2 Peter 1:10 – Diligence in Intimacy with Jesus

Here’s a link to a great blog about being diligent in our relationship with Jesus as the key to “working out our salvation with fear and trembling”. (Philippians 2:12)

Intimacy as the Way to Salvation

Unapologetically recommended by the author’s mother.

2 Peter 1:10 – Diligence

Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble;

Guess what? What I wrote yesterday isn’t always that easy to do. Making “certain about His calling and choosing” isn’t easy. It takes diligence. The dictionary says that to be diligent is to be “constant in effort to accomplish something; attentive and persistent in doing anything”.

If I want to walk with Jesus through life without stumbling, I need to be diligent (constant in effort, attentive and persistent) to be certain of his calling and choosing me. Hmmm…sounds a lot like Ephesians 6 where Paul tells us to “stand firm” three times in four verses.

The confidence born of certainty makes the holding on in adversity, trial and testing simply a matter of time until the purposes of God get worked out. My own personal story bears this out. When life is painful and hard, I look back to the assurance that God chose me and that what I am doing is what He called me to do. Then I stand firm with the shield of faith (Hebrews 11:1 – now faith is the assurance/certainty of things hoped for and the conviction/certainty of things not seen) and extinguish all the flaming arrows (doubts and fear) of the evil one.

Which all leads back to where this whole discovery of 2 Peter 1:10 began. The armor of God. “now put on the helmet of salvation”. What is the thing that protects my mind and my thoughts about myself and about my life? The confidence of my salvation. The confidence that the God of the Universe not only knows me but chose me despite myself. And the confidence that He and His purposes for my life have been ordained. These I diligently seek and He promises that when I seek Him with my whole heart, I will find Him.

2 Peter 1:10 – You are Called. You are Chosen

Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble;

So what is it that Peter tells us will make us sturdy on our feet in the face of adversity?

Being certain of His calling on our lives and that He has chosen us.

When I know that God chose me, I am humbled under his mercy, but honored all at the same time. How could the God that created EVERYTHING want to be in relationship with me? How could He in all His perfection ever stoop to talk to me, to use me for his purposes. It makes my heart yearn for Him all the more. As David said in Psalm 139: “such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high. How can I attain it?” But they are truth. If you are in need of knowing that God chose you, there are many scriptures and we would love to help you.

But you also need to know that God doesn’t just choose you and the story ends with “happily ever after” at that point. If He chose you, He also called you. There is a destiny over every life. There is a God-breathed calling for which you were created.

Knowledge of these two things are the deciding factors in whether or not we stumble.

KNOW YOU ARE CHOSEN. KNOW YOU ARE CALLED AND TO WHAT YOU ARE CALLED!

Pilgrimage Snippets for your meditation – #1

Quotes from Corey Russel –

If you can say, “Help!”, you are eligible for the prayer movement.

You will only find true pleasure, when you find what you were created for; until then you will have a gaping hole in your life.

The most important 4 word prayer of my life: GOD, WAKE ME UP! (Ephesians 1:15-23)

We have a poverty of spirit when we think we know who God is and in reality – We Don’t Have a Clue! (Job 36:26)

Revelation 4 – They sing, have sung and will sing, “Holy, holy, holy” for millions of years and everytime is like it is for the first time. God give us an unending revelation of who you are.

We have got to have moms and dads who take risky steps to invest in the future of thier children.

JESUS! Met me in this video

When I watched this video this morning, I involuntarily gasped the Name – Jesus.

If you never come back to this blog again, if you don’t read/watch anything else this year, you must see this. It is an 8 minute video and at about 2:50 Louie Giglio starts the story. Please,Please,Please watch the whole thing. Then share it and pass it on the everybody!

Prayer Streaming – #18

Prayerstreaming – the committed heart

When you think about praying without ceasing, THE classic that comes to mind is Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. Its a classic; if you haven’t read it, you should.

When McHenry writes about Brother Lawrence, she uses phrases like…faithful dedication, passionate pursuit and determined goal.  Brother Lawrence knew that unceasing prayer wasn’t something that we could do just because we wished we could.  It was a commitment that we needed to make much like the commitment of a marriage vow.  Here’s a great quote from McHenry:

Just as a wife cannot make a marriage commitment and continue seeing other men, when we make a commitment to pursue a relationship with God, we need to discontinue the pursuit of activities or relationships that would draw us further from Him…when we allow the pulls of the world to come between Christ and us, we are committing spiritual adultery.

Nothing articulates this better than the song Blessed Be Your Name. I’m using it for my meditation today. Here are the lyrics followed by a youtube video of the song.

Blessed be Your name
in the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name
And blessed be Your name
When I’m found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out I’ll
turn back to praise
And when the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be Your name when the sun’s shining down on me
When the world’s “all as it should be”
Blessed be Your name
And blessed be Your name on the road marked with suffering
Though there’s pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name

Prayer Streaming – #11

Prayerstreaming – the Abiding Heart.

Sorry can’t let this one go! This could be the best illustration I have ever heard on how to commune with God. It is a quote McHenry used from Richard Foster.

Communion with Him isn’t something you institute. It’s like sleep. You can’t make yourself sleep, but you can create the conditions that allow sleep to happen.

Prayer Streaming – #8

Prayer Steaming – the Abiding Heart

In order to remain in constant communication with the Father we must abide in the Son. McHenry’s first sentence in this chapter is that “prayerstreaming is a form of abiding in Christ.”
So I went to John 15 and took a good look at what it means to abide in Him.

Verse 4: “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.
So if we abide in Jesus we will bear fruit. Branches connected to the vine can pull at any moment on the nutrients and water delivered by the roots. They don’t have to wait for a quiet time or a weekend service. His constant resource is available to me night and day, and when I draw on that I become fruitful.

Verse 5: “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
Yep, I know what it means to not be able to get anything done. I want my life to be productive rather than the way that I feel on unproductive days like yesterday. I got up with a check list I thought I’d take care of during the day and didn’t even get half way. I just felt sleepy and blicky.
So would yesterday have been different if I’d spent more time with Him that doing what I thought needed to be done?

Verse 6: “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.
Don’t want to get thrown away! “Then keep close”, Jesus says.

Verse 7: “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
Ahh…there are two things in this verse that lead up to me being able to access unlimited provision for what I want and need. The first is abiding in Him – the constant flow of uninterrupted prayer. The second is His words abiding in me. The necessity of the Word becoming a part of me will take some work, but saturation in it is like Miracle Grow to my life.

Prayerstreaming/the Abiding Heart is my access all the resources and nutrients I need for a productive life that bears fruit, keeps me in the presence of God and makes it possible for me to ask and receive whatever I need from the Father.

It’s a good thing!

Prayer Streaming – #7

Prayer Streaming – The Clean Heart

In this chapter McHenry examines the life of Teresa of Avila. Teresa’s greatest revelation was the revelation of how her sin seperated her from God and prevented the unbroken dialogue she longed for.

When I read this I kind of snorted out loud, because the quote was, “On one side, God was calling me; on the other, I was following the world.” That struck me as funny because she was living in a convent in the 1500’s. I didn’t think that the “world” there and then had any comparison on the “world” today. But what I discovered is that Teresa wrote about how she did all the prayers and worship leading at the convent, for the praise of others. That she often posed as praying, but would actually just be counting the moments for prayer time to end.

Ah, conviction. Do we do what we do in a religious context to look good to others? A form of godliness (2 Tim. 3:5) where Jesus said, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 6:1.

So how do I ponder this in prayer? McHenry writes it this way: “praying is the awareness that God sees us. He sees our willing hearts, certainly, but He also sees the shadows over them that inhibit the intimate realtionship we say we want.”

Here are some questions to take with you to prayer and allow the LORD to help you see the answers:

What keeps me from God’s presence?
What problems distract me?
What emotions or personal struggles bog me down from feeling close to God?
Is there a root weakness that causes these to rise and trip me up as I try to pray?
Do I struggle with anger, fear, worry, jealousy, bitterness, insecurity, lust, self-centeredness …or something else?

If the God we are listening to loves us so much, will He not tenderly reveal and work with us to remove everything that hinders love?

Prayer Streaming – #6

Prayer Streaming – The Loving Heart (con’t from yesterday)

Praying without ceasing becomes easier when we see God as our loving Father. This chapter in McHenry’s book also talks about seeing God as our Shepherd, Physician and Beloved.

Shepherd - Hmmm…Jesus said that his sheep know his voice. I guess that whole part from the other posts about listening to God’s voice came first so that I would understand the reason why I need to listen. Psalm 23 is so good for meditation in prayer, because it tells me the things that my shepherd does for me. Take time to sit with this Psalm today and listen phrase by phrase to what God wants to tell you about the way that He cares for you.

Great Physician – There is a song that ministers to me so greatly based off of the account of the woman who was healed by touching Jesus’ garment. The words are worth meditating on:

If I’m healed by just one touch of your garment, Lord
Then how much more of your love is for me than I’m tasting, Lord.

Beloved – This is the truth that changes lives. God, let me understand that your love is “stronger than death, and your jealousy is as severe as Sheol. Your love for me flashes like the flashes of fire and torrents of water cannot extinguish the fire of your love.”