If you’re like most pastors, you give teapot vibes: You spend a lot more time pouring out spiritually than getting poured into. To help you balance that ratio, we’re introducing a devotional series to encourage and grow you amid your Gospel Advancing ministry journey.
We’ll start by taking a look at the apostle Peter’s first letter to the early Church.
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood:
Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy, He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. This inheritance is kept in Heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
Bestowed, not taken
Something we’ve lost a bit of in modern culture is the idea of inheritance. Most of the time when I hear people talk about what they’ve inherited from their parents, it’s something negative.
“I have anger issues like my dad,” or “I have control issues like my mom.” And so, we often think of inheritance as something that we don’t want.
But the inheritance Peter’s writing about is a blessed and divine inheritance through our faith in Christ.
Previously, the inheritance we received from Adam and our own sins was death. But now, through faith in Christ, we’ve received an inheritance of life, grace, and freedom. We’ve been adopted into the Kingdom of God as sons and daughters of The Lord Most High.
Paul puts it this way:
So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.
One of the beautiful things about inheritance is that it has less to do with who you are than who you belong to. Inheritance is a blessing that is bestowed. That’s why Jacob couldn’t just grab Esau’s blessing in Genesis. It had to be given to Jacob. Otherwise, it was worthless.
In the same way, our inheritance is worth nothing if we try to take it in our own power. Instead, it’s of infinite worth because God is the one who gave us our inheritance and guards it in Heaven.
Afraid of being in need
In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
While this inheritance is secured for us in Heaven through Christ Jesus, Peter assures us that we’ll have “grief in all kinds of trials” prior to receiving our full inheritance. This is the “already but not yet” tension of being a Christian. We have an inheritance that we’ve received now and will get to experience fully the future, but there are remnants of sin and death here on Earth.
If we received our entire inheritance immediately, perhaps we’d squander it and slip into belief that the blessing we received was through our own strength. Instead, we wrestle through trials to produce in us a genuine faith. Faith that isn’t set on the things of the world, but on the things of Heaven. Faith that’s worth more than gold.
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
The trials in our lives are there to produce patience, and in our patience, perseverance.
Patience and perseverance are difficult to find in modern culture. We’re used to instant communication, the ability to heat our leftovers in just 60 seconds, and the comfort and security of a couch and some Netflix.
Deep beneath impatience and desire for comfort is fear of being in need. We worry that God won’t show up in the right way or at the right time. But trials teach us patience and perseverance because they force us to confront our fears of not having enough and teach us to rely on God’s provision and timing over our own.
By faith alone
Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when He predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the Gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from Heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.
The point of building a genuine faith is that we would receive salvation. This isn’t a salvation that’s based on anything we’ve done. It’s based on trusting in Jesus Christ alone.
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.
This is the truth on which the Gospel stands: Through God’s grace and our faith in Christ we have been saved. This is the story that God has been telling through all of human history, going back before the time of the prophets. It’s the story that you, your students, and every other human who’s traded their inheritance for sin and death receives the grace that Jesus offers us. All we need to do is trust in Him.
It’s so easy when living out Gospel Advancing to lose sight of the simple beauty of the grace God calls us into. Instead, we can live in anticipation of our divine inheritance and also help the people around us receive the inheritance of grace from God. We don’t have to earn God’s favor by striving to pour out more and more; rather, we can rest in—and labor from—our secure position in His family.
And even though we face trials here on Earth, we can live in confidence, knowing what we have to look forward to—knowing that we’ll have crowns that are worth more than gold to give to our Lord.
Reflect on these questions this week:
- How might you behave differently if you were to live in the confidence of your divine inheritance?
- Are the trials you’re facing in life building patience and perseverance in you?
- How might confidence in your inheritance change the way you advance the Gospel?
