2 Peter 1
5-9So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books.
As I read this text today I am asking myself what I am complementing my basic faith with? I love what Peter says “, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. I also like the fact that he says ” don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given. What has God given you? There is a personal pronoun that hinders me from complementing my basic faith. It’s “I.
I live my life in this “I” realm, we all do from time to time. I got to do this, I got to go there, I have to meet here, I am tired, I am, I am, I am……When skiing, I get to the end of the course, drop down for a brief word on what “I” just did right or wrong. I am always responsive and say “yea, I know what you’re talking about. These are all qualities of a great ski coach, good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love. The three people that have spent the most time coaching me share some or all of these qualities. They all have “reverent wonder”, each time I ski they are like “wow, he is still alive after that. Oh yea, it gets that good! I can feel the generous love and the warm friendliness, the passionate patience at the start. They all have good character and really care about the outcome of my skiing. They in some sick way want to develop me into a better skier. It hurts to grow sometimes. One thing they all have in common, they are giving of themselves to develop me.
That’s skiing, now how about life? I can say with great gladness that these three coaches and many more of you have exhibited some if not all of these qualities and have given freely of your time to develop me as a person. You have given so much to see me mature as a Christian and now I am seeing what is right before me.
What I like the most is what Peter says next “With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus.
That says it all, doesn’t it. These qualities just don’t arrive, they are active and growing always. The question for me and for you, what qualities do we need to grow in? Are we developing others?
George Beasley
Thursday, April 19, 2007
