Sometimes… when I least suspect it, I am overwhelmed by the
Lord’s grace. I had one of those
amazingly beautiful moments recently.
Last month in my post I shared that I have been mentoring two younger
women. The Lord blesses me so much
during our time together. Here is what
He taught us a few weeks ago.
Each week we review a chapter of a book of the Bible. This past month we have been working in 1
Peter. We pretty much go paragraph by
paragraph. When we started in chapter 1
and got to verses 10 through 12 I shared with my now dear friend how incredible
it is that hundreds and hundreds of years prior to Christ walking the earth,
prophets had testified to His coming.
That when they wrote they were inspired by the Holy Spirit and were
writing even for us today… thousands of years later.
Concerning this salvation, the
prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and
with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which
the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of
the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not
serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been
told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent
from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.
1 Peter 1:10-12
We discussed how blessed we are
that the Lord had laid out such a complex plan that even today their words
encourage us.
The following week we were going
through 1 Peter chapter 2. After we read verses 13 through 15 (below) about
submitting to human authority we discussed how the Lord uses the authority on
earth for His plans and that we need to be in prayer for our government as well
as others.
Submit yourselves for the
Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme
authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those
who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God’s
will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people.
1 Peter 2:13-15
I had a handwritten note that I
jotted in my Bible right after that paragraph that referenced Daniel 6. That is the chapter about Daniel and the lions’
den. My friend had not heard the story
of how Daniel was obedient to both God and the king of Babylon.
I once again got the joy of introducing her to one of God’s great people
of the Bible and explained to her that some of the king’s other advisors were
jealous of Daniel and talked the king into issuing a decree stating that for a
month if any person bowed down to anyone but the king, he would be thrown into
the lion’s den to be devoured by the ravenous animals. Daniel, being first a worshiper of the true
and living God did not bow down but continued his normal habits of praying to
the Lord. The jealous guys told the king
in general about Daniel (without using his name) and the king declared he must
be thrown into the lions’ den. Once the
king realized it was his trusted counselor Daniel, he was very disappointed and
as he watched him being tossed to the lions he told Daniel “may your God save
you”. The door was closed and sealed. The
next day the king went back to the den and found Daniel alive and well. Of course, the king was pretty mad by being
manipulated like that, so he threw the other guys into the den who were
devoured immediately.
We discussed how Daniel is a great
example of what these verses 1 Peter 2:13-15 speak about.
He was faithful to God and to the king (did I mention afterward he was
made 2nd in command and the king made everyone honor the God of
Daniel?). By doing good Daniel honored
God and brought Him glory and made the others look foolish.
As we talked I kept staring at my handwritten note… I can
remember writing the note but do not remember how many years ago it was. I think it was about 12 or 15 years. I realized that just like 1 Peter 1:10-12
where Peter stated God had the prophets preach for our benefit, God had me
write down that note just for this moment in time. He knew that one day I would meet with my
friend and we together would study His Word.
He knew that the verses written by Peter would come alive to us with this very example of Daniel AND finding the note was an example of
how God uses events from the past to encourage us. It was not only to benefit
me then but enlightened us today!
Wow! What a humbling
experience that was. We both realized
the depth of how God was working at that moment… of how He wove our lives in
such a way that a simple note would enrich us so much years later… with humble
tears in our eyes we praised our glorious Creator God!
**********************
Below are a few cool things I found while looking for items to highlight in my blog post. 
10:30 PM |
Category:
1 Peter,
Daniel,
devotional,
mentor,
mentoring,
Phyllis Ducey,
prophets
|
10
comments