Thought of the Day !!

Make every effort to respond to God's promises.  Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.
                                                       2 Peter 1:5b-7 (NLT)

Peter precedes this passage by telling us that God has given us everything we need to be able to live godly lives.  He also stated that God has given us "great and precious promises".  And then comes these words that share how we ought to desire to respond. 

First, Peter tells us to "make every effort to respond to God's promises".  God has given us so much and promised to give us so much more.  And our God is one who keeps His promises.  But so often we make very little effort to respond.  Our response should come out of our gratitude for all God has done.  So if we make very little effort to respond to God, wouldn't that mean that we aren't really that grateful?

Next Peter teaches us a proper response, one that would make our Father in Heaven proud.  He says to supplement our faith.  Faith is so important.  But faith should not ever be in word only.  It should be backed up by our works.  In this case, Peter teaches that God would love to see our faith backed by moral excellence (living godly lives), knowledge (of God's Word and through it His will), self-control, patient endurance, godliness, affection for other Christians and love for everyone. 

I leave you with a question for today.  It's not how do you live up to all these because none of us is perfectly sinless.  It is, however, how much is your desire and effort to live in these ways?

In the love of Christ,
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