"...giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self control, to self control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." ~ 2 Peter 1:5-8
My devotional today emphasized the action of "adding to your faith..." What does this mean? It means it is an action on OUR part to obtain those spiritual habits. We can't just expect to pray to God that we will have those actions and "TA DA!! I am now a person of self control, virtue, godliness, etc..." It is a daily (sometimes hourly) action that we must take on ourselves to be those things. After all in Phillipians 2:12 - we are told to "work out your own faith." And right now I have been praying for a lot of things (some I can share, some I cannot share on here). I have problems though with jealousy/envy, especially when I see what I view as others who "don't deserve it" getting exactly what they want. I feel almost like the prodigal's brother...I see people who live their lives without Christ or they live their lives as they want and don't care about the consequences, and then they get what they want. It can be frustrating to wait for what you think you deserve. Yet, the things I want require action on my part. And if I want to be free from jealousy and envy, I need to put action in stopping those feelings and focusing on the righteous things of God. I need to put the time and action into those things I want. The more action I put in praying for others, the more action I put into helping others, the more action I put into spending QUALITY time in God's word, and the more I put action into genuine love, the more those fruits will abound. I think so often as Christians, we think if we pray for something (whether it is something, someone, or a virtue), we think God is going to give it to us without having to work very hard for it. But the lesson in this devotional today is teaching me that if I want to be less jealous, I need to act and be less jealous. I need to stop focusing on the bitterness or anger, and be happy for those people. And then I also need to focus on what I do have. It requires effort, sweat, and action.
I don't know if this is where others are at, but this is totally where I am at right now. And this was a much needed lesson this morning.
Blessings to you all!
Sarah
