27
Follow Him Daily
Tim Savage5In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge,6and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness,7and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.2 Peter 1
Here are our principles for life:faith, moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, patient endurance, godliness, brotherly affection and love for everyone.If we can get these down then we can be more productive and useful to Christ, but it’s a long list of very high moral guidelines.Will we really be able to consistently hit the mark?I think the list boils down to 2 categories – personal holiness and loving others.If we focus on the discipline of being holy and blameless and loving and respecting others then we fulfill our calling from God.Of course, that’s not easy.It’s hard!It’s hard to deny yourself; it’s hard to put others first.Nothing about the calling is easy because we’re fallen, sinful, messy human beings.The only easy thing is to choose this verse because it encapsulates all of our directions in to one tidy little passage!Convenient for devotions but hard to achieve in real life.
I must approach each day and each encounter with others with these guidelines in mind:faith, moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, patience, godliness and love.This is the blueprint for representing our Lord and Savior well.In dealing with family, in dealing with co-workers, in dealing with the special people that God brings to our church, in dealing with all others I must be more loving and patient, even though my mind says no.It’s in doing these difficult things that God can use us more, that He can reveal more of His plan to us.Luke 9: 23-2423Then he said to them all:“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.24For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.
Dear Heavenly Father,
Forgive me when I try to live my own life.I want to follow You more closely and give up my selfish desires and agendas for the eternal life and hope that only comes through You.
In Jesus name,
Amen
