May 12, 2016
Today’s reading from Encounter with God

Calling the Follower

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Opening Prayer

Thank You that I can call You “Father,” that You love me perfectly, that You know all my ways and are concerned for me.

Read 2 Peter 3:8-18

[8] But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. [9] The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. [10] But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. [11] Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives [12] as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. [13] But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells. [14] So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. [15] Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. [16] He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. [17] Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. [18] But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.

Scripture taken from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Reflect

Spend some time asking God for grace to become more fully the person he has created you to be.

Being reminded of judgment and looking forward to a new home challenge me not to sit on my hands–but to have holy and missional hands. Peter encourages us in the light of the sure and certain return of Jesus to think about our personal conduct (11). We are challenged to be spotless and blameless–radically different to the world around us. The followers of Jesus are called to purity; to allow the Holy Spirit to sanctify our lives so that we would increasingly look like Jesus; to ask him to cut out of our attitudes, ambitions and appetites anything that destroys the image of God in us.

Creation needs to be at peace with its Creator, to walk with the Lord in the cool of the day. To be at peace with God is only possible when we practice the presence of God in a dynamic way. This means the constant awareness that we speak and act and move only as the Spirit enables us. To be aware of the promptings of God and the correcting vision of Jesus we need to be in constant dialogue with him. “Our Lord’s patience means salvation” (15). As we wait, there is an opportunity for lives to be transformed, for the lost to be found, for the sick to be healed, for the broken-hearted to be bound up and for the nation to be changed.

Our job is to grow in the knowledge of God’s grace and as conduits of God’s grace. We should come to look more like Jesus because of the work of grace in us, forgiving and transforming us. The transformation God wants to do through you he first has to do in you.

Apply

In what area do you sense God calling you to grow? Something to stop? A new thing to begin?

Closing prayer

Heavenly Father, I don’t want to be a somnolent saint, sleeping instead of growing in You. Set before me the vision of what You want me to be.

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