2 Peter 1

I didn't blog yesterday as I was writing material for our LIFE Group Leaders for 1 Peter 1-5. There is so much good stuff in there.

1:2 - Mat god give you more and more grace and peace as you grow in the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord. - I love that Peter says as you. So many people sit back and wait for God to add to their grace and peace. You and I are called to grow in our knowledge about God and Jesus, because to know them is to know grace and peace. So many people do not know the God they follow or they know a lot about Him, but they do not personally know Him. God did not call you to win spiritual jeopardy, but to come in to a living relationship with Him every day.

1:3 - By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life.... - We are not incapable of what the Scriptures call us to be and do. We are unwilling.

1:4 - And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us GREAT and PRECIOUS promises. These are the promises that ENABLE you to share his divine nature and escape the world's corruption caused by human desires. - God's promises enable us to live the right way. We need to examine what they are and then believe them. It is not enough to know God's promises. We have to choose to live inside of them whether we "feel" them or not. To walk in faith of a promise God has made is to honor God greatly.

1:5 - I thought the way the NLT translated this was great. instead of add to your faith like the NIV says it says, supplement your faith. The idea of supplementing just struck me deeper than add.

1:8-9 - The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But those who fail to develop in this way are shortsighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins. - So many people today feel unproductive and useless when it comes to the things of God and yet here Peter tells us exactly how to change that. He also says that for a person to choose not to mature in faith is to prove that they are not seeing things the right way and they are forgetting that they were once a slave to sin who has been freed. In other words, they are forgetting to be so grateful they pursue God.

1:10 - ... work hard to prove that you really are among those God has called and chosen. - I think that so many of us look at salvation as completely from God (which it is), but then we forget that we still have a part to play. God is in the leading role, but we support what He is doing and has done by how we live. Peter is here calling us to make a great effort to make sure on our part that we are Christian. Christianity is not a passive activity. It takes a daily effort to seek God and pursue the Christ-like way.

1:19 - ... you must pay close attention to what they wrote for their words are like a lamp shining in a dark place - How much attention do you pay to the prophets of the Old Testament? How much attention do you pay to the Old Testament at all? I see so many "modern" Christians who make no effort at all to understand what has been written in the past and so they miss out on so much of what god has for us. If you want to mature in your faith (which God expects you to do) then take the time to go back and read and learn from the Old Testament. There are pictures of God there you will never know otherwise.

Love, Michael