The Plumbline

In view of all this, 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 1:5-7 NLT) In view of what? "God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence." (vs.3) We have been given everything (not some things and not the others), but everything we need in order to live godly and upright lives. In view of being given so much (all we will ever need), we are called to respond to God in a positive and 'actionable' manner. Faith is good, but it should lead to moral excellence, increasing knowledge, self-control in increasing me...

Understand, therefore, that the Lord your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations and lavishes his unfailing love on those who love him and obey his commands. (Deuteronomy 7-9 NLT) Obedience comes at a price, but it also carries a huge blessing. No one can say obedience doesn't 'cost' them something. It usually means we lay down something and take up something else in its place. If we think obeying God's decrees is going to be easy-peasy just because we said yes to Jesus, we might want to rethink that one!  Obedience might cost us some of our relationships. What? Yup, it could mean we pull away from some that aren't helping us be built up in the Lord and are actually pulling us away time and time again. Didn't Jesus say we were to love the sinner? Yup, but he never said we needed to allow them to continue to be influential in our lives! Obedience might cost us time and energy. When we follow Jesus closely, we ...