Crowned With Glory & Honor Sample

True Love Shines In the Impossible

If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you....Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this matter.

—1 Peter 4:14,16

The word reproached means to be reprimanded, reviled, mocked, and insulted for perceived faults in a harsh or demeaning manner. In other words, it means to be shamed. Peter wrote that when you are reproached, or shamed, the Spirit of glory rests upon you. As the world tries to shame you the Lord will manifest the glory of God upon you more and more.

This truth must become deeply embedded into our consciousness. We must see the truth that as we are under the assault of the enemy, God is revealing His glory in and through us.

Paul reveals this amazing truth in 2 Corinthians 4. He starts by focusing on the glory of God that is inside of us as born-again believers.

For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

—2 Corinthians 4:6

Then in 2 Corinthians 4:7, Paul declares an incredible truth: “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.”

This treasure of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God—this glory, this power, this fullness of God—is inside our earth vessels. The glory of God now resides inside of us. But most of us do not experience much of this glory or see it manifest in and through our lives.

Paul then takes us through what I believe is one of the most overlooked truths in our modern Western gospel: the power and glory of suffering. We have the glory of God in our earthen vessels, but how is it manifested outwardly? Paul shows us.

We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.

—2 Corinthians 4:8-9

Always carrying about in the body the liability and exposure to the same putting to death that the Lord Jesus suffered, so that the [resurrection] life of Jesus also may be shown forth by and in our bodies.

—2 Corinthians 4:10, AMPC

For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

—2 Corinthians 4:11