Studyin' 1 Peter 4 W/ Lena's Journalin' for Today

Do you understand true love is proven to be true through trials and testing? It is not known as true love, unless proven by fire. God does not want love from us in word only, just as we do not expect love from Him in word only.
He willingly suffered to demonstrate His great love for us. He tells us to prove Him, and we do. When we received Him, because we believed Him, we felt we’d be blessed by Him, because we were blessed by who we were drawn to and believed that what we saw in Him was glorious and it drew us to love Him. We loved what we saw He’d so willingly done FOR us.
In that courtship, decisions for a lifetime were made, we did not see much on the side of reciprocal love, like our minds were not necessarily flooded with thoughts of what we could do for Him, which they could have and should have been, and for some, maybe they were. But, we loved Him because we first sensed how great His love for us was/is.
Love must always go through the proof of fire. If it comes through purified, it is true. Suffering is like fire. This causes me to think of Job’s firey trials, and losses, and horrible suffering of spirit, soul and body. Jesus also suffered, in Spirit, soul and body. Both Job & Jesus came out with resurrected life. The question to us today is, will we? Will we even submit ourselves to the trial willingly? Will we find our love for and faith in Him, are gold, or wood, hay, stubble? It must be shown to both us and to God of which composition we are.
It is so much better to find this out during our earth lives, than to burn eternally because we were untried here.
How do trials come? That which proves us? Jesus said, not My will, Lord, but Yours be done, accomplished in and through My life and My death. That started the process. One’s dependency must be tried to be truly in Him.
Let the world try us, they are far more merciful than God. And they may kill off the body, but if tried to be true in faith, they can never have the spirit! Mockery? He is our judge. If they mock us wrongly now, it will be shown later on, in His light. I may not be justified now, but that’s ok, I don’t have to be, just as Jesus did not have to be. He knew His place in God’s heart and that is what mattered. Is that what matters to me, or do I have to be proven right in the here and now, and in the eyes of men?
The house of God should be willingly judged and found to be in Him, even if the finding only happens in a personal part of the heart. If the one being judged finds his heart is truly all God’s, and is humbly all after the Lordship of Christ, that judgment was worth its scrutinization.
When a Christian is persecuted, it probably means he is advancing. He is taking back territory for the Kingdom of God. The enemy gets angry at that. Those who do not take much spiritual ground for the Lord Jesus Christ, do not have a whole lot of opposition!
Now I said enemy opposition, not consequences of the flesh for wrong decisions made, or evil actions having to be paid for. I’m talking onslaught, attacks with no cause.
Who do we trust? Trust is a key issue behind most every action. We say, In God we trust. Those words will be proven to us personally, and to the world around us also. For the world to see Christians tried, and proven, is a God thing. We should withstand in the evil day, and come out shining His glory. They should be able to stand back and see what happens to us, to see if they want to be a part of God’s eternal family also.