"In This You Rejoice"

I recently finished reading through Psalms, and so I decided to start making my way through the book of 1 Peter. Not exactly sure why, or what led me to this particular book...but after I finished reading the first 9 verses, it was pretty clear that it was not a "coincidence" that I ended up there.

The first 5 verses are nothing short of amazing. Some of the greatest theological truths & reasons for hope are so tightly packed within this short passage of Scripture! Peter talks about our new birth through the great mercy of God, and the hope we have because of the resurrection of Christ; he talks about the "imperishable, unfading inheritance" we have waiting for us in eternity...and then he caps it all off (or so I initially thought) at the beginning of verse 6 with "in this you rejoice." So naturally, I paused to think about the incredible truths I had just read & was reminded of. What an incredible God - His mercy gave me a chance at new life, a hope for life after death, and an eternal inheritance that is waiting for me! How awesome is that? Of course I can follow the first part of verse 6 & rejoice in that - that's easy! So, being all charged up, I picked up where I left off, finished verse 6 & read through verse 7...and there it was. The "T" word. Trials.

Ok...so what is Peter trying to say here? Am I supposed to "rejoice" in the incredible grace & mercy of God that is laid out in the first 5 verses...or am I supposed to "rejoice" in trials because they test the genuineness of my faith? Well, after putting this together with James 1:2-4 I'm pretty sure now that the answer isn't one or the other, but simply "Yes." And to be honest, I definitely wasn't nearly as charged up about this passage anymore. I'm not going to lie...the last thing I want to do right now (and over the last 6 months) is "rejoice" in my trial. I just don't want to. This sounds really weird, but one of the first things I think about when I read the word "rejoice" is that little kids' Sunday school song we used to sing as a round back in the day. "Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice" - repeated over & over, with high-pitched little kid voices, while smiling from ear to ear. No thanks. When it comes to my "trial" right now, I honestly want no part of that. For some reason, I'd rather sit & just...pout, really. I find myself choosing to remind myself of how much I have been hurt; how my life looks so much differently now than it did just 6 months ago; how there are things that I had that were involuntarily ripped away from me & that it was "not fair." To be brutally honest, the more I thought about these verses, I literally became angry. Who has time to rejoice when there is so much pain to try & swim through?

But as I kept reading through these verses multiple times - and even now as I'm writing my thoughts out - I can see that I had completely missed the point of what Peter and James were trying to convey to their original audience. Neither one of them are telling me that I need to rejoice in the trial itself. I'm not being told I need to force myself to be happy that I'm currently going through the hardest situation & circumstance that I've ever faced in my life. We aren't expected to jump for joy when we get an unexpected diagnosis, or when we get a call in the middle of the night about the loss of a loved one...we aren't supposed to throw a party when we find ourselves in the middle of a financial crisis, etc. In fact, Peter even recognizes that trials are hard when he says that "you have been grieved by various trials." He uses the analogy of gold being tested by fire - would it ever be pleasant to stand in a fire? As I was reading a commentary on this passage, I found this statement by Dr. Warren Wiersbe: "To deny that our trials are painful is to make them even worse. Christians must accept the fact that there are difficult experiences in life and not put on a brave front just to appear 'more spiritual'."  Even Jesus responded to grief & disappointment by visibly weeping.

So if the point is not to rejoice in the trial itself, what am I supposed to rejoice in? Well, it's the end result...that I can't see yet. See, what Peter is saying in verse 7 is that if I cling to God's grace through my trial & remain faithful to Him as He carries me through, I will bring "praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." Wow. Think about that. I will bring praise & glory to my Savior when He returns if I just simply rely on Him to get me through the crappiest times of life. It's all about reflecting the praise back to Him - He wants to be there & help His children through the most difficult points in life...and if we let Him, that immediately reflects the honor & glory right back to Him, where it belongs. When I think again about the analogy Peter uses of gold in a fire - a goldsmith would never waste any of his precious gold by throwing it in a fire if he wasn't 100% sure that the finished product would be exponentially better off. And so it has to be the same with us - God would never allow me to walk through a fire in life if it didn't somehow make me better & bring Him glory. Wiersbe says this: "It has been said that the Eastern goldsmith kept the metal in the furnace until he could see his face reflected in it. So our Lord keeps us in the furnace of suffering until we reflect the glory and beauty of Jesus Christ."

Is that hard to remember & think about in the midst of the flames? Yep. It's a daily struggle. But I'm reminded of the lyrics in a song from Tenth Avenue North that says, "If You promised pain, it can't be meaningless." So...in this week of Thanksgiving...I will try very hard to remember that it's "In this you rejoice" - in the incredible blessings that God has poured out on me through His Son Jesus Christ, but ALSO that somehow through this fiery trial, He is preparing me for something greater.