When people
hear that I work for a church, they often imagine that I sit at a desk all day reading
books and arguing about words. I hate
that!
When people
think about church, they often imagine something that is boring, irrelevant and
an “endurance test”. I hate that too!
To me,
faith has nothing to do with sitting around arguing about words, or being bored
to death. To me, faith is practical and challenging.
Faith is something that you live and it changes
your world for the better.
Peter
echoes those thoughts when he writes, “[God’s] divine power has given us everything
we need for life and godliness… by his own glory and goodness” (2 Peter
1:3). Everything starts with God and
there is nothing we can do to earn our salvation. However, that does not mean that there is
nothing for us to do.
“For this
very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness,
knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance;
and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to
mutual affection, love” (verses 5-7).
Faith is supposed to change who we are, how we live and how we treat one
another.
He goes on
to say that, “If you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will
keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord
Jesus Christ” (verse 8). If our faith is
boring or “unproductive”, Peter says that we are missing the point
entirely. In fact he goes on to say that
if our faith is uninspiring then we are, “near-sighted and blind and have
forgotten that we have been cleansed from our past sins” (verse 9). In other words, if you understand what God
has given you, it will change your world and everything about you.
We cannot
earn our salvation, but we can fill it up our faith so that Christ is formed in
us (Galatians 4:19).
When that
happens, we will be welcomed into the kingdom of God (2 Peter 1:10-11).
Nothing
about that sounds boring to me.
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