God is Not Mad at You
1 Peter 4:12 (NASB95)1 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you;
It is believed that Peter wrote this just prior to his death at the hands of Nero. We know he didn’t write it after! Nero, who was a particularly evil leader, used the Christians as a scapegoat and the reason that Rome burned. Historians believed that Nero actually set the fires so that he could rebuild Rome in his image. But when people began to point the finger at him, he blamed the Christians and subsequently tortured and killed many Christians. One of his favorites was to take a Christian, dip them in tar, nail them to a post and light them on fire in his gardens.
Although they had done nothing wrong or against the government they were blamed. So Peter in preparation for them says, “don’t be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you.” Don’t be surprise when difficult days come because in them you share in the sufferings of Christ. We cannot add anything to the perfect sacrifice of the lamb of God who took away the sins of the world, but we can demonstrate His grace by how we deal with our own fiery trial.
Every pleasure and every pain is a test from God to see if we will treasure Him above all and a temptation from Satan to see if we will make an idol out of our comfort and our pleasure.
Difficult days do not mean that God is mad at you. He is not mad at you any more. The wrath of God was met in you when you came to Christ for salvation. But it does mean that God is lighting us for a dark world to see His splendor.
I love you, Pastor Randy