The fact that God does all the work in our salvation leaves us no room for boasting. Because he loves us, he gave his Son. His Son paid for our sins. The Holy Spirit works on our hearts, causing us to believe and making us into brand new people. We are drawn along, pulled toward God by his love and compassion. When we return to him—prodigals all, he runs toward us with open arms.
As I’ve reflected on the early chapters of 1 Peter these past few posts, I’ve examined our frail human condition and our new identity in Christ. God never forgets us. He has made us alive, and he transforms us. Today I want to dig more deeply into how God’s love gives us a mission.
God’s choice of me astounds me daily. I am a broken, arrogant, self-reliant firstborn, yet I have felt the tender wooing of Jesus tugging at my heart since my earliest days. He knew I would harden my heart, wreck my life, return to him, and then twist my faith into legalism, hypocrisy, and bitterness-scarred interactions with my husband, my children, and my parents. He knew he would then have to pulverize me to powder to bring me to repentance. He knew I would be a tough nut to crack. Yet he chose me anyway. Why?
For some reason, God loves me, and he loves you. This is more certain than death and taxes. His undeserved kindness and mercy lavished upon us is stunning. But, what other considerations went into his pursuit of us? Why choose us?
What is God’s motive for wooing us particularly? Other than the effect on us personally, why does he do this?
- God knows when he gains us, he has a powerful tool to demonstrate his redemptive love to the watching world. If he can save us, he can save anyone.
- God desires us to be models of his kindness and love, showing the same mercy to others. Because there is tenderness, affection, compassion, and friendship with God for even us, we can draw from this well of love and give it to others.
- God longs for us to use our brokenness to draw other broken people to him. If he can redeem us, twisted in the particular way in which we are bent by sin, he can redeem others in like condition.
One of the most glorious facts of our reclamation is that God takes all of our mess, even the most hideous parts, intending to use it all in his glorious plan of redemption. We get to be part of the rescue team!
No one can comfort people who are suffering like one who has suffered in similar fashion. Jesus, our High Priest, is our most tender Comforter because he has suffered in all things as we have. We can turn to him with everything.
Likewise, he will bring to us the people who have suffered in the same ways we have. By doing this, he redeems not only their suffering, but ours. All our trials now have a purpose and a use. Through these we were refined and came to recognize our need for Christ. Only a fellow sufferer can tell others about the hope and help available in Christ. As he helped us, so he will help them.
All our lives, there they are. The Holy Spirit orchestrates the meetings. Our task is to aim them toward Christ.
Mindful of the Savior’s leading within us, we must be vigilant, scanning the horizon for those seekers Jesus is leading to us. They are coming. Bringing others in for adoption into God’s family is our mission. Watch for them!
The rescue mission is not only about our own reclamation. It is about those God wants us to bring in, so they can receive the same comfort and mercy we have received in Christ.
Do you see them coming? How has God shaped your life to be part of the rescue mission?
All images except Christ: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Wow. Umm. Got saved as a young girl, so it was my mom and I in a home where Dad was terrifying to me. His anger was explosive and still is, but as a little girl, the Lord saved me so I had a refuge in Him – I would have crumbled and disappeared without the Lord in my heart. He was my refuge often throughout sexual abuse, introvert awkwardness and being a “sandwhich” kid between two powerful siblings. I understand 1 Peter exiles inthe sense that they felt alone and weird in a world darkened by sin and not accepted, but accepted and sanctified by God. That was my life growing up – me, my Mom and God on an island of craziness. I picked up a lot of spiritual dirt during that time and hid in my knowledge of the Word which made me arrogant and bitter and resentful and a very angry woman – and wife and mother. Until the Lord enabled me to forgive as He had forgiven me and to let Him be my protector and shield and shepherd. I have sought forgiveness for all the hurt my hurtful and sinful responses to my own hurt had caused others. He is restoring one relationship at a time in His time. He uses me to talk one-on-one with women who have also been hurt as I was and how the Word of God heals and God loves and is faithful through it all and in it all. He is using me in the prisons and in the halls of the church and world to speak the grace of God into broken people who struggle to make sense of it all and how God is there for them to redeem what is broken and make something beautiful in and through them. I am humbled – I am not beautiful without His hand of workmanship in the pain and suffering of my life. He certainly gets all the glory as I was lost and now I am found, restored by the touch of my Abbas hand.
You have a powerful testimony! It seems the more trial and brokenness we’ve had, the more people we are able to reach with the redemptive message. As God draws those he has chosen, he works our ugly messes together to bring a powerful message of grace and mercy that attracts others. This is our mission, to take that message to people who’ve been hurt in similar ways. Each of us has a unique “target market” for the gospel, a particular group with whom our message of God’s grace resonates most powerfully. This doesn’t mean we can’t share the gospel with others. We can. But I’m sure you know from experience, too, that God brings these people who have been hurt in similar ways to us, so we can administer the medicine of God’s word to them. We know how to do it, because we’ve taken the same medicine.
Needed words for this weary momma today. I’m so thankful God can and does use my brokenness to display His glory.
BTW, it was lovely to meet you last week when you stopped by my house with your precious momma.
It was lovely to meet you, too! Your little guys are delightful! I amen your comment about brokenness. It fills me with such joy to know that the Lord makes beauty of my ashes and uses even the worst parts of my life for his glory and his purposes!
Melinda, this is SO GOOD! I love your humility. You know that God knows the proud from afar but draws near to the humble. It does take a lot to get through the pride of a first-born … at least in my case! I’ve been through the breaking that had to come to this over-confident, proud first-born! I now am so ashamed when I think of that know-it-all attitude I had! I especially wonder how I could have been SO deceived! I know and understand SO LITTLE!!!
Anyway, that’s why I find your transparency and humility so delightful! I see the Jesus in you! Thanks for allowing God to use those gifts He has given and the life experiences He has allowed to honor and glorify Jesus, which always touches the lives of all He has planned to touch through you!
Love and gratitude,
Aunt Jackie
I write to encourage others. I’m often writing truth to encourage myself. I’m glad God can use me. There was a time I thought I could never be used because of what I’d done: http://wp.me/p2yxe2-eg
It is always amazing to me that He would choose me for His rescue team–the skinny one in glasses, second-born, in the second-hand clothes, always on the outside looking in, never feeling accepted. It always surprises me that He uses me, but when He sends someone, His Spirit makes it plain, and since He has met me at the point of my need–every time–I can share with them what He has done, being careful to point them to Him as their source of help. I will not always be here! What a joy to know that I am His, accepted, chosen, beloved, righteous and holy in Jesus!
That’s how he works! It’s miraculous that he transforms us and has a plan to redeem and utilize all we are, all we have been, and all we will be. Being part of the mission gives us the joy of bringing God’s love to others. (P.S. I think you’re amazing!)
I think you’re amazing, too! You were a second-born who COULD keep up with the first-born! You REALLY worked hard, and you did everything your big sis did, though she was 2 years, 3 months, and 13 days older than you! How often is it that the big sis hears their mom say over and over, “Why can’t you be more like your little sister?” You did everything SO fast, and I was always methodical and slow, something that drove our momma crazy. She wanted me to be fast like you! You were the amazing one, as Melinda said! She is right! Melinda saw what all you could accomplish … truly amazing!
Those are very sweet words, Jackie and Melinda. Fast and fiesty!! I was too fiesty for my own good. It hasn’t been very long ago that I learned that my Daddy called me fiesty, like he was, he said. Fiesty can get you into lots of trouble. I never pictured our Daddy as fiesty. God uses me anyway. He had a lot of work to do in changing my heart! He is the Amazing One, and His grace is amazing!
Did you girls miss those twinkly eyes? Of course, your daddy was feisty. He had to be feisty to marry into the Stuart clan.