A Shielded Inheritance

Storm Approaching

 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,  and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 1 Peter 1:3-5

I’m prone to ‘spiritual panic.” I see the condition of the world, especially in the West, and I think to myself, “We’ll all be doomed!”

The promise found in 1 Peter is very comforting. Put simply: through faith we have an inheritance. This inheritance is preserved for us in heaven and as we wait, God’s power shields us. For the Christians in Peter’s day, this wasn’t theory. As they were under intense persecution, this promise had to be lived and acted upon.

If we did an honest audit, where do would we find our security? In the largeness of our church? In our church’s worship team? In our doctrinal basis? Or is it, as Peter suggests, as it should be, in the person of Christ who is the guarantor of our salvation. We KNOW what it should be, but is it?

God often reveals himself through weakness – Christ epitomising that. We could learn a lesson. Our strength lies in our vulnerability and our dependence on Christ, and not on the structures and programmes we build.

Our inheritance will not spoil or fade but anything we build, even in our church communities which is not on Christ our foundation, will certainly rot to nothing.