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⁹But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. ¹⁰Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
1 Peter 2:9-10

What a wonderful passage! It’s rhythm builds to a crescendo in verse 9, then quietly slips in the wonderful message that we are the people of God.

Today I want to focus on one little 4-letter word in the verse: “that.” Used here as a conjunction, Mirriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary describes it as a “function word to introduce a subordinate clause expressing purpose or desired result.” We might substitute “so that” if we wanted to be a bit more wordy than Scripture. The first part of the sentence happened “so that” the second part could or would happen. Let’s look at it again.

First part: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God” – this happened for a purpose –
Connection: “so that”
Second part: here’s the purpose – “you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.”

Wow! The purpose for which I was chosen is to declare God’s praises. Put another way, I am fulfilling my purpose – my destiny even – when I am praising God. When we declare God’s praises, we are fulfilling our holy destiny and high priestly calling. That just blows me away!

Are you having one of those days and need a reason to rejoice? Try any of these:

• God has chosen you! (Meditate on that awhile!)
• God has made you a royal priest! (What an honor!)
• You are a part of a holy nation! (No, we’re not talking about the USA, but the Kingdom of God!)
• You belong to God!
• He called you out of darkness into His wonderful (some translations say marvelous) light!
• You have received mercy!

Is it any wonder that the answer to the first question of the Westminster Catechism is this: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.

He is deserving of endless and boundless praise, and I am so looking forward to enjoying Him throughout all eternity.

During this Summer of Praise, let’s fulfill our destinies by praising the One who has done so much for us!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 14th, 2011 at 10:35 pm and is filed under Attitude, Blessed Life, Christian Living, Praise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.