Verses 20-21 tell us the best thing we can do to fight these false teachers. While we need to always be aware of them and be prepared our focus seems to be more on us than on them. I like to tell people when there is a conflict or difficulty or a disagreement with someone. You can’t fix anyone but yourself.
We need to be aware that there are bad guys. We need to know the warning signs. But most of all we need to know how to prepare ourselves.
And here they are.
Build yourselves on your holy faith
Praying in the Holy Ghost
Keep yourself in God’s love
Looking for His mercy
We must be constantly striving to keep building our faith. Peter tells us exactly how to do that – ‘And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness…’ If our faith is not being built on it is going to stagnate.
Prayer is obviously vital. We are told elsewhere to ‘pray without ceasing’ and Jesus says ‘men ought always to pray and not lode heart.’
Faith building and prayer must be joined with keeping ourselves in the love of God. ‘Jesus loves me this I know’ must be more than just a kid’s song. It is the knowledge that God loves us that keeps us going when things get tough.
And finally we overcome the wickedness of this world by looking for God’s mercy. We don’t have to look at fixing this broken world. Only Jesus can do that and we need to look to His mercy for us to survive and for us to share with others.
I think there is plenty there to keep us busy.
No comments:
Post a Comment