Intro to "Be Hopeful" (1 Pet. 5:10-14)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/25/2017 11:48 PM

My Worship Time                                                                                          Focus:  “Be Hopeful”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                      Reference:  1 Pet. 5:10-14

            Message of the verses:  “10 After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. 11 To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen. 12 Through Silvanus, our faithful brother (for so I regard him),I have written to you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it! 13 She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you greetings, and so does my son, Mark. 14 Greet one another with a kiss of love. Peace be to you all who are in Christ.”

            What we have in verses 10-14 are the last verses from Peter’s first letter.  Dr. Wiersbe entitles this last section “Be Hopeful,” as this is the name of the last main point in his outline.  We will just look at the introduction to these verses this evening and they there are four sub-points under this main point.  They are as follows “We have God’s grace,” “We know we are going to glory,” “Our present suffering is only for a while,” and the last sub-point is “We know that our trials are building Christian character.”

            Dr. Wiersbe writes the following paragraph for his introductory material for these five verses:  “Peter closed on a positive note and reminded his readers that God knew what He was doing and was in complete control.  No matter how difficult the fiery trial may become, a Christian always has hope.  Peter gave several reasons for this hopeful attitude.”  The reasons for this hope are the four sub-points that we have already mentioned.

            I mentioned in an earlier SD that I cannot find the last Spiritual Diaries that go along with this last chapter in 1 Peter and that is why I am writing them out.  The first chapter or so of 2 Peter is also missing and so once we are done looking at the end of 1 Peter we will then move onto 2 Peter.  Once all of that is complete then I will go back to what I have been doing which is putting one older Spiritual Diary on in the morning along with continue to write Spiritual Diaries for the book of Acts.  My plans for the evening devotions is to begin the book of Ephesians.  I have to say that Ephesians is a very difficult book to study, but we will with the help of the Spirit of God get through it.

7/26/2017 12:04 AM