Day 1: Faith

Our provision for all things that pertain to life and godliness

Faith, to Peter, is assumed among his readers. This faith is the divine antecedent to all things pertaining to “life and godliness.” Peter’s exemplar to the faith-filled life is—no doubt—Jesus Christ. It was Jesus who took on the weakness of man in His incarnation (Philippians 2.6-8). It was Jesus who accomplished the perfect will of the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12.18, Luke 4.18, John 1.33). And it is Jesus, through His death, resurrection, and ascension, who has provided the means for us to receive everything that we need to be “partakers of the divine nature” (John 14.11-12; 15.16; 16.13, Ephesians 2.8-10).

• Read 2 Peter 1.5-8
• In what areas of your life is God inviting you to receive His gift of faith at a deeper level?

I am a control-freak. This is not an endorsement of the behavior, simply a confession. There are times when I am firmly planted in the belief that if I want something done right (or even well) that I must do it myself. This can become burdensome… stike… this IS burdensome. In addition to this control problem, I have a doubt problem. I doubt that if I ask someone else to do a particular thing, that they’ll respond affirmatively. I doubt that if I actually give the task to that person that it’ll be done right (or well). I doubt a LOT. A doubting, control freak is not a pleasant combination. It reeks havoc on my mind. I sit in bed at night, having to distract my brain from thinking, with the television in order to try to sleep. There is no doubt that I need to deepen my faith. I am at a plateau and I’ve been here for a while. After becoming a Christian and acquiring TONS of new knowledge, I thought I was accomplishing something. Turns out that all the knowledge in the world is meaningless if you don’t put it into action. So I immediately began to throw myself into ministry within my local church. Now I’m wading in it so deep that I’m not sure I could get out if I wanted to. In and of itself, that’s not a problem .. but because of my aforementioned character flaws ministry become difficult. I know that God is inviting me to deepen my faith. I just wonder sometimes if I’ll ever have the time to do that!

• How is God inviting you to practice His gift of faith within your community?

Within my community, I feel like a faker. As the Lay Leader of my church, people have begun to do something that I’ve never had them do before: hold me in high esteem. Some have even admitted to looking up to me. But I’m a fake. My faith is not as deep as my words communicate it to be. And I’ve never really stopped to think about that until now… early in the morning (which is totally unlike me) on the morning that I’m supposed to deliver a sermon to our congregation. Ouch! I trust God for the big things: direction in life, to take care of my health, and prayer concerns that I bring before Him. But I find that I am rarely able to trust Him in the trenches. My head tells me that He is far to busy to be concerned with whatever mess I’ve gotten myself into… that God only helps those who help themselves… Yet, part of my sermon for this morning deals with how important it is for each of us to deepen our souls. Will I ever stop to listen for myself? I have become so caught up in the business of ministry, that I am forgetting to allow myself to be ministered to. Yipes! In the past couple of months, the times that I have been ministered to the most, have been in my seminary classes and I am learning so much… coming to some really important self-awareness (i.e. this). Those were times that I was “scheduled” to be in class, because the classes were paid for. If I’d had the option of going to a lecture or going shopping… I’d have picked shopping, hands down. God knows this about me and I praise Him for that. He has opened up my mind and allowed seminary to be a channel to reach me through. I could feel that early on… back last year, even, as I visited Gordon-Conwell, I could feel something about the place… God called me there. Where He’ll lead me, I will go.