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Fill it Up

           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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