Bring Glory to God

BRING GLORY TO GOD

 Recently I was reading (1 Peter 4:10-11) from my NLT version of the scripture and was amazed when I read the words "Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ. All glory and power to Him forever and ever! Amen". I'm sure I had read this passage from Peter many times in the past, but this time from this newer version this closing phrase from verse 11 of chapter 4 really caught my attention! So I read the whole chapter again to get the truth in context, and was particularly touched by verse 8 and 14. I would suggest that you read this chapter over again a few times in several different translations carefully and see what the Holy Spirit will reveal to you. In the NLT version the heading over verses 1-11 is called "Living for God", and verses 12 to the end of the chapter is called "Suffering for Being a Christian". I don't know many people who look forward to suffering for any reason, but scripture is very clear that if we intend to live a life that pleases our Father we can expect some suffering.

Verse 8 states "Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins". The Greek word translated as love here is [Agape] which is the same word that is used in (John 3:16) and several other place when speaking of God's kind of love. And verse 14 states "So be happy when you are insulted for being a Christian, for then the glorious Spirit of God rests upon you". So if we combine the intent of Peter in the overall theme of this chapter we will see that the possible suffering we may be expected to endure as a follower of Jesus should not surprise us. In fact I think the overall theme of scripture is that "everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution". (2 Tim 3:12). There is no way to escape it, and anyone who tells you that a life with Jesus is a wonderful "problem free" existence is  lying to you, and is either very ignorant of scripture or else are false prophets. We need to have a basic understanding of both the OT scripture as well as the NT to grasp the need for understanding the Gospel of the Kingdom. And when we read (Matt 24:14) we can see how important Jesus considers this to be, "And the Good News of the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, so that all nations will hear it; and then the end will come". The "end" He refers to here is the end of life as we have known it on Planet Earth. So we must realize how important it is that all the "unreached peoples groups" hear the gospel, some of which don't yet have the scripture in their native tongue!!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer                                       02/08/13