FRIDAY 2nd
2 Peter 1:5–7
‘For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.’
I have re-read the verses in today’s devotion that cover again what we have just been considering, the supplements or qualities we need to add to our faith. I have done this to take us into the next verse which says, ‘For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ (v8)
If you or I did an inventory of our Christian life and had to do a checklist with the qualities we have considered, I wonder how short we would come up to not only what Peter is not only recommending but instructing that we should have.
In one of my jobs, I used to have to do the stock taking and ordering for the company that I worked for, we manufactured agricultural trailers, so it was essential that we kept sufficient stock to ensure that the orders could be met (and the order book was always full). It only needed to be a small nut and bolt missing and the trailer would not be completed and sent out on time. So, I made every effort to ensure that the parts stock was adequately filled.
If we lack in any of these qualities we cannot fully function as God desires us to function as his children, it can have an effect on our own personal walk with God, it can have an effect upon our relationship with each other in the family of God and it could also have an impact on the relationship we should have with those outside.
Peter says that having these qualities will keep us from being ineffective and unfruitful, so if we feel that we are ineffective and unfruitful in our lives, let us go to the store cupboard of the heavenly stock room and ask God to help us, remembering what it says in the verses prior to this list of qualities, ‘His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness’ (v3), HIS power is available to us to enable us to be graced with these qualities and to enable them to flourish in us and through us. God doesn’t expect us to be without enabling us to be, he energises us by his Spirit at work in our lives, his divine power.