All Things that Pertain unto Life - Michael Schrock

Good morning. I'd like to extend the Christian greeting to each one of you

this morning. I'm gonna say, even though I was asked to preach,

it is a pleasure to be here with you. Nice to see some people

from Home Church here also, and I appreciate the thoughts and from Sunday School

talking about God's love. It's a deep subject that we can talk about all

day and maybe, like John said, we can fill all the books in

the world about it, and still there's more to talk about because God's resources.

If you think of his resource, his love is, you could maybe

consider a resource. But it is part of Him that He has given to

us. But it just goes on and on and there's no end to it.

And He showed it to us by example through giving his son for our

salvation. And that's what I like to look at a little bit this morning.

Is everything pertaining to life is Apostle? Peter talks about that in Second

Peter's Chapter two. Sorry Second Peter Chapter one. Peter is talking about something

here and he uses this phrase everything for all things that pertain into life.

And I know some of you have heard me mention this before. Some of

you from back home. But I'm going to help Peter remind us and remind

myself over and over again of these things. He says in chapter one,

verse fifteen. More Over, I will endeavor that ye may be able after

my decease to have these things always in remembrance. So Peter is saying here

that you know, these are some things I'm sharing with you. I will

soon be gone, but I want these things to be remembered after I leave,

and I want you to remember these things because they're very important. So

I'm going to read here in tewod Peter chapter one, verses one through four

Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ. To them that

have obtained light precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Savior,

Jesus Christ, grace and peace be multiplied into you through the knowledge of

God and of Jesus our Lord. According as his divine power hath given unto

us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of Him that

have called us to glory and virtue, whereby are given unto us exceeding great

and precious promises, that by these ye may be partakers of the divine nature,

having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. Now we

as Christians, I believe that all of us we would like to succeed in

our Christian life, right, That's that's a daily struggle. We're trying to

overcome our weaknesses and to have victory over temptations. And we want to grow

in the knowledge of Christ and grow in our Christian life and become stronger.

And we would like to show our enemy love like Jesus showed love to his

enemies, and grow in these areas in our life. And I guess it

would be stupid of me to ask this question of you if you want to

succeed, because I believe the answer is yes. We do want to prosper

in our Christian life. And we see examples in the Bible. We see

examples of men and women that some failed miserably, and we see other examples

of people that work success they succeeded in their Christian life. And if you

go to the Old Testament before the New Covenant, as we already talked about

this morning, looking towards that salvation, and even they succeeded, you know

that we have Abraham David. These are our people that we look up to,

and maybe we think that we our faith will never measure up to their

faith. But there are other people. You know, there's Rayhab. Think

of where she came from and just a success her in her life because of

the right choices that she made in her life. So we see examples of

these, and you know, God's plan for his children is far beyond our

failures. His plan goes beyond my failures. He looks beyond that. He

doesn't see me when I'm stuck in my failures and say you're just a mess,

You're not worth my while. He looks beyond that, and he would

like for me to get beyond that point and to succeed in my Christian life.

A lot of times, you know, us as parents, we look

at our children and as they grow, we would like them to prosper,

not only physically. We want them to be healthy and strong. We want

them to be healthy and strong emotionally, and we want them to become Christians

and to continue in that and to be strong, healthy Christians. And that's

us as as parents and so much our father in heaven, this Abba Father,

this Jehovah, that we learn about in the Old Testament, the Great

I am so much more. Would he like to see us take these steps

forward and go from taking baby steps to long strikes moving forward? And he

would, and to do that, he also would like to supply us with

everything that we need. Some people view God as this being supreme being.

It's just with a big stick, ready to catch me at any corner and

see if he can hit me. And I need to dodge my way through

life and look in his word and see what I can do to please him

or I'll get beat. That's not the Father that we serve. That's not

the that's not Jehovah. That's not the God that we serve. Peter's talking

about a God that is willing to pour everything into my life, to give

me everything that I need to prosper and to sometimes look the other way even

when I have my failures. I'm not talking about sins that he will look

the other way and he'll ignore my sins. But he did provide a way

for that also. But someone that is there and trying to help me walk

me through these things. And that's a nice idea. It's a neat idea

that we have this heavenly Father that loves us and is just pouring these wants

to pour his grace and hiss into my life. But also Peter says that

you know what, there's it's not only that there's something that I need to

do. That there's there's a work that I need to do in my life.

Also, it's not just about what God can do for me, but

it's a work that I also need to do in my life, so that

so that this power in my life can just surge and explode in my life.

So today I would like to look at three points. Mainly. Number

one is God's provisions and his resources for me. Number two the the things

that I need to do my part that I need to put some effort into

this, and we'll look at that a little more in detail that that later.

And how blending these two God's resources for me and blending my effort putting

these things, these two things together, how it just surges into a powerful

force in my life to be productive and to be able to grow in my

Christian life. I could use different examples. You know, when I was

younger, I loved explosions when I was a teenager. I don't know if

all teenagers love explosions, making things go boom, and when you put fuel

with fire, that's what generally happens. And usually you need you need to

bring those two things together, fuel and compression or fire. I can't really

think of a practical example on the lady's side, sorry, but you get

the idea. I think of internal combustion engines, and it always you can

dump fuel into an engine all you want, and you can flood the engine

with fuel, but as long as there's not oxygen and compression or oxygen and

fire to ignite that, there will be no power. You're gonna be stationary.

Those wheels will not turn. There has to be two ingredients coming together.

And that's the way. That's what Peter's talking about here in this chapter

said, look, here's God, all powerful God just pouring this into your

life. Here it is. He's not out to try to get you.

He's pouring you grace into your life. Now you turn around to your part

and this will result in power and you will start rolling, you'll start going

down the road. And this is one of my favorite passages and subjects because

realistically, looking in my life, if I do a self analysis, there's

a lot of things that show up that are not very nice. And I

would just like for all of us to pause a little bit and think about

our own life. And if you use computers, if you're used to using

technology, just type in your search bar failures or struggles or sins and just

let that run through your life a little bit and what shows up. And

that's kind of a personal thing. But if you just run a little self

analysis in your life and think of all your struggles, all your temptations,

or maybe not temptations. We all have temptations, but the the things in

which we fail and things that we might should call it sin, but we

just want to call it a failure, whatever you want to call it.

But just run a little self analysis in our lives this morning, and whatever

pops up, and just look at it. And now if nothing popped up,

and if you're perfect, that's great. This message isn't for you,

but I have our time believing it. But the good news is Peter's saying

here is there is a formula for this to have one hundred percent success.

To the point where he says in verse ten, if you do these things

some things that he a formula he gives here if you do these things,

you shall never fall, never ever fall. Now that's pretty confident with Peter.

When I when I first realized what he was talking about in this passage,

I had to think about it for a while, and I thought,

now, this is inspired word of God. But does Peter really know what

he's talking about? Is it true that if I do these things that I

will never fall? But thinking about it, I think it's true. I

believe Peter had a point here. And think of Peter. He was this.

He was the one that was always everywhere. He was the one that

had a quick temper, and of all people he should know. But he

came to realize in his life that when he put his effort, or when

he put effort into his life living a Christian life and adding things to his

faith and joining those resource with the resources that God has given him, but

there was power there. There was great power. So let's look at a

few things that God has made available to us. In verse three, according

as his divine power hath given into us all things that pertain to life and

godliness through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue.

God wants to give us all things that it takes. And I like to

turn to Romans chapter eight, verse thirty one and look at a few things

that God has given us now, the little self analysis that we ran in

our life. Whatever the list shows up on our screen, I just want

to say this morning that there is power, there is a way to overcome

those and Peter is giving us that formula here and tewod Peter chapter one.

And that is the good news about this chapter. It's a chapter of encouragement

for me and somewhat admonition, but of encouragement for me because the good news

is that those things do not have to pull me down, they do not

have to destroy my life. But the good news is that there is there

are ways to overcome this. Romes chapter eight, verse thirty one through thirty

two. What shall we say then, or then say to these things?

If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared

not his own son, but delivered him up for us, shall how shall

he not with him also freely give us all things? If God, if

we have God on our side, we have everything. Or if we are

on God's side, sometimes we feel like God has to come and follow me.

Say okay, God, I'm going down this route. I want you

to become with me. It's not so much that way. Jesus asked his

disciples to follow him. And we're supposed to be followers of God. So

if we are by God's side, if we put ourselves in the yoke with

Jesus, as he said, we have everything that we need at hand.

People and situations can come against us. But we're invincible because we are on

God's team. And just for starters, let's look at some things that God

has given us. Here in verse thirty two says he didn't even spare his

only son. And that's something that we can easily underestimate. God did not

spare even his son for us, and that is above you know, all

the good things that you can think of. God given us, those things

would be categorized beneath his own son. His son would be above all those

things. And he didn't spare his own son. He gave us his son

as appropciation for our sins. And if so, Paul argues, he will

give us all things too, he shall not, how shall not he not

with him also freely give us all things with his son. He will give

us everything because with his only begotten son comes everything. So we go back

to verses twenty eight and thirty. Here in the same chapter he says,

and we know that all things work together for good to them that love God,

to them who are the called according to His purpose, for whom he

did for No, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of

his son, that he might be the first born among many brethren. Moreover,

whom he did predestinate them he also called, and whom he called them

he also justified, And whom he justified them he also glorified. What shall

we say then to these things, as God before us, who can be

against us? To some things that we see here in these verses. Number

one, he works everything to our good if we love him. That's a

condition. It's easy to claim this promise. Well, God is going to

work everything for my own good. But if we love him, if we

are receiving that love that he is and to my life and participating in that

love, he will work everything, be it good or bad. In my

perception, he'll work it to my own good. Number two says here that

he knew us, and he predestinated us to be like his son Jesus even

before the beginning, even before the world began. In two Timothy, chapter

one, verse nine, he talks about this, that we were predestined for

this before the world began. He predestined us to be his sons and daughters,

so that we could be many brethren with Jesus. Trying to look for

the verse here, but he talks about that so that we can be many

brothers with Jesus. Basically with presenting the idea of adoption, so that we

can be brothers and sisters with Jesus Christ. In the form of adoption,

we can be called with the holy calling. Again in for Timothy chapter one,

verse nine, he says that we have been called with this holy calling.

We're justified and justified by our faith, as he talks about in the

same book Romans chapter five, verse one. But he says here in verse

thirty, and whom he called them, he also justified, and whom he

justified, he also glorified. So he wants to glorify us in the context

of this of being his sons and daughters. He would like to glorify us,

and this idea of being glorified. You know, Jesus told Jesus in

his prayer there in John chapter fifteen sixteen I forgot not fifteen sixteen, I

believe, or seventeen, where he was praying to God, and we have

this long prayer recorded. He was talking to God to his father and says,

now's the time for you to glorify me, that I may be glorified,

so that you may be glorified. And God also wants to glorify us

with his son Jesus. And that includes many different things. That includes us

dying to ourselves and resurrection, resurrecting with Jesus Christ. And that's the idea

of being sons and daughters, and the idea of adoption is that we can

have this power and through Jesus Christ, through the knowledge of Jesus Christ,

we can participate in these things and participate with his resurrection also, and that

we could be glorified with his son. And we could use the example of

you know, a proud parent promoting his child like this is my child.

There are a lot of children around, but each one of us as parents,

we look at our children and we're proud of our children. To be

honest, it doesn't matter if they have the if they're smart or not.

It doesn't matter if they're capable and different things are not. We're proud of

our children because they're our children, and that is the way we are for

God. It doesn't matter if we're having high iq or if we are prosperous

in whatever areas in life, that doesn't change the affection that God feels for

us or have love for us. He loves us because we are his children,

and He wants us to share this glory with his son because we're his

sons and daughters. Going back to Second Peter, these are some things that

God wants to give us, some resources that God would like to give us.

And now back here in Second Peter, chapter one, verse two says

grace and peace be multiplied into you, and these salutations the Apostles used many

times. We just rush through him, Grace and peace be multiplied to you

through the knowledge of Lord Jesus Christ, and things like that, and just

go through. All right, what is the chapter going to be about?

But there's quite a bit of theology in these salutations if we just stop and

think about it. And Peter is saying grace in peace be multiplied into you,

is He's not necessarily saying that God wants to give his grace and peace

to you. He's not saying directly, but is implying that obviously he couldn't

give them the grace and peace, so he is blessing them with the grace

and peace of God in their life. So God wants to give his grace,

He wants to pour his grace into her life. We look at it

grace a little bit, the literal divine favor of God in our life.

It's not some abstract idea. His grace, God's grace is literal. He

wants to pour his grace, his favor, and you could enumerate those things

in your life. It basically it's whatever you need. His grace is favor

in your life, is whatever you need to to prospering your Christian life.

And maybe if you want to draw a picture that portrays God's grace, you

can think of some supreme being bending or stooping down and reaching to a very

inferior being and offering his hand an assistance. And when when that inferior being,

which would be us, we reach up and and our efforts meet the

grace and peace of God in our life. That is when that connection can

be made, and that is when when we can come to this place where

we will not fall. So God wants to give us his grace, God's

peace. When you think of peace, many times peace God's piece is portrayed

as quietness, peacefulness, quiet sailing, nothing like the stormy sees. The

disciples were navigating with their little boat. That is a result of peace.

It is not peace itself. Peace of God is more becoming one. It

literally means to bind back together that which has been broken or separated. And

maybe that's where the saying becoming unglued comes from. When you become unglued about

something, what happens, it's just peace is gone, it's shattered, things

go to pieces. It became unglued. And to bring that those unglued pieces

back together, that is what the peace of God means. That's what happens

when when sin has torn our life apart and we became unglued. For God,

the peace of God is when I come back to back to God and

we're back as one. There's an example of this Jim Walton. He was

working through Whitecliffe Bible translators in Colombia, the Jungles of Colombia and he was

having trouble translating this word peace into this indigenous tribes language, and he could

not figure out how to translate this word peace because of what it implies.

And Fernando, the village chief, he was out in a town called a

Savannah where he was doing some business. And if he walked back to his

village it would take three days to walk that distance, but if he flew

by plane, it would take twenty minutes to get there. So he was

promised to ride. I believe this. Jim Walton. He had coordinated with

a small plane that was flying back and forth, and he was promised a

ride back to his village. I would save him a day and some two

days and some of walking. Well, the plane was late, and he

waited, and he waited, and his piece was beginning to he was beginning

to lose his peace. I guess finally decided, Oh, well, the

plane's not coming, I'm gonna take off walking. Well, he took off

walking. After a while, the plane landed, so they sent a runner

after him and called him back, said the plane landed, come back and

you can catch a ride. When he came back, he had taken a

while and by then the plane left again, and he became unglued, and

he came over to Jim in his own language. He began renting and raving

and to attack him verbally, and thankful of Jim hit the record button on

his little recorder and recorded the whole thing. And finally when he left,

Jim was running their recording and he asked the local people that knew their language,

what was he saying, and they said he was saying, I don't

have one heart. I don't have one heart with you. And that's when

when Jim realized that, you know what, God just gave me a definition

of peace here. I am not at one heart with you anymore. And

in that sense, that way he could find something that these people could understand

as peace and teach them that being at peace with God is being at one

heart with you. And obviously, this, this person, this chief,

he was not at one heart because things weren't going well. But when we

can come back together with God and we are at one heart with God again,

and we are at peace with God, and the result of that is

wrestling even in even in difficult times, the peace of God brings us calm

and serenity in our lives because of it. In verse three, these are

things that God gives us without limit, no cap no restrictions, no fine

print. There's nothing that will limit God. And he gives us all things

that pertained to life and godliness through through His knowledge. And I think this

is a keyword. Knowledge through the knowledge of Jesus Christ. In other words,

knowing God and Jesus our Lord, as he says in verse two.

And coming to the knowledge of God is something that takes effort. You don't

come to the knowledge the day you were saved. You came to the knowledge

of gods. Most certainly you did, or we did. I did,

But not to a deep knowledge of God. And to come to the knowledge

of God, it takes effort. It takes work. It's just when I

meet a stranger, I come to certain knowledge of this person. I see

this person, I make a son. We all do. We immediately profile

someone. And because of the way this person is dressed, because of the

way he said hello, the way he shook my hand, the way a

lot of different things, we think that we come to the knowledge of this

person. But the more time we spend with this person, we come to

deeper knowledge. And the deeper we dig, the more things we share,

and you can spend a year, two years with this person, and you

keep coming to a deeper knowledge of this person. That's the way with God.

We can't just come to God and now we have the full knowledge of

God. Peter's talking about through the knowledge of Him. That has caused the

glory and virtue is that we find these things. And the better we get

to know God, the more we come to the knowledge of Jesus Christ,

it just multiplies itself. We receive more, and we know more and we

receive more. So in verse four included that we cannot receive these great which

is super big and precious promises, precious which is something honorable and valuable,

and blessings without knowing God. So we cannot receive these things without the knowledge

of God. We have to come to the knowledge of God to receive these

things. And the more we come to know God, the more we can

receive. So these are some things, and you can go there's a lot.

There are many other things that God would give to us that we have

mentioned, But these are some things, some resources that God would give to

us so that we can prosper in a Christian life. Now, I'm going

to skip down to verse eight and read through verse fifteen here in Second Peter,

chapter one. For if these things be in you and abound, they

make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our

Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see

afar off, and has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.

Wherefore, the rather brethren give diligence to make your calling an election sure,

For if you do these things, you shall never fall, For so an

entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord,

our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Wherefore I will not be negligent to put

you always in remembrance of these things, though you know them and be established

in the present truth. Yeah, I think it meet as long as I

am in this tabernacle to stir you up by putting you in remembrance, knowing

that shortly I must put off this tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ

has showed me. Moreover, I will endeavor that ye be able after my

decease to have these things always in remembrance. See how emphasis emphasizes this and

these last few verses. I want you to remember this, remember this.

It is important, It is key. Remember this even after I am gone.

I would like you to remember this. You know, we hear in

America, we like to have stuff formulated for us. We like to be

able to do step one two in three, and anything that we do,

we try to perfect it to where I can always do these steps one,

two in three and get the same result. Right. We don't like to

build something or the ladies take a recipe and add ingredients and every time something

different pops up. That's kind of my experience. But I'm not a good

cook. But if I follow a recipe to the letter and these steps one,

two three, every time I get a similar result. And that's what

we like. We like things formulated. Eventually, we like something to be

formulated for us. And you know, I like to be able to invest

into something and put some effort into something and expect a certain result every time.

That is what gives me confidence in it. But when it comes to

how to live a successful Christian life spiritual life, many times the answer is,

well, it's not that easy. As you know a case by case

and oh maybe partially true in different areas, but not so dramatically. So

Peter here is saying that you know, there is a way, there is

a way that you can have a successful Christian life if you do these things.

The problem is that we don't like the formula as much. I had

to think of naming. Naman was clearly given the the answer or the cure

for his leprosy, which is terrible. We'd compare it to I guess cancer

today. But he didn't like it. He didn't like the formula. He

said, I got a better formula back home, cleaner waters through river Jordan.

It's dirty. I don't like that. I'll do it myself. I'll

do it my way, not so different. It was still a river.

It's still water, but just a different one. And it's so easy to

do that with the word of God. Yep, it's a great idea.

But I got a better way. I'll use kind of the same idea,

but my own way. And that's where failure comes. Naman would have gone

back home and dipped himself in the waters of his rivers there that is talking

about, and I really doubt he would have been cured from his leprosy.

Because he did not, he wouldn't have come to the obedience to the knowledge

of God. Through obedience, he came. Naman was able to come to

the knowledge of God through his obedience, not through the water of the Jordan,

but through his obedience to God. And that is the way it is

with us. If we want success, it comes to coming to the knowledge

of God through obedience to his word many times, and Peter is pretty pretty

sure of this. So now I'm going to go jump back to verse five

and read through verse seven. And besides this giving all diligence, now I

want to stop you a little bit. What do you do when you give

all diligence to something? If you think of the word diligence, just putting

effort, all diligence, not just part diligence, but putting all diligence into

something. Maybe we're running late and we have to get something done, and

we're in a panic, and we've got to get this done, and we're

just put all diligence into doing this as fast as we can and as hard

as we can. Peter's saying, take the same idea, all diligence put

all your effort into this and add, he says, add to your faith,

virtue, to virtue, knowledge and to knowledge, temperance and to temperance,

patience and to patience, godliness, and to godliness, brotherly kindness,

and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things being you in a bound,

they make you that you shall never be bare nor in fruitful knowledge of

our Lord Jesus Christ. And in verse ten, if you do these things,

you shall never fail. If you do these things, they will make

you productive, he says. If you do these things, these things will

make you want to or not. If you add these things to your faith,

they will make you, he says, neither barren nor unfruitful. Or

if you flip that around, they will make you fruitful. They will make

you productive in your Christian life. If we add this to you to our

faith, and if we think of our faith, I don't know how big

you think your faith is. When I think of my faith, sometimes I

think it's oh, pretty good. Other times I think it's very small,

next to nothing. But if we make a scale of one to ten,

and let's say the faith of Abraham per se, just for comparison, let's

say the faith of Abraham is number ten, and number one would be no

faith at all, or zero be no faith at all. Number one would

just be the bare minimum. Where do you where would you consider your faith

to be in this scale of one to ten. And that's not what matters

so much. It doesn't matter if my faith is a one or two or

three. Peter is saying, here, take that little bit of faith that

you can muster. Take that little bit of faith that you have. You're

a little bit of a belief in God. You're because you know when things

are going wrong, when you're facing difficult times. The honest truth is that

our faith sometimes is really small, and we question God quite a bit and

is it really true? Does God really exist? Does he really care about

me? What I'm saying is, let's take that little bit of faith that

we can that we can muster. Maybe it's a nine or ten, same

as Abraham, whatever, But I says, add these things to that faith

every day with all diligence, and begin to add to your faith virtue.

I don't know if I have time to go through all of these in depth,

but just to go over a little bit, because this is this is

a list of things that we can easily just kind of skim over, right,

we just read through them, and yeah, it's a neat idea.

It's great add these things, But if we really stop and make a study

of these things, and how do I and I don't have time, we

don't have time to talk about that necessarily this morning. How we can add

virtue in a practical way, That is a study you can make in your

own life. How can you can practically add virtue to your faith? But

virtue, the standard definition would be behavior showing a high moral standards, basically

being a decent human being right in this world. And it could be it

could mean conforming my life and conduct to moral principles that result in an upright

life, as in decency, being a decent human being, honesty, integrity,

rightness, good character, things like that. That's being a virtuous person.

The opposite of virtue. If you look at the opposite of something,

sometimes it brings more clarity to the opposite of virtue would be a vice,

which would be of something like immorality, iniquity, corruption, wickedness, misconduct.

That's the opposite of virtue. So adding virtue to our faith, feeding

that in our life and putting into practice. One Peter two nine says,

but your chosen people, royal priesthood, priesthood a holy nation, God's special

possession. I believe this is an nib that you may declare the excellences of

Him who called you out of the darkness into his wonderful life. And the

best way to proclaim these excellences in our life is to show them through my

life, and not just to proclaim and say that I'm a Virtus person,

but actually that people can see it and desire to live a god in life.

So to add to this faith knowledge And when we think of knowledge,

we are living in the era of knowledge we have. You know, if

you have Internet or if you have access to books. We have so much

access to knowledge, so much knowledge. But that's not the knowledge that he's

talking about. He's talking about the knowledge of Jesus Christ and coming to know

God in a more deep and meaningful way. And the only way to know

God, as we already touched on that is to is to spend time with

Him. And sometimes if we don't know how to spend time with God,

a great way to spend time with God is to keep his commandments. Just

try that your life. Keep God's commandments. And it's interesting how that works

even with children and parents. When a child keeps his parents' commandments, it

creates a good relationship between them. When the child does not keep the commandments,

it creates a bad relationship. In the same way with God when we

keep his commandments just for starters, when we keep God's commandments even if it

doesn't make sense and we don't feel like it, but just keep his commandments,

and we can begin to build that relationship with God, and we begin

to come to the knowledge of God through that. Moving on here, temperance,

which means self control. This is a difficult one and this is where

we need the help of the Holy Spirit many times to practice temperance. The

Greeks view this virtue as the ability to keep one passions under control, the

passion of anger, envy, and moral passion. Many different things keep these

things under control, and some of these things most definitely are out of control

in our own strength, and we need the power of the Holy Spirit.

But some examples will be my tongue, you know, the passion between my

tongue, the things that I want to say, my temper temptations, eating

habits, gluttony. These are passions that we need to practice temperance, and

we need to add temperance to our life. Says add patience, perseverance,

self control, waiting. Patience basically is waiting with cheerful endurance. Sometimes we

ask God for patience and he sends us a situation where we have to where

He would like for us to wait with cheerful endurance. You know when when

you're late and someone is holding you up and it's time to go, and

it's hard to it's difficult to endure it cheerfully. And again, this one

is focusing specifically on waiting with cheerful endurance, intemptation, waiting with cheerful endurance.

As James says, be patient unto the coming of the Lord. Be

patient with trials and tribulations and sufferings. Just be patient, endure it cheerfully

and add that patience to your life. Godliness walking in the view of God.

And you know what happens when you walk in the presence of God.

You receive his glory in your life. What happened to Moses when he went

up on the mountain and he was in a presence of God. He receives

so much glory from God. And when he came down, the people couldn't

stand to look at his face because it's shone so bright because he was in

the presence of God. And that is the way Godliness works in our life.

Our face isn't going to radiate light physical light. There might be a

change in your facial expressions. But when we walk in the presence of God,

we learn to think like God. We learned to act like God,

we learn to talk like God. And that's adding godliness to our life.

Brotherly kindness. We already talked about that in Sunday School somewhat. Although it's

not the same love. It's not that gopy love. It's felale, which

is basically the love that you feel for a friend or for a relative.

And the Apostle Paul combines these two loves, feleale and a gopy. I

forget what name he uses. It's the only part in the Bible that I

read it, I believe is in Romans. He combines those to express the

brotherly love that we should have for each other, just plain old brotherly love

as a family. And lastly, he mentions charity. Add this to your

life, add this to your faith. And this is a big one because

it is a part of God in our life that should reflect to others.

Now, I'm gonna have to skip some things here. As I mentioned earlier,

God has given us these resources. Now these are some things that we

can do in our own life. And when we blend the resources that God

has given us with this effort that we're putting forth in our life, it

results in one The only thing I can think of is power in our life.

That is what results the results in success and in power in our life.

When God is doing his part and we are doing our part together and

we blend and combine our efforts, that is what results in our life.

In conclusion, I like to read Galatians chapter six, verses eight through nine.

Let him that is taught in the Word communicate into him that teaches the

all good things be not deceived. God is not mocked. For whatsoever man

soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh

shall of the flesh reap corruption. But he that soweth to the Spirit shall

of the spirit reap life everlasting. And I believe that's the desire of each

one of us. Here sowing to the spirit, we will reap life everlasting.

Sayth it, fosting God, bless you.