Supernatural Joy and Genuine Love

A smear campaign can travel faster than truth, and the first Christians felt it—accused of treason, atheism, immorality, even cannibalism. We open that history not to chase outrage, but to ask a harder question: what profile should the world see when it looks at followers of Jesus today? Rather than staging a public-relations blitz, Peter writes to scattered believers with a steadier strategy—endure with joy, live with integrity, and let the gospel rewrite minds one person at a time.

We walk through Peter’s surprising claim that Christians can “greatly rejoice” even while distressed by trials. That joy isn’t a mood hack; it’s rooted in a living hope, a living Lord, and an inheritance that can’t fade. We draw a sharp line between happiness and joy, share Joni Eareckson Tada’s vulnerable morning prayer, and name four truths that reframe suffering: trials are not eternal, never wasteful, always painful, and relentlessly refining. From helicopter parenting to the goldsmith’s fire, the pictures are plain: God doesn’t swoop in to spare us from every hardship; he forges endurance and maturity through them.

The heart of the conversation lands here: loving an unseen Christ. You haven’t seen him, yet you love him; you don’t see him now, yet you believe and rejoice. That unseen loyalty is the test—do we love Jesus or just the good life we hope he gives? By holding joy and sorrow together, Peter offers a resilient, hopeful profile for a skeptical age: gracious, grateful, future-focused people who endure with courage and reflect the face of Christ through the heat. If this resonates, subscribe, share the episode with a friend who needs sturdy hope, and leave a review to help others find the show.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Joy, Suffering, And The Cross
• 1:52 Cultural Profiling Then And Now
• 3:27 Rome’s Accusations Against Christians
• 7:00 Peter’s Aim: Endurance Over Activism
• 10:03 The Christian Profile Of Hope
• 11:33 Rejoicing Amid Trials Explained
• 15:06 Happiness Versus Joy
• 18:56 Johnny Erickson Tada’s Daily Prayer
• 20:57 Four Realities Of Trials
• 25:11 Trials Are Not Eternal
• 28:43 Trials Are Never Wasteful
• 33:41 Parenting, Pain, And Maturity
• 38:54 Trials Are Always Painful

Transcript

Joy, Suffering, And The Cross

SPEAKER_00 0:38

That's exactly the expression, although just a fraction of the pain of Jesus Christ. His suffering, his separation from his Father, which we cannot even begin to understand when he was drenched with the sin of the world, 1 John 2, 2. And it says, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. Aren't you glad that he endured the cross, accepted the shame so that you and I could be born again. Today we hear a lot about profiling, profiling people, and I agree we ought to be careful. Just because someone is from the Middle East, has a dark complexion and a beard doesn't mean they're a terrorist. Just because they're Hispanic and working out in landscaping doesn't mean they don't have a green card and they're illegal. Just because they're young and black doesn't mean they're up to trouble. Just because they're white doesn't mean they're prejudice. But frankly, this isn't a problem just in this country. If you travel around the world, you discover it's a problem everywhere because it is a problem of the heart. The gospel is blind to all of that. I remember 20 years ago or so visiting one of our global staff members in Japan, and we were walking around Kagoshima, and I just noticed people looking at me. I was a little taller than the average individual, but he told me, he said, look, they're recognizing that you're more than likely an American. And he said, they are assuming, they're profiling you, they assume two things about you. One, that you have AIDS, and two, that you're carrying a gun. So they think you're dangerous. And they're leery of you. He said, He said, they've all watched Chuck Norris on TV. And they think you're going to break something too if you get too close to them. Well, I don't break things unless I try to fix them. That's the way it works with me. But that was up for profiling. When Peter wrote his first letter to the scattered believers, their communities were beginning to develop an erroneous profile of Christianity and Christians. In fact, if you read historians like Tacitus, a first century Roman senator, who's fascinating to read, and others, they reveal how Christianity was coming to be regarded and assumed. And if you were a Christian, then you were this or that. For one thing, Christians were being viewed as treasonous to the crown because they wouldn't acknowledge the divinity of Caesar. Secondly, they were profiled as atheists, if you can imagine, they were viewed as atheists because they rejected the pantheon of Greek and Roman gods and wouldn't worship them. And instead, Tacitus wrote with cynicism, they worshiped a dead man. They were considered bad for business because they wouldn't get into the temple practice. In fact, in Ephesus, you had this one event where the silversmiths were losing money because Christians weren't buying the little idols, and so they viewed Christians as bad for the economy. Wherever Christianity took root, the economy dropped. That was the profile. In addition, the Christians didn't fit the politically correct notions of morality, the correct ideals of the Roman view of ego and self and power and licentiousness. The early church is going to follow the New Testament model of sexual purity. They're going to condemn adultery and they're going to condemn fornication. They're going to condemn homosexuality as being outside the bounds of God's design. And they're going to deliver this message while their own emperor has married both a man and a woman, has had numerous escapades with married women. So they obviously don't fit in. Even darker elements that would be hard for us to imagine, but darker elements of their profile was being developed. And I'll give you a kabilab. One of the rumors that had begun to circulate in the first century was that Christians were cannibals. They were meeting in secret to eat somebody's flesh and drink somebody's blood. So they were in secret cannibalistic. They were also viewed as hypocrites because although they condemned their culture for sexual immorality, they were holding in private these things they called love feasts, where they were encouraged to kiss one another. So they were obviously involved in holding secret orgies. Add to that profile, Christians were being viewed as anti-family because their religious leader said this is going to split the family up. He demanded their loyalty over and above, loyalty to parents and siblings. And so they were anti-family. Bad for family. So Christians are actually being profiled as anti-business and anti-family and anti-patriotic and anti-social and anti-Caesar and immorally deviant and cannibalistic and atheistic. Tacitus writes in the first century, these words, and I quote them, these who had been given the vulgar name of Christians were detested for the abominations they perpetrated. In other words, they're committing all these abominations. And the founder of this sect, Christus by name, had been executed by Pontius Pilate, and this dangerous superstition, though put down for the moment, broke out again, not only in Judea, the original home of this pest, imagine that, but it's breaking out even in Rome. Another Roman historian adds, because of these issues, this religion was slowly prohibited by laws which were enacted and by edicts which eventually proclaimed that it was unlawful to be a Christian. Like much of our world to this day, by the way. Not here, not yet. Now, as Peter is writing to these scattered believers, and I invite you your attention back to his first letter, it's becoming perilous to be a Christian. This is why Peter's letter, by the way, doesn't deal with any theological heresy or error. He doesn't get on to the body, the church, the local church. Doesn't deal with any of that. And what he does instead is merely writes a letter to encourage the believer who is facing growing public ridicule and opposition and scorn and financial loss and physical loss and all the distress and suffering that is sort of mounting up. They're being profiled incorrectly and tragically. Now, I do want to say this as we continue the introduction for just a few more moments here. What Peter does not do in his letter is tell the Christians that their major mission in life is to rewrite, you know, the community-wide viewpoint. He doesn't tell them to go and straighten everybody out. He doesn't tell them to march on Nero. He doesn't tell them, you know, to demand their rights, which are being erased. He doesn't tell them to, you know, here's how you can demand better treatment. What Peter does instead is to encourage the believers to remain faithful to Jesus Christ. And if they do any rewriting of their profile, it's going to happen one individual at a time. Those people that live next to you and work next to you and watch you and belong to your extended family, one individual at a time, by means of the gospel will find out what true Christianity is all about. Change the mind of one person at a time by means of the gospel. Now, so far we've covered in chapter one what we could turn around now and sort of view with that perspective of what ought to be the profile that our world sees in us as Christians. We are, verse two says, basically people who ought to be marked by graciousness. We are people who should be known for this internal spirit of peace, verse 2. We're people that always seem to be grateful for something, grateful for what we have, verse 3. We're people who talk to our founder and talk about our leader as somebody who isn't dead but is alive, verse 3. We're people of certainty about our future destiny, verse 3. We're people who are anticipating this incredible inheritance, which comes at the revelation of Christ, verse 4. We're people who talk often of that other world. We're people who seem to be really interested in that one, interested in this one, but we can't wait for the next one. Verse 5. This is the true and accurate description of the Christian that we should measure ourselves against. Now, the next four verses Peter's going to give us two more characteristics to add to the profile of the believer. Here's the first. We're people who rejoice in the midst of difficulty. We're people who rejoice in the midst of difficulty, and then secondly, we'll get to that later. We're people who follow an invisible deity. Those are the two points, and I'm going to stuff about 30 points in between, okay? Verse 6. In this you greatly rejoice. Now we do have to stop there for just a moment. This opening phrase, in this, ties back to the previous description of our living Lord and our living hope and the inheritance. He says, in those things you greatly rejoice. You greatly rejoice. That's an intense, expressive term. And when you think about what he's going to talk about, when he talks about trials, it really doesn't seem to fit here. But it really does. Now Peter uses that expression to greatly rejoice as bookends. So I wanted to cover these verses. If you see in verse 6, you could circle that and then draw a line down to verse 8. He's going to talk about greatly rejoicing in verse 6. Then as he begins to wrap up his thoughts in verse 8, he's going to refer again to Christians who greatly rejoice. They serve as sort of bookends to his thoughts. And let me just add here that this idea of greatly rejoicing does not exist in secular Greek. No secular Greek author that we know of to date has ever used that phrase. In fact, think about it. People in the world don't talk about joy. I have such joy. I talk about happiness. Why? Because happiness is dependent upon happenings. When happenings are good, we're happy. Not joy. In fact, I think about the fact that our world, instead of talking about joy, has been talking about happiness a long time, the United States Declaration of Independence, ratified by Congress July 4th, 1776, said that we all have the right to pursue life, liberty, and what? The pursuit of happiness. Which I think is rather ironically written, because since that time, all of America has officially been pursuing happiness, but nobody's been able to catch it. Right? And you can't catch it. Because what happens in life isn't always happy. And you can never really quite hold on to it. Happiness is externally generated. Joy is internally generated. Joy is a glad and settled conviction of God's sovereign control. Galatians 5.22. So happiness then is natural. And we experience it. Happy things happen, and we're happy. Joy is supernatural. And it can only come by means of our submission to the Holy Spirit no matter what happens. Couldn't help but think of Johnny Erickson Tada. You're familiar with this quadruplegic that's impacted the lives of many people through her testimony. And that she was interviewed a few years ago. In fact, the interview covered a little bit of what she had said or what had happened at a conference she had spoken of recently. She mentioned this in the interview. She said, after one session, a woman came up to me and said, Johnny, you always look so together. You always look so happy in your wheelchair. I wish I had your joy. And Johnny responded, Well, I don't do it. In fact, let me tell you how my morning went today. In fact, this is my average day. After my husband Ken leaves for work at 6 a.m., I'm alone until I hear the front door open at 7 a.m. That's when a friend has come over. While I listen to her make coffee, I pray as I prayed this morning, and many mornings, Lord, my friend will soon give me a bath, get me dressed, sit me up in my wheelchair, brush my hair, brush my teeth, and get me ready to go out the door. I don't have the strength to face this routine one more time. I have no resources. I do not have a smile to take into this day, but you do. Can I have yours? That's the idea. The reason the believer's glad contentment has to be internally produced is because of the hard realities, the harsh realities of life. And it doesn't matter who you are, there are harsh realities in your life. And if we just pass the microphone down the aisle, everybody has a story of some hard experience or harsh reality, right? Now notice how realistically Peter writes about that in verse 6. Look there again. In this you greatly rejoice. Even though now, for a little while, if necessary, you've been distressed by various trials. That is a loaded statement. But I'm so glad for Peter's realism. I get so tired of Christian pietism, don't you? With its fakery and its shallowness. And what he does here, if we can break down this phrase, is give us four realities about trials. So let's just do a little sidebar. Let me give you four realities he provides here for us about trials. First, trials are not eternal. Notice, even though now, for a little while, in fact, it can last a lifetime. But just keep in mind that a lifetime compared to eternity is nothing. It's a little while, right? So keep that in mind. Peter has already told us that our inheritance, the glory we are going to receive, is undiminishable. It's undefiled. It's indestructible. It can never be taken away. It's going to be eternal. It's going to last forever, but trials that are going to come don't last forever. They're temporary. They will be eventually replaced with an eternal way to glory beyond all comparison. 2 Corinthians 4.17. Pain one day will give way to unhindered, uninterrupted praise. Peter is just kind of fast-forwarding the tape for the believer, for these struggling believers. He's reminding them that what they're experiencing is not going to last forever. An analogy that came to my mind when I thought about this is the joy of a mother after the birth of her baby. And uh think of what pain. And then what praise. Listen, I consider one of the miracles of life the fact that a woman will actually want a second child. It's remarkable to me that she would actually be willing to go through it all over again. If guys had to endure that kind of pain, we wouldn't go through it one time. We just have pictures of kids on our refrigerator, and that's about it. In fact, I remember uh when Marcia was expecting the twins, we were Dallas seminary students, and we we were across the street from the seminary at Baylor Hospital where the doctor delivered all, this particular doctor was a believer, and he delivered all Dallas seminary babies for free. That's why we chose them after praying for 10 seconds. But at any rate, we were we were there. And he had all these prenatal classes, and you go in there, and of course, I've never done it before, and I don't have the strongest of stomachs. And so we're in this room and they're just describing everything. And you know, the women are taking notes and just, you know, writing it. And I'm I'm fainting nearly. I am breaking out in a cold sweat. I remember one particular video one night, we're watching it, and I could tell I just broke out in a sweat. And and I didn't know what I was gonna do, throw up or faint or whatever, and was sitting there, didn't say anything to Marsha. She's taking notes, and and and and just felt faint and weak. And the only thing that saved me was I looked across the room and there was another guy who had it worse than I did, and I began to focus on that guy. Forget the woman screaming on the video. I was watching this guy, and I survived that particular session. But I was amazed. I'm amazed my wife was ever willing to go through any of that again after the first child. It's amazing. How many of you, by the way, are firstborn? Raise your hand. Wow, you almost ruined it for us, secondborn. How many of you are secondborn? Look at that. Aren't you glad your mother chose? Maybe she didn't choose, I don't know, but she was willing to take that surprise all. All the way to delivery. And I was born, the secondborn chose to view the pain of all of that as temporary and focus on the joy to come. That's exactly the expression, although just a fraction of the pain of Jesus Christ, his suffering, his separation from his Father, which we cannot even begin to understand when he was drenched with the sin of the world, 1 John 2.2. And it says, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. Aren't you glad that he endured the cross, accepted the shame so that you and I could be born again to life eternal. Pain and suffering is not eternal. Secondly, trials are never wasteful. Peter writes, even though now for a little while, if necessary. Now you need to understand that the English is lacking a little bit there. This is a conditional form that assumes the reality of the condition. So if I could retranslate it for you and sort of put that condition in there like it's nuanced, Peter is saying this, even though now for a little while, if necessary, and it is. And it is necessary. So Peter then is pointing to a divine purpose behind each event of pain, each trial. And you ransack the New Testament, by the way. If you're older in the faith, you know this. If you're younger in the faith, as you read through, especially the letters of the apostles to the church, you discover that God uses trials in our lives for a number of reasons. And so let's just take another sidestep, and let me give you several of them, okay? Especially with those younger in the faith, and those older in the faith need the rehearsal. For starters, trials remind believers of our dependency on Christ. They remind us of our dependency on Christ. Okay? That child has had all it can stand of this painful environment, so he's now happy. 2 Corinthians chapter 12 is a reference you want to write down, verses 7 to 10. Paul writes, I was given a thorn in the flesh, so I would not exalt myself. And now I would rather glory in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Trials have a way of reminding us of how weak we are. There's nothing that brings you to your knees like a trial. There's nothing that reminds you of how frail you are, like something of deep sorrow. Secondly, they reduce the attraction of worldly things. They reduce the attraction of worldly things. Later on in 1 Peter chapter 4, we'll take a closer look at it, but Peter talks about this very thing. There's nothing that weans us away from the world like sorrow and suffering. Listen, when you're going through a trial, you don't care what name brand you're wearing. When you're suffering, you don't care what's parked in the driveway. You don't care how many spare bedrooms you have, how big your garage is, what your name is on the title, or how much money you have in the bank. That trial just sort of clears the fog. It pulls you away from the world that sometimes clutches us, and God in his grace brings us to our knees. Further, trials enable us to comfort others who suffer. Paul writes that God comforts us in all our affliction so that we're able to comfort those who are in affliction with the comfort with which we've been comforted. Comfort is always meant by God to be passed along, handed down. So much more as to why our trials are never wasted. But let me talk about one more, and that's the reality that trials develop in the believer deeper and wiser character. You don't sign up for it, Lord. But we know as believers that it happens, don't we? In fact, James promised us that in chapter 1 and verse 2 that trials ought to be reckoned or calculated as that which produces endurance, and endurance leads to maturity. This is one of the challenges. I go back to the analogy of a parent. That's the challenge your parents had with you and me. And if you have children, that's the challenge you face. You want to see your children avoid suffering and avoid pain and avoid hardship, even though you know those things will produce in them character. So you have to let it happen. You want to protect them from hardship. Guess what? God wants to prepare them for hardship. And we as parents can often get in the way. In fact, I was reading one particular uh illustration of a psychologist by the name of Jonathan Hayde, and he had this sort of this hypothetical exercise to illustrate the problem. He said, Imagine you have a child, and for five minutes you're given a script of what that child's life will become. And you're given an eraser. And you're given the right to erase whatever you want. You read that your child will have a learning disability in grade school, and reading will come easy for some kids, and for your child, it's going to be a laborious struggle. In high school, your child is going to make a circle of friends, and one of his friends will die of cancer. After high school, your child will get into a college they want to attend and while there and get involved in a car crash and lose a leg. A few years later, your child will finish college and get a great job, only to lose that job and an economic downturn. Okay, you've got five minutes and an eraser. What would you edit from their script? More than likely, he says, we would erase those things that cause pain. And yet, from Peter's perspective and the New Testament, those things aren't just left in there, they are written in there by the providence of God. Peter is effectively informing us that trials are moments that are not wasted, they are moments that are invested by God into the life of his children so that they develop endurance. One pastor and author rather humorously referred to this problem with parenting. He says, I'm a member, he admitted, of young adults, and he says, I call us all, and I've never heard this term before, you'll probably never forget it. I call us all helicopter parents. We're constantly trying to swoop down into our kids' educational life, relational life, sports life to make sure no one is mistreating them, no one is disappointing them, no one is giving them a low grade or failing them so that they can experience one smooth transition and one success after another. I mean, if they get cut from the team, you're gonna go talk to the coach. If they get a low grade, you're gonna call the teacher. That's this generation. I mean, in my generation, and it was good for me. If I got in trouble at school, my parents assumed the teacher was always right. I mean, how corrupt is that? If I got a spanking at school, they assumed the teacher was right and I deserved it. In fact, if I didn't tell my parents I got a spanking at school, and they found out I got two spankings. One from my mother and one from my father. How corrupt is that? Entirely warped me. It's interesting, he writes, this this helicopter parent writes, he says, here's a great illustration. One Halloween a mom came to our door to trigger treat a mother. I asked her where her kid was. Well, the weather's bad, she said, so I'm driving him around in the neighborhood so he didn't have to walk in the misty rain. Okay, well, now you're in my driveway. Why didn't you send him to the door? Well, he he fell asleep in the car, didn't want to wake him up. A kid does not deserve candy. She's missing the whole point. Let him miss it. He'll miss it for one year. And you're saying, Stephen, are you condoning a pagan Halloween? No, I'm not. But I am condoning free candy. Back to the point. God knows perfectly how to raise his children. And guess what he doesn't do? Swoop down and save us from every disappointment and every hurt and every sorrow. In fact, he knows that character is going to require hard knocks and tough times and tough breaks, sweat, blood, and tears. And he has not erased it. He's written it in. None of it is wasted. Third, trials are always painful. Peter is just telling you like it is. Verse 6, you've been distressed by various trials. That word various means multicolored. It comes in every shade. Every shade. He doesn't put on a little plastic smile and and and you know fake anything. He admits they come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. They are literally multicolored. And he says, look, here's what they do to us. They distress us. They distress us. That word distress refers not only to physical pain, but emotional and mental pain. It refers to anguish. It refers to heartache and tears and anxious and fearful thoughts. Anyone who says, you know, if you're really following God like you ought to, you'll never fear, you'll never feel any of that, you know, sorrow and distress. Well, just take them to Gethsemane, would you? And show them our Savior so overwhelmed with the distress as a man. Both man and God, as a man deeply distressed. Luke 22. Same word Peter uses here. So distressed. So overwhelmed, as it were, that the corpuscles beneath his skin burst and his sweat mixed with blood. Listen to the Apostle Paul, who is so distressed over the Corinthian church and their failure in tolerating immorality in the assembly. He said, When I came to you, I came with distress. Same word. I was in anguish. Later in the letter, Peter's going to remind the believer that for every color of trial, God's grace is multicolored. He has a color that matches it. That's later. Peter goes on to add another, in fact, the primary purpose for trials, number four, trials reveal and refine genuine faith. Notice verse 7. So that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found a result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Peter isn't getting on to these believers for being distressed by the trials. He's just attempting to give them this longer viewpoint. There's coming a day when Jesus will be revealed. That's a reference to the coming of Christ to establish his kingdom. And in the meantime, God becomes a goldsmith. That's the analogy he now uses. The goldsmith in Paul's day would take that gold ore, put it into a smelting furnace, and heat it up, and the impurities, the cheap impurities, would rise and he'd skim it off the top, and then eventually pour out that ore into molds and create from that exquisite and precious articles of value. I've read in ancient times the eastern goldsmith would keep that metal in the heat and skim off those impurities until he could see his reflection clearly. Peter uses that analogy here to inform the believer that your faith is put into the furnace, not to destroy it, but to refine it. Notice, to refine it. So that what is God gonna do? He's gonna pour out your life, he's gonna pour out your testimony of faith, he's gonna make of your life articles of exquisite and value. And it will reflect the face of Christ. That's the point. So you want to profile a Christian? Here's what the profile should include. This is what we should be showing to our world. We are people who rejoice in the midst of difficulty. Why? Because we realize that trials are temporary, they're not eternal, that is. We realize that they are never wasteful. We admit they're distrustful, and they're always used to refine and grow our genuine faith. We are people who rejoice in the midst of difficulty. Let me add one very quickly. We're people who love and follow an invisible deity. Verse 8. Peter now commends them, by the way, with these encouraging words. And though you have not seen him, and then it's as if Peter encourages them, but you love him. I want to commend you for that. And though you do not see him now, but you still believe in him, and I want to commend you for that. You still believe in him. Even though you do not see him now, you still believe in him, you greatly rejoice with joy, inexpressible, and full of glory. In other words, you just can't describe that settled conviction that he is sovereign. That there is sweetness even in sorrow. Because of all that it does in your life. You find joy in loving him and knowing him, and you reflect the glory of his face when you do. And Peter writes, and I'll expand verse 9, you obtain as the outcome of your faith that is this kind of faith that loves an invisible Lord, this kind of faith that believes in a God you cannot see, as he leads you through unexplainable things, that kind of faith gives evidence of the salvation of your soul. If you love him and you've never seen them, if you believe in them and haven't seen them, but what you do see all around you are trials and tribulations and you experience difficulties and sorrow, in spite of all that, you want to follow him? You believe his best is for you and he's sovereignly controlling your world, that proves you really do believe in him. Nothing else would explain it. Let me put it this way: if you love Jesus only when he gives you the good life, that actually proves you really don't love him. You just love the good life. Imagine being in a situation where you're falling in love with this young lady, and you don't know if she loves you, but you're falling in love with her, you're you're you're you're becoming deeply attached to her, and you think it's probably a good time, uh it's appropriate to tell her that life's gonna change dramatically in a few months because you are inheriting a multimillion dollar trust. And she responds to you, that's great, but that doesn't matter because I love you for who you are. And uh suppose just before the wedding, the day before the wedding, you find out that something has happened, somebody else gets in the way or whatever, and you're not getting that multimillion dollar trust fund. And so you tell your bride to be, and she responds with anger, and she says, in that case, the wedding is off. What did that prove? About her love. It proved she really loved what you would give her and offer her. She really didn't love you. That's what Peter's saying here. In fact, the New Testament refers to the believer as the bride of Christ, Ephesians chapter 5. So why do you want to be married to him? I mean, why do we give the commercial to people who don't know him? Man, if you if you just if you if you marry him, if you your life, is it ever going to be wonderful? Well, tell them the truth. It's gonna get worse than it's ever been. And then see if they want to love him. Here's the proving ground. We can't see them. We love them. We can't see them, but we see pressure and distress and trouble and sorrow, but we believe in them. That's the profile of a genuine believer who rejoices in the midst of difficulty and who is willing to love and follow an invisible deity and desire nothing more than to reflect the glory of his face.