AGAPE BIBLE FELLOWSHIP

God has selected us to work for Him. But before He can use us, He must make us tough enough and strong enough to stand up to the difficulties of this work. When we use our muscles doing hard work, at the end of the day these muscles hurt. That is how we know our muscles are getting stronger. In this same way, God puts us in situations that are hard for us, and we hurt. But these situations make our spirit and our mind and our attitude stronger. As we become stronger, we are better able to serve God.

The Apostle Peter tells us something about this. Let us read what he says. Turn with me to the book of 1st Peter, chapter 1, starting with Verse. 3, and reading through Verse. 7.

All honor to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for it is by his boundless mercy that God has given us the privilege of being born again.

Now we live with a wonderful expectation because Jesus Christ rose again from the dead. For God has reserved a priceless inheritance for his children. It is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. And God, in his mighty power, will protect you until you receive this salvation, because you are trusting him. It will be revealed on the last day for all to see. So be truly glad! There is wonderful joy ahead, even though it is necessary for you to endure many trials for a while.

These trials are only to test your faith, to show that it is strong and pure. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold - and your faith is far more precious to God than mere gold.

So if your faith remains strong after being tried by fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.

May God bless us as we study this passage of His Word.

God has chosen us to do work for him. In fact, in the scripture we just read, the work He has for us is called "fiery trials". So it is hard work and we need to be tough and strong to do it. God has put us into His training program. I think of it as like going into the military service. The first training is very difficult! We are not used to it, but as our training continues, we grow stronger until we become fully ready to fight the battle ahead of us.

In that same way, God's training program puts us through difficulties so that our faith is tested and strengthened and purified. While we may not enjoy this training, this passage of scripture gives us four things to remember during this testing of our faith:

We are to remember who belong to
Verses 3 and 4 tell us that by God's mercy, we are born into His family and are His children. We belong to God. He loves us, and will take care of us.

We are to remember what god has promised us.
God has promised each of us the priceless gift of eternal life.

We are to remember who will see us through to the end.
God promises to protect us until we reach our final destination, which is heaven. (Vs. 5&6).

We are to remember why god puts us the through trials.
God puts us through trials in order to test and strengthen our faith. Verse. 7 tells us that when our faith is genuine, our life will result in praise and glory when Jesus returns.

We all like to have wonderful, trouble-free spiritual moments, which are sometimes called "mountaintop experiences". But God does not keep us on these spiritual "mountaintops" for very long. God takes us back down to the bottom of the mountain to the cold, hard valley of reality. That is where He has work for us to do.

Fruit grows best in the "valleys". Fruit does not grow on the mountain tops. There is such a thing as you go up a mountain that is called the "timber-line" and nothing grows above that altitude. God wants us to show the fruit of His Spirit and our greatest character development takes place when we take what we have learned on the mountaintop and put it into practice in the valley. The valley is where the fruit of the Spirit grows.

One of the most significant character developments that comes out of trials is this:

When we are in our trials, God comforts us. When we come through a trial, then we can look back and know how important it is to be comforted. Then as we praise God for comforting us, we learn that He comforted us so that we will comfort others.

In the ancient language that the New Testament was written in the word for 'comfort' is the same as the word for 'encouragement'. So when God comforts us we can understand that it means that God is also encouraging us. You will see the word 'comfort' and the word 'encouragement' used together in the following scripture.

Turn with me to 2 Corinthians, chapter 1, Verse. 3, where the Apostle Paul is speaking to the Christians in Corinth. Paul says:

All praise to our God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the source of every mercy and the God who comforts us.

He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When others are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.

You can be sure that the more we suffer for Christ, the more God will shower us with his comfort through Christ. So when we are weighed down with troubles, it is for your benefit and salvation!

For when God comforts us, it is so that we, in turn, can be an encouragement to you. Then you can patiently endure the same things we suffer. We are confident that as you share in suffering, you will also share God's comfort.

The Apostle Paul wrote these words from his own personal experience. May I suggest that you mark this Verse. in your Bibles, because it can be comforting when we need encouragement. This Verse. speaks to us about the troubles that we have to go through and it assures us that God will comfort us as we go through these troubles. God does not keep us out of problems, but He does comfort us during problems, and He does bring us through problems.

Let me write a small part of this same Verse. from a different version of the Bible. I will summarize from a version called the "New Century Version", because it makes the idea a little more clear, at least it does for me. Here is what it says:

...Because God is...full of mercy...He comforts us every time we have trouble. So when other people have trouble, we can comfort them with the same comfort that God gives us...

Yes, the Apostle Paul wrote this from his own personal experience. And his experience was not something you or I would ever want to go through. Paul suffered a lot for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He was put in prison several times; he was shipwrecked; his friends abandoned him; and people almost killed him by throwing large stones at him and then leaving him for dead. All this happened because of his faith in Jesus.

Yet Paul is able to write these words that still comfort us when we are in times of trouble.

What are we to learn from this story about what Paul experienced?

Well, one thing is this:

We do not need to be fearful when there are trials in our lives. No matter what we have to face, Jesus is with us during all of it.

Another thing we learn is that Jesus will comfort and strengthen us.

When Jesus comforts and strengthens us, we are not to just retreat into our shell.

"Why not?"

Because this scripture passage teaches us that the comfort and strength Jesus gives us is to be shared with other people. Does that mean we are to only comfort other Christians, or are we to comfort all people?

What did Jesus do?

He healed and comforted all kinds of people. He is the example we should follow. Think of the story of the Good Samaritan. Neither he nor the person he helped was a Christian. So the answer is yes, we are to comfort everyone.

Here is key point of this teaching:

God comforts and encourages us when we go through times of trouble. We are to comfort and encourage other people when they are going through their times of trouble. God is not asking us to do something for other people that He has not already done for us. I like that.

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