Ultimate Love!

Today we conclude the series of thoughts highlighting How To Guarantee a Productive and Effective Life from II Peter 1:5-11. The pivoltal verse in this paragraph of Scripture is verse 8 which reads, For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowlege of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have looked at these qualities: 1. Faith is the foundation for all things, You must be born again! 2. Add to your faith virtue involves Taking Out the Trash! 3. Add to your virtue knowlege, which we called Christianity for Dummies Like Me! 4. Add to your knowlege self-control, which we called Living a Balanced Life! 5. Add to self-control perseverance, Keeping On Even When It Hurts! 6. Add to perseverance godliness, You Must Say 'Yes' Before You Hear the Question! 7. Add to godliness brotherly kindness. 8. Add to brotherly kindness love, which we are calling Ultimate Love! Romans 5:8 reads, But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. You can never say that no one cares about you again. Once and for all, the Lord has demonstrated his love for you and that's unquestionable. Someone has said they they asked Jesus how much he loved us and he stretched out his arms and died for us. Wow! No one ever loved like that! When I was younger, I often took up for other folk in school, on the bus, in the neighborhood. Those whom I took up for and often fought for knew that I loved them. However, on occasion, I got whooped! It's not all about just taking up someone's cause, but it's also about winning. Jesus took up for us and in a few weeks, we will celebrate Resurrection Day, which was his vindication that he won! You and I had no hope of ever paying the debt for our sins that we owed. Jesus owed no debt for he had no sin. However, he demonstrated his love for us in that he paid a debt he did not owe for you and me, who had no hope of ever paying our own debt. This is ultimate love! Agape means to lose sight of meeting my own needs in the meeting of the needs of the object of our love. Reminder: You are guaranteed a productive and effective life if these qualities are in you and increasing!

Brotherly Kindness

We are continuing our series of thoughts on, "How to Guarantee a Productive and Effective Life" from II Peter 1:5-11. Verse seven tells us to add to your godliness, brotherly kindness. The word used here is phileo. This is the term used in the transliteration of the city of Philadelphia. You may recall that this city is known as the "city of brotherly love". This quality is best understood in the passage often referred to as the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37.
There are three lifestyles in this world:
1. What is yours is mine and all I have to do is take it. This lifestyle is represented by the robbers who beat the traveler and left him half dead by the side of the road. Those who exhibit this lifestyle are takers and never givers.
2. What is yours is yours and what is mine is mine and never shall the two meet. The priest and the Levite who came by where the traveler lay but rationalized that they could not be bothered. Admittedly, they had some good reasons not to get involved. If they had touched the wounded man and he had died they would be unclean and have to go through a purification process before they could resume their religious duties. Do you know the names of your closest neighbors and what really makes them tick?
3. What is mine is yours and all you have to do is need it. The Samaritan represented this lifestyle. He went out of his way to help a stranger, not because of what he was hoping to get out of it, but just because the traveler needed him. Jesus asked the lawyer who was neighbor to the traveler and his reply was the Samaritan. Do you go out of your way to help others?

You Must Say "Yes" Before You Hear the Question!

Godliness is exactly what it sounds like...being like God. Perhaps a better way of saying it is to be Christ-like. The Scripture says,
"Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Therefore brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about his calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble; for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you." II Peter 1:5-11
Mary, the Mother of Jesus, is a great example of godliness. Upon hearing the news that she would bear a son who would be Jesus Christ, her response was, "Behold the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word." Luke 1:38
Notice that God has a five year plan for your life, but He is not going to give you the details up front. Godliness is totally counter intuitive. Our normally accepted practice is to examine all the implications and decide to go one way or another. We weigh the pros and cons and see whether to take the job, make the move, etc. However, God did not spell out all the details to Mary as to what she'd have to go through (such as the crucifixion of her son), but she said yes to God even without knowing the whole picture. Do you trust God enough to say yes to Him before you see the whole picture? I would have cheated myself a thousand times if I had not said yes to Him early in my life. On the other hand, I have been blessed a thousand times as much because I said yes to Him. Do you trust Him enough to say yes without seeing the full picture?

Keeping On Even When It Hurts!

Let's recap, we have been exploring the qualities that are referred to in II Peter 1:5-11, especially verse 8, For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowlege of our Lord Jesus Christ. I have called this study, How To Guarantee a Productive and Effective Life. We have explored several of these qualities, such as, faith which is the regenerational relationship with our Lord as we commit to Him our everything. We are instructed, then, to add to our faith virtue, the "Taking Out of the Trash" of our lives. Then to add to our virtue, knowlege which we addressed as "Christianity For Dummies Like Me!" Then we are instructed to add to our knowlege, self-control which we addressed as, "How to Live a Balanced Life!"
Today, we will look at how to add to self-control, perseverance. Perseverance and patience are often misunderstood. They do not imply a passive sitting and twiddling of ones thumbs while waiting for God to intervene in our situation so as to rescue us. This word really means to keep on even when it hurts. It means that I will not put down the load I am carrying no matter how badly it hurts to hang on. There is a scene in the movie, Facing the Giants where a football coach challenges one of the players to do the "death crawl" for 100 yards with another teammate on his back while blindfolded. It is quite a riveting scene. What are the challenges in your life that tempt you to turn back from the path of the Lord?
Colossians 1:9-12 tell us how to walk worthy before the Lord. Verse 11 reads, strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously. This verse alludes to two main sources of discouragement in life, circumstances and people. The word stedfastness refers to the circumstances of life and the word patience refers to the people in our lives. I don't know if you have noticed, but some people are hard to love. One man said he thought he would like the ministry except for the people he had to deal with. Relationships are a challenge, but a right vertical relationship with the Lord makes it possible to deal horizontally with the people in our families, our co-workers, neighbors, etc.
If you find yourself tempted to turn loose of the load the Lord has assigned to you, hold on, help is already there!

Living a Balanced Life!

As we continue to pursue the theme, "How to Guarantee a Productive and Effective Life", II Peter 1:6 says to add to knowlege, self control. Self control has to do with balance. I have come to believe that one of the most important words in the New Testament is this word balance. I don't know about you, but I have a strong compulsion to eat too much, sleep too much, work too much, etc. You can fill in your particular indulgence of choice. Have you ever noticed that there is a time signature for each musical piece? In the old Baptist Hymnals, you could see these in the upper left corner of the hymn. For instance, the time signature might be 4/4 or 3/4, etc. I am not a musician. In fact, I stood in chapel once with a music student whose response, after hearing me butcher the hymns sung, was to say that I must be a really good preacher because I clearly could not sing.

However, I have learned the difference between noise and music. It is rhythm. God made you with a time signature. It is six and one, six and one. He said to keep the Sabbath. He rested on the seventh day after creating the earth. When you work non-stop without a day off for just one week, you are trying to live life at the time signature of fourteen and one. You can do the math. I have found that He commanded us to follow the sabattical principle for our own good. In fact, I have found that I am much more productive and effective if I build into my schedule regular Sabbath Days. Admittedly, I have workaholic tendencies. Therefore, I am using time management and work to illustrate this point. You fill in whatever tempts you to get out of rhythm.

Let's make music, not noise!

Christianity for Dummies Like Me!

We are continuing to look at the idea of "How to Guarantee a Productive and Effective Life" from II Peter 1:5-11. Faith in Christ is the foundation, of course. Then we are challenged to add to our faith, virtue, which I have described as "Taking Out the Trash!" Then in verse five, the text reads that we should add to virtue, knowlege. Luke 11:24-26 tells of a man whose home was cleansed of a demon and the demon found no place of rest so it returned to the house from whence it had left. It found the home swept clean and in order. Therefore this demon brought seven other spirits and moved back into that house. The Bible says that the latter state of the man was worse than the first. It is not enough to take out the trash in our lives, but we must also be diligent to fill that void with the knowlege of Christ. This word for knowlege is very interesting.

1. It is personal, but not private knowlege. Perhaps you have heard it said that religion is personal and nobody's business but mine. The Bible commands that we gossip the Good News of the Gospel everywhere.

2. It is progessive, rather than static. My favorite verse in the Bible is Philippians 1:6 which says, For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. I'm sure you have seen the shirts worn by expectant mothers that read, "Under Construction" with an arrow pointing downward to the baby being formed within her. I believe that every Christ follower should wear this type of shirt. We have been lied to. We have been told that we are human beings; when, in reality, we are humans becoming.

3. It is experiential, rather than just intellectual facts. The word gnosis which is translated knowlege in the New Testament is the same word used to describe the fact that Adam knew Eve and they had a child. Knowing Christ needs to be experienced through a daily walk with Him. It is possible to know the facts, but never experience the relationship with Christ as one's own best friend. One man read the 23rd Psalm with all the eloquence of his learning. Then later an older gentleman got up and quoted the same psalm and the wise man who followed stated that we have been blessed to hear from one who knew the Shepherd's Psalm and from one who knew the Shepherd.

It is not enough to just take out the trash in our lives, but we must fill the void with the personal, progressive, and experiential knowlege of Christ.

Taking Out the Trash!

In II Petter 1:5, we are commanded to "add to our faith virtue". (KJV) Some other translations translate the passage as "moral excellence", among others. The meaning behind this word, virtue, is to cut away all the impurities in order to leave only that which is pure. It means to be unalloyed with anything impure, leaving only the highest quality material.

Iron sharpens iron (Proverbs 27:17), but aluminum alloy does very little to sharpen another metal. There is a story of a silversmith who was leading a tour of how he got the silver pure. He heated the molten metal until he could spot the impurities floating in the kettle and he would dip them out until he could see his reflection in the silver with no signs of imperfections. Until the master silversmith could see himself in the metal, it was not pure enough. Until He can see himself reflected in you, then He is not finished with us, thankfully! He is not finished with me. (Philippians 1:6)

I have noticed at our house, if we do not take out the trash, it stinks! The same is true in our personal lives. We often do not claim the promise that if we will confess our sins, He is faithful to forgive and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (I John 1:9) We are failing to take out the trash in our lives. Repentance is the lifestyle of the Christ follower. We can often fool many people about being filled with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). However, it is difficult to be filled with the person of Christ when we are half-full of trash. If I produced two barrels apparently filled with water to the top, they both would appear to be so. However, if you could not see that one barrel was half-full of sand, both would look filled but one was not. Appearances can be deceiving. You can fool most of the people most of the time, but you can never fool the Lord! Perhaps your first order of business should be to TAKE OUT THE TRASH!