In the Hands of the God of All Grace
And after a little while, the God of all Grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To Him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.
(1 Peter 5:10-11)
The end.
I’m so grateful for Peter’s closing.
He has chosen his most encouraging and tender words to leave for us, his Holy Oddballs.
As I’ve studied through the book of 1 Peter over the last several months, I have noted that Peter’s challenge is not an easy one.
He’s admitting, in fact, this call is down right difficult.
His ask is for the recipients of his letter to live set apart (between two worlds – this one and the coming Kingdom), to be different (social misfits), and his only assurance is that they can be certain of suffering.
And, so, the questions that sits heavy on my heart – perhaps yours, as well – are these:
Am I going to be OK?
Is it worth it?
Will I make it through unscathed and still remain faithful to the Lord who rescued me and awaits me in heaven?
Peter anticipates these questions, and, he practically shouts, “YES!”
I offered this study with a bit of a fun twist…and, when I coined the phrase, Holy Oddball, I meant it to be a bit quirky, curious, and attention-commanding.
However, I realize it’s so much more. It’s demanding. It’s costly. It comes at a great price.
It means choosing submission, when you’d rather just follow your want-to.
It means enduring suffering, when you’d rather escape all pain.
It means remaining ceaselessly alert, when you’d rather put your brain in neutral.
It means serving others, when you’d rather isolate (hard words for this little introvert to type).
And like the Psalmist, we want to cry out, “How long, O Lord (Psalm 13:1)?”
Peter doesn’t ignore that question; he tells us “after a little while,” meaning suffering is seasonal; but, it will come to an end.
It may be part of our Holy-Oddball-Story, but it’s not the end-all-story.
We have a God-of-all-Grace!
(Please re-read the words on the meme at the top of this blog post. Several times, in fact. Let them sink deeply inside your heart.)
The God of All Grace promises Himself to us:
His presence and His work.
He never delegates the work, He performs it.
He will faithfully grant us divine resources, restoration and redemption….always!
One author of a commentary I read explained it this way:
He will restore what feels worn down,
Confirm what feels shaky,
Strengthen what feels weak, and…
Establish what feels uncertain.
Peter is reminding us, we don’t just grit our teeth and hope to survive…we entrust ourselves to a God who has promised to finish what He began in us.
No wonder Peter ends with worship…He knows:
God’s got this!
Rest easy, my fellow Holy Oddballs…
(Thankful to ChatGPT for AI generated images on this series.)