be afraid of this gift.
Hardship and suffering is a gift because it reveals our living hope.
And this hope is an anchor for our soul, it is what produces our character, and it is what reminds us of the love we have that is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
“I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 3:14
What is the PRIZE?
It is the imperishable inheritance.
It is the praise, glory and honor from Jesus!
We get what Jesus has from the Father!
We get what Jesus has.
We are coheirs.
This prize in eternity is what leads us through suffering in this life now.
“My eager expectation and hope
is that I will not be ashamed about anything,
but that now as always,
with all boldness,
Christ will be highly honored in my body,
whether by life or by death.”
Philippians 1:20
That means everything in this life is a gift: whether it looks like life or it looks like death!
Suffering is just as much a gift as blessing, if not more of a gift!
“For it has been given to you
on Christ’s behalf
not only to believe in Him,
but also to suffer for Him,”
Philippians 1:29
We can suffer and have joy at the same time. We can cry and still have joy.
“May you be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might,
for all endurance and patience,
with joy
giving thanks to the Father, (why?...)
who has enabled you
to share in the saints’ inheritance (the imperishable inheritance of praise, glory and honor!)
in the light.”
Colossians 1:11-12
“God wanted to make known
among the Gentiles
the glorious wealth
of this mystery,
which is Christ in you,
the hope of glory.”
(We have what Christ has,
because He died to give us this!)
Colossians 1:27
What does it mean to be "born again"?
It means to have a "living hope" as 1 Peter 1:3 says!
Why do we need a "living hope"?
The people Peter are writing to are suffering people (trials, persecutions, pain, and hardships)...so the reason the term "hope" comes up is because there is no way to get through life unless you can get through suffering, and there is no way to get through suffering unless you have a hope to live for. To hold on to a living hope is to go through suffering as an anchor for your soul.
You have this hope,
as an anchor for your soul:
“We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain,”
Hebrews 6:19
Viktor frankl: Jewish psychologist in concentration camps. If you lose hope you lose life. You give up. But you have hope, that through what's happening someone is watching you from Heaven, God, then you expose the foundation of your soul: life only has meaning if you have a hope that suffering and death cannot destroy. The foundation of your personality is your future hope. This will determine how you handle your hardships now.
Some held on to the hope of gaining back their wealth, health and status in life when liberated, which when liberated they were so disappointed they went into depression and suicide. They didn't get the finite things they expected to have for the amount of suffering they went through. If you make any finite object into your hope, eventually you will lose hope. Suffering was not a means to give you anything less than the weight of glory, the imperishable inheritance of Jesus Himself!
And if you lose hope in life, you lose the will to live, because life is full of troubles.
Unless you get an imperishable living hope, you will not be able to handle suffering--the stripping of things, that if you live long enough you will be stripped of everything, and your character is a function of what is your ultimate hope.
To suffer does not mean we feel no sorrow or grief or pain. We lament in suffering, but we hold on to the joy set before us.
Jesus grieved in the garden of gethsemane. Suffering does not mean we are not perplexed with sorrow, crying out in pain and agony.
We are both in sorrow and joy at the same time!
On the one hand, the average person says this is impossible! How can you be rejoicing when the things you have are stripped from you?! Because for the average person their joy/hope is a circumstance.
“We are pressured in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed.
For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. (For us!)
So we do not focus on what is seen,
but on what is unseen.
For what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal.”
2 Corinthians 4:8-9, 17-18
A living hope, since it's not based on circumstances, means this:
when your circumstances get terrible, when they are stripped away from you then the sorrow actually drives you into your joy! Sorrow kicks on the joy! Because our joy is Christ. Our joy is what we have in Him: glory, praise and honor from Him--the imperishable inheritance! We get what Jesus has from God!
Sorrow is the fire that refines and brightens the gold.
Not only does sorrow INCREASE your joy, the Joy actually enables the sorrow!
They work together as our gift from God. Both joy and suffering are a gift. We must hold suffering as a gift that opens our eyes to see our joy! And our joy is a gift that enables our sorrow to be expressed as Jesus did. So that our hearts are always being full and filled. Not empty or void.
Running from sorrow, or the opposite of sorrow is to get mad or indifferent. Someone hurts you, and you think "I hate you" or "I don't care about you", but when you sorrow over what has hurt you, the sorrow kicks on the joy, your heart is softened and it's always big and full!
The former hardens your heart and disables your ability to be loved and love others. The latter softens your heart to remain open to love and loving others. You know the pain of love and the joy in sorrow.
“Now I am coming to You,
and I speak these things in the world so that they may have My joy
completed in them.
I have given them the glory
You have given Me.
May they be one as We are one.
I made Your name known to them and will make it known, so the love You have loved Me with may be in them and I may be in them.”
John 17:13, 22, 26
How do we activate this living hope?
You love him.
How did Jesus endure suffering?
For the joy set before Him: us!
We look to Jesus and love Him because He first loved us, and laid His life down for us.
Jesus did not die for the joy of heaven and having the Kingdom of God.
He didn't suffer for the glorious crown, he already HAD that! His living hope was: us!
“Out of the anguish of his soul
he shall see and be satisfied;
(see what?)
by his knowledge shall the righteous one,
my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.”
Isaiah 53:11
He died and found joy in the suffering when He saw us being accounted righteous!
So likewise, we suffer and find joy when we look at Him who loves us and delights to give us the promise! Our hope is the imperishable inheritance given to us though His love! We will be praised, glorified and honored with the righteousness of and from Jesus!
We have this great wealth in jars of clay (our decaying mortal bodies).
We look to the unseen, because our life is now hidden in Christ.
Therefore, when circumstances strip us of the things we want, we are shown what really lasts.
Our hope in the imperishable!
And we fall more in love with Him who died to give us this living hope, a hope that will not disappoint.
“Not only that,
but we rejoice in our sufferings,
knowing that
suffering produces endurance,
and endurance produces character,
and character produces hope,
and hope does not put us to shame,
because
God’s love has been poured
into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit
who has been given to us.”
Romans 5:3-5
My prayer for you and for me for every hardship in life:
Holy Spirit, please pour the love of the Father into my heart every day, so that when circumstances or feelings or pain happens I will be fueled to endure and set my eyes on Him who reveals my future glory, my true treasure more clearly seen when everything that makes me "happy" is stripped from me. For the joy set before me, help me to endure all suffering. Jesus you died to give me the imperishable inheritance! I forget this, and suffering is a gift to remind me what I truly live for, who truly loves me, and shows me who I love most.
Jmegrey
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