Salvation is not just something that happens to us when we first become Christians. Salvation is something that must happen throughout our lives. This, in every situation, is God’s priority and it is vital that we remember this, otherwise our expectations will be out of alignment with what God is doing. Things will happen in our lives that may cause us to doubt whether God really cares about us. But, if we understand that God’s care for us is expressed primarily through his ongoing work of salvation in our lives, then we may see our situations differently. God caring for you does not mean that you get ease. It means that you get saved. It means that God will do what is necessary to grow your faith and peel away the layers of corruption from your heart. He will dash the false hopes that blind you and undermine the selfish ambitions that rob you of a full life. God will ‘refine you with fire,’ as Peter says in today’s passage, and as a result you will gain a joy that is deep and enduring. Moreover, as your life bears fruit after God’s pruning you will become a monument of praise and glory to God. In this way God will have saved your life from the emptiness of futility. This is God’s priority: salvation. Now is the time of salvation. God’s priority for you is that you gain greater freedom each day; that the destructive forces at work in your heart may be defeated and that your faith may become stronger and stronger. That is his priority for your life. Let it be yours.
Ask God to keep saving you from the things that bind you.
Read 1 Peter 1:1-12
