"Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls." 1 Peter 1:8-9
Did you catch what Peter said is the outcome of our faith? It is joy. Joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.
The salvation of our souls is not the end. The goal of the salvation of our souls is to be filled with joy inexpressible when we see the One whom we have believed in without seeing for so long.
These past weeks at the Boardwalk I have been filled many times over with joy inexpressible because I have seen my Savior in the faces of my fellow staff members, in the faces of brothers and sisters I've met on the boardwalk, in the faces of the pastors and teenagers that come from churches all over the US to spend a week helping us out.
We are doing ministry, and we are also constantly discussing in an escalating fountain of joy the things that our God is and does. We are His and He is ours, and so we are filled with delight.
Joy inexpressible is indeed the only way to express what I have felt. There is nothing that delights me as much as celebrating our God with His people, and telling those that don't know, about Him.
We live in a time of faith. We must believe in a God we cannot see. We are drawn into a relationship with a being that we cannot see, but it will not always be so.
Now we see through a glass dimly, but one day we shall see and know in full, even as we have been known.
We continue to minister to those who are indifferent or disregarding of the gospel because we have been filled with a joy inexpressible.
If we were not constantly filled with an expression of God's presence then we would quickly run dry.
Yet, ministry is not the end.
Ministry is temporary, as is faith, and hope. Faith and hope will be completed and fulfilled, but love will abide always.
We could never be spurred on by love for people we don't know. At best we can only love the concept of them. We are driven to continue to preach the gospel out of love for our God.
The more unfaithful we were, the more faithful He has been, and the more humbled we are at His love.
"Love so, amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all."
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
"Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
"In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
"In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
"Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
"No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us."
The more you tell others about your excitement in God, the more you will find yourself excited about him. It's kind of a exponential effect because the God we rejoice in is infinite and the love He has poured out upon us is beyond any we could fathom.
I write these things that your joy may be made full.
