Do you feel just a little disconnected from all those folks in the Bible that are recorded as being something special with God or doing something special for God? Does a passage like Jeremiah 1:4-5 leave you feeling just a little less in the eyes of God than this man?
Jeremiah is ‘special’ before he ever did a thing, before he ever took a breath, before he was physically conceived, when he was but a thought in the mind of the Lᴏʀᴅ! God had a design for his life, that he would be a prophet to the nations, before. Jeremiah had an appointment with the destiny God would give him, from the beginning.
Okay, sure, good for Jeremiah, he’s a leg up on any of us regular folks. How should I react to God giving so much destiny to him and nothing to me? Peter— yes foot-in-the-mouth Peter, the apostle who most often bumbled through saying the wrong thing–writes 1 Peter to believers scattered across Asia Minor because of living for Jesus. They are ‘in’ the elect by the foreknowledge of the Father, the setting apart by the Spirit and in obedience to Jesus by the sacrifice of His blood. 2 That gives them, contrary to their circumstances, a ‘special-ness’ as different from those who have not become part of those in relationship with God. Peter continues into the second chapter that they need to stop considering themselves as common and ‘to put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander’ 3 to ‘grow up’ and quit thinking like the immature for they are in the process of being transformed in Jesus. They are no longer common, “… you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” 4
Peter is building up to just how significant you are, the destiny you have, as God’s people:
If you are uncomfortable with being described as chosen, a royal priesthood, holy, the possession of God and all the enabling that flows out of that, sorry but that is your identity in the Lᴏʀᴅ. You are as distinctive as Jeremiah, you have destiny, you have identity before God if only you will see yourself as He sees you. You are appointed of God. Amen.