2 Pet 1:3-4 “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness…. so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
The words in the above two verses absolutely ignite my faith.
I was a person that grew up in a wonderfully loving home. My parents loved me and gave me everything they knew and had the capability to give me. It was truly a loving atmosphere that nurtured good things in me.
My home atmosphere was great, but as we’ve all learned, it can be a hard world to live in. There are many cruel people out there. My confidence level of who I was and what I was to become was not clear to me and I didn’t know or have the Lord to encourage my heart.
While growing up, like most kids, I did not always receive glowing encouragement from my friends and classmates at school. That isn’t what kids are generally great at. The opposite may be closer to the truth. If someone could represent average, in most ways, that was how I saw myself. That may not seem bad but no young aspiring person really wants to think of themselves as average. I had a friendly personality, but most of the strengths that I did have weren’t the kinds of attributes that were noticeable to my friends or in my day to day life. I was an extremely hard worker and had great common sense but who notices that? For a guy, I wasn’t really very big. I grew late in life and was quite small in high school. I received good grades but wasn’t close to being the smartest person. I was only an okay athlete. Over all, I received my share of teenage teasing and ridicule.
As a young adult I gave my life to the Lord. That was when something powerful, miraculously changed within me. My caring of what people thought about me began to decrease because my care for reverencing the Lord and living for Him became my ultimate importance.
As I learned to read the Bible and began to learn about this new life in Jesus, I learned something very wonderful – something that I had wished my self esteem had been built upon my entire life. I learned that I had been given a new nature – God’s nature. Something He called the “divine nature.” The Greek word for nature means “growth” and is implying the growth of our disposition – of who we become. The preceeding word divine means “godhead.” This is implying that God’s character is now within to learn and grow from. 2 Pet 1:3-4 says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness…. so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”
This new nature is given to every believer as an act of God’s grace and love. We can only develop in it when we believe it and act upon it by faith. In taking hold of this revelation and truth, it meant that I had the power of God to become like God working within me! Wow! That is truly a mind boggling thought! It meant that all my old corrupted desires and ways I did things could be left behind. It meant that God’s supernatural power was at work in my life. Talk about a self esteem booster – and not just to please others but instead, to honor God!
Do you know what that means? It means that God desires us to think and act like Himself. That would be impossible except that He DID actually put His nature within us. Most Christians think godliness means being good and kind. There are many people that don’t know Jesus that are good and kind. It has to mean more! God lets us do things that only God can do. He let’s us speak His Word to people – Words that are life-changing and that have the ability to alter the total course of someone’s life. He instructs and allows us to lay hands on the sick so they can recover. He instructs and allows us come to the throne of Heaven – His throne of grace when we pray. Hebrews 4:16 says, “So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it.”
God instructs and allows us to be vessels of the Holy Spirit to be used in all of our day-to-day surroundings to become like Jesus and to share His love and life-changing power. If you are a Christian, I challenge you to pray about these scriptures yourself. He did ask us to put on goodness but He also asks us to put on godliness – to be like God. Then His purpose can become our purpose. Then His power can work through us. Of course these things are only accessed by faith in what Gods says. When that happens, then the reality of these two verses truly begins to hit home with us. John 14:12 “The truth is, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father.” AND 1 John 5:14-15 “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us–whatever we ask–we know that we have what we asked of Him.”
God doesn’t want us to reach out to those around us with only the same nice and kind words that any person that doesn’t know God could offer. He wants us to act like Jesus in the earth – to offer His life changing love – His life changing Word – His life changing promises – His life changing power that comes through prayer.
Jesus has given me His love, His purpose, and His divine nature to imitate and boldly live touching others with His “divine” love and power. Jesus is the friend that rightly impacts our life and who we are forever!
In His Love,
Pastor Tim Burt
http://readfreshmanna.blogspot.com/ Published by Pastor Tim Burt
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