There are several podcasts I follow. In one of them, Stirring Words, one of the hostesses, Kimberly Taylor, said that she’d been “slow reading” her Bible. This is the opposite approach to what I’ve always done.
She said she wouldn’t even take a whole chapter, just a portion of a chapter as divided by subheadings, and ponder that during her devotional time. So, I the speed reader, decided to give it a try.
My Bible is an AMPC translation which does not have subheadings. My bookmark was at the beginning of 1st Peter.
This past weekend I served at a Christian Women’s retreat of which I’ve been a part for several years. Not surprisingly, this was filled with good and bad. The good is obvious, women’s lives were changed. Several of these women either were, or had children who were, on the autism spectrum, and my talk had a focus on that challenging aspect of my spiritual walk.
The bad, satan was on the attack. The latter normally takes the form of subtle mental and/or physical attacks. This time, it became very clear by the end of the weekend that the attack was occurring on a spiritual plane in the supernatural realm.
Nonetheless, I persevered despite a severe Aspie meltdown Saturday evening and a few physical issues, along with an obvious attack on my brain and spirit (two separate parts of a human being). During the last activity of the retreat, God allowed me to see that what I thought was a mental issue was in reality a spiritual attack. I sought prayer from people I trusted. . . and . . .
Monday was a new day, and it was a free day. It was wonderful.
First on the agenda, read and ingest 1 Peter chapter 1.
The first few verses were great with much truth revealed and ingested; but then came verse 7 which reads: “So that [the genuineness] of your faith may be tested, [your faith] which is infinitely more precious than the perishable gold which is tested and purified by fire. [This proving of your faith is intended] to redound to [your] praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) is revealed.
On first read, it seemed as though something new had happened—I had discovered a misprint in my Bible. That has never happened before!
Redound? Never heard of it! Surely it should say “rebound”! Even if that didn’t make a lot of sense in the context.
Research revealed the following:
Definition redound:
“contribute greatly to (a person’s credit or honor):
“his latest diplomatic effort will redound to his credit”
synonyms:
contribute to · be conducive to · result in · lead to · effect · have an effect on · affect · conduce to
contribute greatly to (a person’s credit or honor):
“his latest diplomatic effort will redound to his credit”
synonyms:
contribute to · be conducive to · result in · lead to · effect · have an effect on · affect · conduce to
So, 1 Peter 1:7 could be interpreted as:
So that [the genuineness] of your faith may be tested, [your faith] which is infinitely more precious than the perishable gold which is tested and purified by fire. [This proving of your faith is intended] to contribute greatly to [your] praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) is revealed.
In other words, the spiritual attack (yes, there is no other word that describes some of the things that happened over the weekend) was a testing of the genuineness of my faith, which is more precious than gold, and would result greatly in my praise and glory and honor when Jesus is revealed; I will get to hear him say “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
What a blessing! And what evidence of the truth of Romans 8:28!
The blessings continued on Monday. I got a good chunk of work done around the house.
And I had some fun starting to crochet this beautiful scarf which is made out of a worsted weight merino/nylon blend called “Autumn Brew” made by Bad Sheep Yarn https://badsheepyarn.com. Check out their website—they have some beautiful colorways.
That’s all for today. Will try to be more diligent about updating this thing more frequently.
God bless you in all you do.
JLM in Euroclydon 