In 1 Peter, Chapter 4, look at verse 12.  Peter is basically telling us that we’re living in a time when sobriety is necessary.  We need to get serious and realize what’s at hand.  The admonition just prior to this, the context, of every one of us making sure that we’re in place, gifts that God has placed in the body.  We need to find our place and work together in harmony to be able to be victorious, verse 10 says, “good stewards.”  Then he comes down into verse 12 and says, “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you.”  We know there’s the gospel being preached today that if you accept Jesus then everything in your life is going to be hunky-dory.  Your marriage is going to be fixed instantaneously.  Every night your husband comes home, little cupid angels, little fat guys with harps and stuff and music will start playing.  Dinner will be served, background music playing.  That’s just not where we live, folks.  So, if you get thrown off course and you get shaken because all of a sudden, things are not peaceful.  People are getting sick.  We have tragedies and adversities coming.  Afflictions are coming from without and persecutions, and people are saying all manner of evil against us.  “I just lost my job because of my faith,” and somehow this shakes you up.  The admonition is, “What’s your problem?  Don’t you know that’s what we signed up for?  It’s already been prophesied that all this stuff is coming.”  Are you ready?  Do you understand this is the environment we’re living in?

Paul was going to be one of the greatest spiritual leaders in the nation.  He came from means and was going to prosper way beyond that.  Why do you think he was being tempted to pay off the king so he would release him?  Do you remember in the Scripture?  The king was trying to get money from Paul.  Rejected of his household, his friends, lost his position.  Think about Job.  Paul is going through this, spiritually, and then the consequences of this life.  We see him being beaten, we see him being stoned and left outside the city for dead.  We see him shipwrecked, we see him being beaten with a cat o’ nine tails and what is his response to all of that?  He looks at you and me and says, “Look at me.  I’m here representing the apostles.  Look at me, beaten, despised, hated, cast down, without food.”  How should we respond?  He responds with that same spirit of James, count it all joy, praise God, when you fall into diverse temptations,” James, Chapter 1 says.  “Knowing this, that the trying of our faith works patience.”  Let patience have its complete work, let it come to fruition, that you might be made mature, wanting nothing, praise God!  How are we going to get mature?  By oppression, by satanic attacks, by the loss of our well-being.

We don’t like to hear these kinds of things.  “This isn’t very encouraging.”  No, it’s not, but it’s something that’s edifying.  It will build you up.