To Encourage You

1 Peter 3:17 “For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.”

There is something that is incredibly freeing in being a follower of Jesus Christ.  Actually, there are many things about such a life that are freeing, but it’s the one thing mentioned in the verse above to which my mind goes as I read it.  It is incredibly freeing to know that God is sovereign over all of life.  That means He is the absolute ruler of heaven and earth. And although He gives men the freedom to make their own choices, it is God’s ultimate will that will prevail in the end.  

We see perhaps the greatest single example of this in the crucifixion.  God sent His own Son into the world as a sacrifice for sin.  Everywhere He went He preached the Word of God, for He WAS God’s Word in flesh and blood.  But men opposed Him. We are told that “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11).  Ultimately, to shut Him up, they murdered Him.  To His disciples, it seemed that the whole universe had unraveled before them.  It all seemed so out of control. But it wasn’t – not even a little bit!  In Acts 4 we have the account of Peter and John preaching that Jesus had risen from the dead. The Jewish ruling council was outraged and forbade them from preaching and threatened to punish them if they continued.  When Peter and John report this to the other Christians, the believers immediately cried out to God with the following prayer: “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’ – for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, TO DO WHATEVER YOUR HAND AND YOUR PLAN HAD PREDESTINED TO TAKE PLACE.”  It was with these words that these believers pointed back to the prophecy of Psalm 2 which foretold that the rulers would plot against the Messiah, and then fulfill that prophecy in the wickedness of their deeds. Yet, it was all planned and predestined beforehand. 

The God Who created the entire universe rules over that universe in every way.  We have a shadow of this same thing in the Old Testament in the life of Joseph after his own brothers had rejected him and sold him into slavery.  As Joseph, to their shock, finally revealed himself to them, he said this, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20). 

Which brings us to the verse above. What about OUR suffering? What about when things seem to be spinning out of control in our own lives? What about situations when we might be mistreated, misunderstood, or treated unfairly all while we are doing our best to live for our Lord?  Or what about when we fail miserably, or otherwise sin and suffer as a result? Where is God in all of this? Is He still sovereign then?  The answer is, “of course He is.”  Sometimes we suffer for doing good as His children. Sometimes we suffer at His rebuke for our sin. In either case He is sovereign. In either case He is in control.  In all of it He is fulfilling His ultimate purpose for us.  We are never outside of His sovereign care.  It may seem otherwise. We may not be able to understand. But we don’t have to. We only need to trust Him, for hasn’t He told us to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6)?  And that includes when our ways pass through the valley of suffering; even the valley of the shadow of death.