The Hope of Power is Encouragement in the Word.

    Can you imagine what it must have been like to travel with Christ up the Mountain of Metamorphosis, or as it is commonly called the Mount of Transfiguration? 
    Peter, James and John journeyed with Jesus for three days and there was changed in appearance and also appearing with Christ was Moses and Elijah.

    While all three synoptic gospels tell of this incident by introducing it with a prophecy that some would see Christ coming in His Kingdom of God, only Mark, basing his gospel on the preachings of Peter, stated that they would see the Kingdom of God present with power! (See Mark 9:1)

    The Hope of Power’s Encouragement is linked specifically with the Latin word adventu in 2 Peter 1:16. Peter is incarcerated in a Roman dungeon, locked up for preaching the gospel by Nero. Soon the famed apostle and founding disciple of the Jerusalem church would be crucified upside down, deeming himself unworthy to die in the manner of his Lord, Jesus Christ.

      What is his emotional thermometer? What is his spiritual temperature? Does he feel powerless and discouraged in his final days? Had he given up all hope? Hardly.

      The once shifting and stumbling Simon is now rock-solid Peter. He knows his jig is up, his days are numbered and yet he waxes poetic, almost lyrical in his description of his soon departure into eternity.

      “I know that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me,” Peter wrote. “Why would I want to stay in this tent when I have an eternal 7 star accommodations waiting for me?” His earthly tabernacle would soon be upsized for a heavenly mansion.

      It is not almost comical, it is absolutely gut-checking hilarious that this once swaggering, overly self-assured fisherman even suggested to build three earthly tabernacles for Moses, Elijah and Jesus just so they could “sit for a spell” on that mountain so many years earlier.

      Trade God’s Heavenly Temple for an earthly thatched-together tent. Not even Chip and Joanna Gaines could convince that trio into a such a Fixer Downer!

      Do you see old Peter wink his eye right here in his final epistle. “As long as I am here in this feeble tent, I want to shake you until I wake you to see where Jesus went and where I am going.”

    Jesus told Peter in his earlier years that when he was old, he would be led by the hand and forced to go where he didn’t want to go. “I know I’m going to take off this tent, just like Jesus showed me,” the imprisoned Peter wrote.

    The readers of the letter knew what Peter was talking about. He and the Apostle John had preached it for years. After the Resurrection, Peter had gone back to fishing and then saw the Risen Lord.

    During a fish breakfast, Jesus restored his fallen disciple by asking him a question thrice, the same number of times he had denied his Lord before the cock crowed twice.

     Now only the rooster was cocky and Simon had eaten the crow. 
     With every probing question, Peter humbly pledged his love for his Master. He heard the charge to feed his sheep and tend the lambs.

     You see, Peter had to learn: 
Power wasn’t in the bragging.

     Courage wasn’t in the boasting.

           Hoping wasn’t in the seeing.

     The power of the Kingdom was not what He saw on the mountain of transfiguration.

     The encouragement for courage was not found in the appearing of Moses and Elijah. 
     They were not going to exchange their heavenly habitation for the thatched tent, but now Peter was soon going to leave his earthly tabernacle for an eternal temple.

     From a darkened prison cell, Peter saw a light up above. 
     “You would do well to heed the prophetic word,” Peter wrote, “like a light that shines in a dark place.”

      Hope 
          Power
              Encouragement 
are all found in the Word of God.

     “This is my Beloved Son, Listen to Him.”

     Whether booming on a holy mountain from a heavenly glory, or humbly written on a tear-stained papyrus, smuggled out and copied and translated for 2,000 years now, the Word of God is not a cleverly devised fable.

    The Hope of Power is in the Encouragement of the Word of God.