Trials to Faith (1 Peter 1.6-9)

So I just want to set this up a little bit before we even read it.

Right before our passage that we're about to read, Peter, our author, he's been talking about what is waiting for us.

He's been talking about heaven, this incorruptible heavenly inheritance that if you are a believer, that you have waiting for you.

And he's talking about the hope that lies in this before he starts talking about these trials, the hope of what lies ahead for followers of Jesus Christ.

So he says that and then he leads right into 1 Peter 1, verse 6.

1 Peter 1:6

So if you're able, please stand for the reading of God's word.

1 Peter 1 verses 6 through 9.

1 Peter 1:6–9

He says, You rejoice in this, even though now for a short time, if necessary, you suffer grief in various trials, so that the proven character of your faith, more valuable than gold, which through though perishable, is refined by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Though you have not seen him, you love him.

Though not seeing him now, you believe in him, and you rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy, because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

You please pray with me.

Lord, we thank you so much that you are a loving father.

That even when we're going through trials, even when things are being tested, when we feel like the heat has been turned up in our life, Lord, we know that you love us so much.

We know that you're holding our hand.

We know that you never leave us or forsake us.

We know that you walk us through the valley of the shadow of death, and therefore we should fear no evil.

So, God, we thank you for that love that you have for us.

When trials come, Lord, we pray that you would help us to remember that love that you have for us and remember that you have purpose in trials.

Lord, we thank you for your word.

We pray that you would accomplish everything that you desire here this morning in each one of us and for our church as a whole.

In Jesus' name, amen.

You may be seated.

So, our author, as you probably guessed, is Peter.

He's the disciple, he's the apostle, he's the one that, as you read through the gospel, seems to mess up a lot.

We have a lot of cases of that.

And then Peter thrived.

Not perfect, but Peter thrived after spending three years with Jesus.

After he becomes filled with the Holy Spirit.

We see Peter throughout the rest of the New Testament thriving.

And that's our author.

That's the one writing these words that the Holy Spirit is using to write these words.

And Peter is writing this to, as you can see in verse 1, if you want to look at it, to those chosen, living as exiles, dispersed abroad, in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.

He's writing to Christians that are all over the place.

So this isn't one specific message to one specific church.

Really, he's writing it to anybody that's willing to read it and to take it in, and he's writing it specifically to the persecuted church, those that are exiles because of their faith.

Peter himself, if you know anything about his life, he's very familiar with suffering.

And he's writing to people that are very familiar with suffering.

They're familiar with the trials of life, the things that he's writing to them about.

So I want to ask you this question this morning.

When things get hard, and I mean really, really hard, what is your gut reaction?

What are your prayers for?

What do your prayers sound like to God?

You know, this morning is really a character study that we're looking at.

A character study of Peter's faith.

That we then see him now teaching others as he writes this letter to the dispersed church that is going through this persecution.

So I want to read you a passage as we look at the progression of Peter's faith.

I want to read you a passage from Mark 4.

Um, I obviously didn't have time to do slides this morning, so I'm not gonna have the cross references up there, but you can just sit, you can listen, you can take notes and write down what the cross references are.

But this is from Mark chapter 4, verses 35 through 40.

Mark 4:35–40

And you could turn there, you can listen, you can write it down, whatever you'd like to do.

But it says, On that day when evening had come, he, Jesus, told them, Let's cross over to the other side of the sea.

So they left the crowd and they took him along, since he was in the boat.

And other boats were with him.

A great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking over the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.

They're in serious condition here.

He was in the stern, Jesus, sleeping on the cushion.

So they woke him up and they said to him, Teacher, don't you care that we're gonna die?

He got up, he rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, Silence, be still.

The wind caused, although I'm sorry, the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.

Then he said to them, Why are you afraid?

Do you still have no faith?

You know, from what I can tell, this was the first time, at least that we see in the gospels, that we see the disciples in a real bind.

Where they're trying to face something on their own and things are looking dire.

And how do they react?

Not the greatest, do they?

Don't you care about us, Jesus?

Don't you see that we're about to die and you're sleeping in the boat?

Come on, Jesus, do something.

So Jesus rebukes the waves and then he rebukes the disciples.

And notice Jesus doesn't see the first sign of a storm and rebuke it.

He didn't rebuke the first ripple that started that evening.

He went to sleep.

And he let the disciples feel the storm.

They got to feel it.

He was teaching them in this moment.

This was a teaching moment for Jesus.

It did not surprise him.

Could you imagine if every time Jesus saw a small wave in our life, he jumped up and he rebuked that wave?

Peace be still.

I mean, it would be kind of nice, wouldn't it?

But I don't think we would have any trust faith in the Lord if we never had to actually feel the storm a little bit.

But the point of this morning is we learn a trusting faith in Christ when we go through the trials and when we go through the storms.

And then when we watch God guide us through those things to bring us to the other side of those things.

That's how he chooses to build a trusting faith in our life.

You know, he where he proves his faithfulness so that the next time we go through it, we have no reason to fear.

Because, like the good shepherd that he is, he's always with us.

But the disciples had to learn this somehow.

Jesus was with them physically all the time.

They're watching all of these miracles.

They really weren't building their trust faith because they were right there with him.

They needed to experience something on their own, to actually have some fear in their gut where they needed to trust Jesus more.

Now, I want to read you another instance that where this pretty much almost the same thing happens.

And this is from Matthew 14, verses 22 through 27.

Matthew 14:22–27

So if you're writing down Matthew 14, 22 through 27.

Let's see if the disciples learned anything this time, okay?

Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side while he dismissed the crowd.

He'd been teaching and he told the disciples, go ahead of me.

I'm gonna dismiss this crowd.

So, the first difference here, the disciples are in the boat alone this time.

After dismissing the crowds, he, Jesus, went up on the mountain by himself to pray.

Well into the night, he was there alone.

It's been a while.

Meanwhile, the boat was already some distance from land, battered by the waves, because the wind was against them.

And then when Jesus saw what was going on from up on the mountain, then he ran down the mountain, and then he ran across the shore, and then he ran to the boat, and he's like, guys, I am so sorry, I didn't know this was gonna happen.

No, that's not what my Bible says.

I don't think that's what your Bible says either.

It says Jesus came toward them walking, not running, walking on the sea, very early in the morning.

It spent a whole night out there.

When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified.

It's a ghost, they said, and they cried out in fear.

Immediately Jesus spoke to them, have courage, it is I, and once again he tells them, don't be afraid.

But again, notice that Jesus took his time, didn't he?

He allowed them once again to feel the storm.

This time he wasn't with them, though.

This time, sure sounds like it lasted much longer that they were getting tossed around in this boat.

Now, I believe that the disciples, you know, some of them are professional fishermen, remember.

They probably had to be thinking in the beginning when the storm starts to rise up.

Okay, you know, we've been through this before, and Jesus got us through this before.

We just need to trust in Jesus and we'll be fine again.

And then after a while, I imagine that doubt started to creep in.

Maybe they even started talking about it amongst themselves.

You know, well, Jesus was in the boat last time.

Like, this is a little bit different.

And you know, we've been out here a while now, and things seem to be getting worse.

You know what?

I actually think the waves are bigger this time.

Don't you guys think the waves are actually bigger than last time?

Maybe we're gonna die.

Maybe that's why Jesus didn't get in the boat because Jesus didn't want to die, you know?

And I just picture, you know, this going on with them in this boat, and then they start to freak out.

But isn't that a picture of what we do in our own life?

You know, God, I know you got me through the last time, but this is different.

The waves are bigger.

This one just seems longer.

Lord, I don't know if you can handle this one this time.

You know?

Sounds ridiculous now, but when we're in the moment, we do that all the time.

You know, in the first storm, Jesus said, How is it that you have no faith, didn't he?

In the second storm, if you read on past what I just read to you, Peter sees Jesus, recognizes that it's him, and he says, Command me to come to you on the water.

And he actually has the faith, he doesn't have any faith, he has the faith to step out of the boat and start walking towards Jesus.

So there's some progress, I think, that we see in Peter.

I think we can count that as some growth, some maturity in him.

Until Peter takes his eyes off of Jesus and he puts them on the circumstances that he's going through.

And he forgot who was taking care of him in that moment.

In the middle of a miracle, he forgot who was taking care of him.

But you know what Peter did right as soon as he started to sink?

He realized what he was doing and he looked back to Jesus to rescue him.

So I think Peter is learning.

I think his faith has grown between those two stories.

You know, and then our verse today that we just read.

Peter is now speaking to other believers from experience through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

But the Holy Spirit's the one that had him write this down, and I think Peter is speaking from his own experience about what it looks like to weather the storms of this life and to weather persecution and things like that.

Now remember, as I said, right before these verses, we're gonna start breaking down here in 1 Peter, he's talking about our incorruptible heavenly inheritance that we have.

And this next section is kind of like a parentheses.

Like, look at all we get to look forward to, you guys, and all we get to rejoice in.

And then he picks up in verse 6 You rejoice in this.

Even though now, here's our parentheses, for a short time, if necessary, you suffer grief in various trials.

Rejoice in this, you guys.

Your hope, your eternity, it's incorruptible, it's in Christ.

Even if for a short time we have to go through the things that we're going through right now.

In the middle of trials, it's okay to place our hope in Jesus Christ.

You know, it helps us to remember the shortness of our life.

It helps us to remember that our life is just a vapor, that this suffering, as it says right here, is only for a short time when we look at that in comparison to all of eternity.

And Peter's audience should rejoice in this fact that their future is in Christ and that this suffering is only for a short time.

What makes us rejoice, though?

Here today, each and every one of us.

I want you to, in your head, answer that question.

What makes us rejoice?

Is it that it's Friday and the weekend's finally here?

Is it in that next paycheck or that bonus you might be getting from work?

Is your rejoicing based on another person?

Is your rejoicing based on that next big purchase and possession that you're gonna finally get?

We can learn here that we should be rejoicing in Christ.

We should be rejoicing in what's ahead of us.

We should be rejoicing that our trials here on earth really are for a short time.

Not all the time, but if necessary, as it says right here, you suffer grief in various trials.

You know, Jesus told his disciples, We will have tribulation in this world, but rejoice because I have overcome the world.

We can rejoice in that even in the midst of tribulation.

So, why does Peter say it may be necessary for us to suffer trials?

Well, look at the result in verse 7.

So that the proven character of your faith, more valuable than gold, which through, though perishable, is refined by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

You know, it's hard for us to really know how pure our faith is when things are going really well.

Doesn't it?

It's hard to really know how pure, how strong our faith is when our life is in an easy moment.

And this is exactly why Satan asked for Job.

If you've read Job in the Old Testament before.

Satan thought Job would stop worshiping God if the heat got turned up in his life, and boy, did he turn the heat up in Job's life.

But Satan thought if his faith is truly tested, he's not gonna worship you anymore, God.

And God allowed it.

But God didn't allow it just to mess with Job.

God allowed it to purify Job's faith.

You know, we use that word a lot in our culture, don't we?

Purify, but not really in the sense of precious metals.

Usually it's in the in water, you know, that we talk about purified water.

We got this filtration system under our sink at home.

It goes through five different filters before it's actually purified, and and we drink it.

That's what I think of when I think of the word purified.

But gold, as it's mentioned in our passage, it's purified much differently than water is.

And it makes a lot of sense why the Holy Spirit would have Paul write this down to be the analogy of purifying faith.

Because there are so many similarities in the way that gold is purified and the way that God purifies us through trials.

You know, if you're not familiar with the process of refining gold, gold is refined by heating it up.

You turn up the temperature until it's molten.

And then what happens when you turn up that temperature, all of the impurities, they call it dross, come out of that gold and they rise to the surface so that the one that's purifying in it can then wipe it off, can remove those impurities that come to the surface.

And then they repeat that process over and over and over again until they end up with pure gold.

We need to always remember that God doesn't allow the enemy to mess with us for no reason.

He doesn't allow trials in our life without reason.

If he allows the heat to be turned up in our life, it's to see what rises to the surface.

It's to see what impurities may be hidden inside of us that maybe we don't even know about.

And then those impurities rise to the surface so that he can address those and he can help us with those impurities.

You know, the enemy turns up the heat, that junk in our life comes up, God wipes it off if we allow him to.

And I want to give you a couple examples of this.

Say you're having an argument with your spouse.

What's gonna surface in that argument?

I'm gonna guess pride.

Pride surfaces, it comes to the top, and God says, Hey, you see that pride?

Let's take care of that.

Let me help you take care of it.

Let me help you take that impurity out of your life.

You might have an unexpected financial expense.

What comes to the surface when all of a sudden you have this unexpected financial expense?

Probably a lack of trust that God is gonna be your provider.

So God says, Hey, you see what just came to the surface here?

Let me let me take care of that.

Allow me to take care of that in your life.

You know, things don't go as planned in our life.

You know what usually comes to the surface?

That's anger.

God says, hey, you see what just surfaced?

Let's take care of that together.

Friction between a brother or sister in Christ arises, you know, when the heat's turned up sometimes, revealing impatience.

God says, hey, you see that impatience?

Let's take care of that right now.

So I want to challenge you.

The next time you really get upset, you really get stressed out, you really get disappointed, ask yourself something.

Oh man, when that happened, what just came to the surface?

What was the impurity that God wants to take care of and remove from my life when things don't go my way?

What am I feeling?

What's coming to the surface?

And then allow God to address that.

Allow God to take care of that.

Ask for forgiveness for those things, for those impurities, and ask Him to help you work through those things.

You know, I really think if we can gain this perspective, if we can look at the heat that gets turned up in our life as an opportunity for God to work, as opposed to whining about how hard it is, you know, our whole perspective will begin to change when we start to think about trials and difficulty and pain and all of those things that come into our life come up in our life.

And the thing is, though, the enemy has so many tactics that he wants to use to turn up the heat.

He knows how to push our buttons, doesn't he?

To place trials in our life.

He knows which ones to place and which persecutions to place because he wants those those impurities to come to the surface and cause us to sin.

God wants to use that time to help clean us up.

He really hopes that as those impurities surface, that that's going to lead to even more sin in our life.

So he wants to turn these things up.

He wants to kick us while we're down, and he wants to keep us in that valley of the shadow of death, and then try to get us, tries to tempt us to sin in those times.

And then what he'll try to do if you do do that is then he tries to isolate you.

He tries to feed you lies when we go through these trials.

He wants to tell us things like, you know, good Christians, they don't react that way.

They don't get involved in stuff like that.

There's something wrong with you.

But you're the only one in your whole church that struggles with this.

Did you know that?

If they found out what a sinner that you actually were, like, like they would never accept you.

They would probably kick you out of church.

Or he's gonna tell you stuff like, you deserve this trial.

You're absolute trash.

You're garbage.

Why would the Lord ever want to bless you after the stuff that you just did?

You know, another tactic of the enemy is he'll use stuff like that to put doubt in us.

You know, as soon as the road gets rough, we Start asking, well, you know what?

Maybe I wasn't supposed to do this.

Does God really want me to do this?

Why is this so hard?

If God asked me to do this, why would this be so hard?

Shouldn't ministry just be easier than this?

Shouldn't our relationships in church just be easier than what they are right now?

What God does is He allows the heat to be turned up so that junk can surface and so that He can take care of those things if we allow Him to take care of those things.

But look at the end of verse 7 again.

So that all this refining may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

This is what our purification leads to.

God's glory.

You know, if we allow him to deal with the junk.

If we don't, and it surfaces and we react, then we just have more sin to uh to confess to him.

But if we allow him to deal with that junk, it'll make us more like Jesus.

And being more like Jesus brings praise and glory and honor to God.

Now look at verse 8 with me.

Though you have not seen him, you love him.

Though not seeing him now, you believe in him, and you rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy.

Why?

Well, look at verse 9.

Because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Peter and the disciples saw Jesus perform miracles.

They saw him perform lots of miracles.

They also got to see him crucified, they saw him raised from the dead, they saw him ascend to heaven, they were there when Jesus gave the Great Commission.

But Peter's writing to people just like us that are sitting here today, who have never seen Jesus with our eyes, but have known Jesus.

And they've seen Jesus with their spiritual eyes, like we have been able to see Jesus with our spiritual eyes.

You know, if you've been walking with Christ for any amount of time, your spiritual eyes have seen God's faithfulness.

They've seen God prevail time and time again throughout trials and tribulations and persecutions.

And Peter is commending people like us that are here today, that have faith in Jesus and have never physically seen him before.

I think believing in Jesus would have probably been a little bit easier for Peter and the disciples that actually got to touch him and witness all of these things.

So he commends those that have not had those privileges that the disciples, apostles had.

But he commends those people that are still willing to suffer for Christ, that have not actually had those same opportunities.

So that's us today.

So be commended, feel commended, walk out of here commended because he's talking about you.

Now look at the second part of verse 8.

It says, And you rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy, because you are receiving the goal of your salvation.

I mean, the goal of your faith, salvation of your souls.

James 1, verses 2 through 4 says something very similar to this verse.

James 1:2–4

James writes, My brethren, count at all joy when you fall into various trials.

Knowing that the testing of your faith, should sound familiar, produces patience.

But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

Another verse showing how trials lead to faith.

How trials lead to patience, how trials lead to our personal refining.

You know, these things can be good if we allow them to be good.

And we don't allow the enemy to win and have it go down that road that leads to sin.

You know, we have this amazing reward waiting for us after this short while.

It's a short while.

We have this amazing gift that we get to look forward to for all of eternity.

So I really think this is just Paul's way of saying, keep your eyes on Jesus.

Keep your hope in Jesus and in the hope of eternity.

Now, A.

W.

Tozer has this quote I want to read to you.

He says, Faith is not in itself a meritorious act.

We shouldn't get the merit for having faith.

The merit is in the one toward whom it is directed.

Faith is redirecting our sight and getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus.

There's a lot packed in.

I want to read it one more time.

Faith is a redirecting of our sight and getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus.

We can't take credit for our faith.

We can't walk around like I have so much faith.

That's not what faith is.

You know, when we worry, when we try to intervene, when we act on fear, we act on anger, whatever it might be, as opposed to having faith, we're putting ourselves on the throne of the situation, thinking that we can actually do something about whatever it is that we're dealing with.

Faith is looking outward for God to intervene.

It's acknowledging that God is on the throne and then trusting in that fact.

Trusting that he loves us so much that whatever he's led us into, whatever he's allowed, maybe, is going to be for our purification, for our refining.

Now, I want to take one more look at one more trial that Peter faces.

Okay?

And we get this out of Acts 4.

So this is after Jesus' ascension.

This is after Pentecost.

So Peter's filled with the Holy Spirit.

And things were really going great for Peter at this point.

First three chapters of Acts, Peter all of a sudden becomes this great orator for the Holy Spirit.

He's integral in 3,000 different people coming to Christ.

God used him to heal the lame man at the temple gate.

And then we hit chapter 4, verse 1.

It says, Now as they spoke to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came upon them, being greatly disturbed, let's see, being greatly disturbed that they taught the people and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.

And they laid hands on them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening.

Peter, I think, could have reacted in three different ways when he got arrested here.

First, I think, like the first trial we covered today, Jesus, where are you?

Don't you know I'm perishing here?

Peter could have reacted by grabbing a sword and cutting somebody's ear off.

He's known for doing that.

Or he could learn from his past mistakes, his past trials, accept that he was getting arrested, and trust God that he knew what he was doing.

You know, we don't know exactly how Peter reacted in that moment of being arrested, but everything points to him going peaceably and trusting the Lord.

You know, at first glance, this arrest looks like it's going to put a major roadblock in Peter's ministry.

But God had other plans.

God used this to get Peter in front of all of the major religious leaders in Israel in that day.

And when he gets in front of them, the Holy Spirit takes over and Peter preaches.

You should go read it in chapter 4 of Acts.

He preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And think about it this way: how else would Peter have been able to preach to this audience?

To preach to this council, let alone to preach to all of them at one time and give them all the gospel of Jesus Christ.

God used him going to jail for his own glory.

And that should sound familiar from our 1 Peter passage today.

God used that trial for his own glory.

But this time Peter allowed God to use him in those circumstances.

And I don't think that happens with a younger, less tested Peter.

Do you?

And we can think, well, you know, it's about time, Peter.

Gosh, how long did it take you to learn these lessons?

But we can't rail on Peter too hard.

I think Peter was has finally realized that God can work all things together for good to those that love him.

Even an arrest.

God uses that arrest.

God uses the arrests that Paul goes through throughout the whole New Testament.

And he uses those things for good every single time.

I really believe if it wasn't for some of those arrests, we might not have all the books that we have in the New Testament today.

It's like, Paul, sit down.

You need to write.

This is a huge lesson that I've learned in my life.

And I'm still learning on a daily basis.

I have not arrived in any way.

But when I remember when I was younger in my faith, I would easily slip into this mindset of being defeated.

Or I'd have this attitude of, you know, something went wrong, or there was some sort of spiritual warfare that I was sensing, or something like that.

And I would just be like, God, why would you allow the enemy to do something like this to your child?

Where are you in this?

Can't you please make a way?

Or like the disciples, I'm perishing, God, you know.

As I've grown in my understanding of trials and realizing that trials, every single one of them that God allows in our life, that they all have a purpose.

And once I've come to that realization, my attitude and my prayers have changed a lot.

You know, they changed to, Lord, what is the purpose of this?

Not in a doubting way, but just like, okay, God, what's the you allowed this, what's the purpose?

What are you trying to show me?

What are you bringing to the surface right now?

What do you want me to learn in this moment?

You know, I think one big step in maturing in Christ is realizing that trials lead to opportunities.

That trials lead to our purification, trials lead to our increased trust, faith in Jesus Christ.

And that's not easy.

I'm not up here pretending it is.

And like I said, I have not arrived.

I'm still learning this on a daily basis, but trials lead to opportunities for Christians.

That is the perspective that I think God wants us to have.

You know, as I was going through this, this whole subject that we've been talking about today, it reminds me a lot of potty training a toddler.

You didn't see that one coming today, did you?

The parents want their child to mature in this way, to become potty trained.

They want the child to stop messing themselves in their diapers.

You know, at first, the child, most children, some of you got lucky, but most children, they want nothing to do with this.

They don't want to learn this self-control in their life.

They're just content being in their diapers.

They just want things to stay the same.

They do not want this change.

But the parents know it's time.

And it's going to be hard on all parties that are involved in potty training.

And the child still will resist.

But the parents start this process anyway, don't they?

And the child has some accidents that need to be cleaned up.

And they want their diapers back.

And they don't understand the why of why their parents would possibly put them through this.

Why are mom and dad doing this?

Don't they know that I don't want to?

Don't they know that I don't like this?

Don't they know that this is an inconvenience and I don't like this change in my life right now?

You know, usually for a toddler, this is the biggest trial that they have ever faced in their life.

And when you think about it, at its core, the resistance of a toddler in potty training, they're asking the parents to keep excrement up against their skin longer.

They're asking the parents to, hey, let me create a bigger mess than is needed.

You know, of course, they don't have the logic and they can't say things like that, but that's really what they're asking for.

They can't see that the parents are doing this out of love.

They can't see that the parents are doing this for their own good, and because they love their toddler, they're allowing them to go through this.

The toddler just knows I don't like this, I don't want this.

And they may even think it's scary at the time.

And they may even think that the parents are being mean.

Why are mom and dad being so mean right now?

Don't they see what I'm going through?

But the truth is, only an unloving parent wouldn't potty train their child when they thought that the child was ready to be potty trained.

God does this with us too.

He loves us too much to leave us in our pull-ups.

And often we don't understand and we don't like it, and it may even feel like God's being mean in the moment because we just don't understand logically how this is all gonna work out, why we're in the middle of this.

All the while, he's just training us and he's refining us and he's making us more and more like him through whatever it is that he's walking us through in that moment.

You know, like a parent potty training, all he really wants is a willing attitude.

That's all a parent really wants, right?

Like, just be willing.

This would be so much easier on all of us if you were just willing and you just did what we told you to.

So here's the encouragement for all of us today.

Let's change the way we look at trials.

Let's change the way we look at pain and the way we look at persecution.

Let's change the way that we look at things when the heat gets turned up in our life.

When things come our way that we really don't like.

You know, let's look for the opportunities to grow in our faith when the heat gets turned up in that way.

I want to read you verses six and seven from 1 Peter here again today.

You can look at it with me.

But taking all of that into account, look at it again.

Verse 6 you rejoice in this, even though now for a short time, if necessary, you suffer grief in various trials, so that the proven, proven character of your faith, more valuable than gold, which, though perishable, is refined by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Just like Peter before the council, an arrest leading to praise and glory and honor.

Let's ask ourselves the next time we find ourselves in the middle of something like this.

Okay, God, what's the end goal here?

How do we go through this and at the end of it bring you praise, glory, and honor?

How do we bring you praise, glory, and honor in the middle of it as well?

How do we bring you praise, glory, and honor right at the beginning of this as well?

Will you please pray with me?

Lord, this is this is hard.

Everything that we talked about, Lord, keeping our eyes fixed on you, having a trust, faith in you no matter what the circumstance is, realizing that when we're going through trials and persecution at any scale, whether it's tiny little things or it's huge things like Peter was going through and these different churches that he's writing to, whatever the scale, Lord, help us to just look at trials as opportunities.

Opportunities for growth and for purification, and opportunities to bring you praise, glory, and honor.

Lord, we truly want to do that in our life.

So would you first just help us to realize it?

Lord, it's hard to realize.

Sometimes we're in the middle of something before we realize we're going through something hard.

Sometimes we're in the middle of something before we even realize we're reacting to that hard thing.

So at the very beginning, Lord, would you prod us and let us know when we're going through a trial like this?

And then would you help us?

Would you strengthen us to have the right attitude, to look for the opportunities, to know you wouldn't allow us to go through it if it wasn't going to refine us and it wasn't going to strengthen us and it wasn't going to bring glory to your kingdom.

So, Lord, help us to be very discerning between the voice of the Holy Spirit and the voice of the enemy that's trying to feed us lies and feed us doubt, trying to get us to react sinfully, to allow those impurities to surface and then lead to sin, to try and tempt us in every way possible.

Help us to discern those voices.

Help us to know what is temptation and to just have great discernment in knowing the voice of the Holy Spirit in our life.

So lead us and guide us in these things.

Help us to keep these things at the forefront of our mind when we do come upon hard things or we're in the middle of hard things and ultimately look to what's going to bring you the most praise and glory and honor in that life situation.

Lord, we thank you that you lead us through the valley of the shadow of death.

Lord, we thank you that you hold on to our hand, that you are by our side.

We thank you, Jesus, that you are the good shepherd.

You're always watching your flock.

You're always intending what's best for us.

You're always by our side.

So help us to remember those things and not doubt, especially when things seem to get really dark.

God, we love you so much.

We want to grow in you.

We want to honor you.

So help us to honor you in this way.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.