God has given us everything we need for life and godliness. He has also given us precious promises that we can now live, not according to our old sinful nature, but according to His divine nature. That is the message of the opening chapter of Peter’s Second Letter.
Now that God has given us everything, we need to do something with it. “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.” [2 Peter 1:5-7 HCSB].
Remember that storehouse I wrote about a couple days ago. It is filled to the brim with everything that we need to live a godly life. It is all there, available, waiting for us to enter and retrieve anything we need. So, Peter reminds us to “make every effort to supplement your faith,” that “faith of equal privilege,” with …
What do you need to be more like Christ Jesus? Goodness? Knowledge? Self-Control? Endurance? Godliness? Brotherly affection? Love?
I would love to be able to tell you that the moment you surrender your life to Christ you immediately and miraculously become exactly like Him. That doesn’t happen. It usually takes a bit of effort on our part. We are instantly born again, instantly made new, instantly indwelt by the Spirit of God. Now we must take that and work it out in our lives.
That is going to require a lot of visits to the storehouse!