Africa Day 2

Day 2 in Africa Thursday, March 19, 2015

We landed in Uganda tonight at 9:30 PM and got to our hotel at 1:00 AM on Friday. Tired but not suffering from jet lag too much. Took a long time to get our visas.

As we were flying from Amsterdam to Uganda I found a line of scripture from 2 Peter in a book I was reading. The scripture spoke powerfully to me about my walk with Christ. I highlighted with bold print those parts of the passage that touched me the most, partly because I have been thinking about faith lately. Here is the scripture from 2 Peter 1:3-11:

 Making One’s Calling and Election Sure

 “His Divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the Divine Nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness, and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from past sins.

Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fail, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”.

We have access to God’s Divine Power, so we can participate in the Divine Nature!!! But there is something we have to do. You must “make every effort”. Peter is telling me that faith is not enough. I must add these other attributes. I am not sure what Peter means when he writes “make your calling and election sure”. Perhaps if we live a life outlined in the previous passage, we are moving in the Divine Power and so know that God’s calling has been effective in our life. And if we forget who we are to God, in Christ, accepted and valued, we will slip back into finding our value in the world. If we do that, it is impossible to be the men and women Peter calls us to be.

Finally, Peter ends with the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is not just in the future. The Kingdom of God is here now and will last for eternity. I think Peter is showing us what the Kingdom life looks like – faith, for sure; but more: goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love. These are the attributes that mark the lives of Kingdom men; the seven attributes remind me of the gifts of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5:22, 23. We develop these as we walk in the Spirit and partake of the Divine Nature. We can become like Jesus.