One Thing at a Time

The other day I was in the living room when Kelly came in. She is 21 months old and into everything. She loves shoes, anybodies shoes. She will put on whatever shoes she can find and tromp around the house, most of the time in just one show that is way too big for her. On this day she was fully dressed, she had on a diaper, a onese, a garment that is a shirt with a tail that buttons under the bottom, a pair of pants and socks.

What caught my attention is that she also had on a pair of panties. I am not sure whose they were but they were red and pulled up to her waist over her pants, I am pretty sure she had both legs through one leg hole since most of the panties were bunched up on one side of her body and she was just as content as could be playing and having a good time.

She just didn’t know that panties go under your pants and not on top of them. To the rest of us it was hilarious. We know that some things have a particular order to them and for a particular reason, underwear just don’t perform their desired function if you wear them on the outside.

Now when I get dressed on Sunday mornings I have a particular system and it doesn’t work well if I deviate much from that system. I get up and shower, then put on my underclothes first, because they don’t work as well on the outside. Next I go to the closet and put on my dress pants and belt and get my boots which I carry into the bedroom to get socks and then put on the socks and boots in that order.

Now you might wonder why I don’t get my shirt yet. Because it has to be ironed and I have lots of people living in my house so the last thing I do is get a shirt and go out in the hall where I set up the ironing board to iron my shirt. This means I iron wearing a t-shirt and my dress pants and boots. When the shirt is ironed I have to go back into the bedroom, unbuckle my belt, unbutton and unzip my pants and put on my shirt and tuck it in and then re-button, re-zip and re-buckle. I know it is a lot of extra steps but unless I want to go out into the rest of the house with a lot of other people and no pants on it is the only way.

There are some things in scripture that also require a step by step approach and today’s passage is that kind of thing.

2 Peter 1:5–11 NASB95

Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble; for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you.

This passage starts of with for this reason, what reason, the one we talked about last week. Because you have been given everything pertaining to life and godliness by the grace of God. Everything you need to have life, even eternal life and everything you need to achieve godliness has already been given to you, you just have to use it.

So how do you use it, here is a step by step guide given to us right from the scriptures describing how to use what you have already been given to achieve life and godliness. Are you ready to be more like God, here it is, a step by step plan to achieve that goal with the resources the bible tells us you already have.

1: be diligent. In other words put in the effort. Few things ever change without someone putting in the time and effort to make the change happen. The first step is to be willing to make the change and willing to put in the effort it takes to make the change happen. We already know this, we know that you don’t master a subject unless you study and you don’t get better at playing an instrument unless you practice, you don’t become good at a sport unless you learn the game and play it. Be diligent.

2: Step 2 so now that you have decided to put in the work what do you put it into. Moral excellence, in other words be the best person you can possible be. Go out of your way to follow the moral code of the bible, to act like Jesus Christ acts and to think like Jesus thinks. After all, our moral actions are one of the first things others notice about us, how we talk and how we act, how we treat others. Be better than your best.

3: So that brings up the question of what is moral and what is not. What is the right thing to do. If you are going to strive to do right you must first know what that is, you must have knowledge. Where does that knowledge come from, scripture. Once you have decided to put in the effort and decided to act like Jesus you must learn how to do that by learning everything you can about God’s word.

4: So now once you have commited yourself to action, decided to model your life after Jesus and studied the bible to know how to do that you can begin to exercise self control. Many people today lack self control and there is a simple reason for it. Just like there is an order to getting dressed there is an order to controlling your own life. trying to get your life under control without having the resources to do so, without committing to the work required and without having the proper model and the right information to use is like putting you shoes on before putting on your socks. You might have all the right pieces but they don’t work they way they are supposed to. Trying to get control of your life without the right foundation and information just doesn’t work.

5: So here we are, once you reach this point and have self control you can really take charge of your life. You decide where you want to go and what you want to do because you are the one in control. If you have followed the steps you will obviously not be working against God because Jesus is your model and God’s word is the information you use to establish self control. If you did it right you would be right in the center of God’s will for your your life and totally in control of that life. Now the secret is to maintain it. We have all had times when we felt like we had gotten it all together but they usually don’t last long. Of course if we base our lives on the life of Jesus and the word of God we have a huge advantage and a good chance at arriving at those moments where we have it all together intentionally rather than just by luck. so now we have to persevere. What does that mean, keep it up. We never really get to sit down and say we are finished, we have arrived. We are alway in the process and always facing new challenges but we know that God has given us everything we need to achieve Godliness and we have the tools to maintain control of our lives, we just need to keep at it, keep it up.

6:For as long as we maintain that self control we have achieved Godliness. We put in the work to make Jesus our example according to the word of God and control ourselves accordingly. As long as we keep that up, according to scripture we will have achieved Godliness. From time to time we slip up and we get back on the right path. The more we are able to exercise self control and the quicker we get back to where we need to be after we mess up, that’s called sin by the way, the more we become like God and the more we begin to show godly qualities.

7: Brotherly kindness. Do you ever find it hard to be kind to other people, I do. Some people it is easier to be kind to than others but if kindness is part of who we are shouldn’t it depend on our character rather than on the character of the other person. Does the kindness God shows us depend on who we are or on who He is. If it depended on us then we would be in trouble. The more we become like God the more we will become kind to others because of who we are and not because of who they are. Can you guess where that leads?

8: Love. When we become like God we will love people the way God loves them. Some people make it easy to love them and some make it harder but God loves us on our best day and on our worst day and do you know what? He loves us just as much on our worst day as he does on our best day. How is that possible.......because God loves us based on his character and his self control not based on ours. As we become more like God, as we experience more godliness, we love people because it is what a godly person does and not because they are lovable or unlovable.

Have you ever had problems loving someone, I have. Maybe it is because we have not dressed ourselves properly. Our socks are on top of our shoes and our underclothes are outside of our outer clothes. Maybe it is because we have not followed the steps to Godliness. It can’t be because we don’t have the tools. It can’t be because we are not able or not equipped. After all the bible clearly tells us that we already have everything we need to achieve godliness. Not only does it tell us we have everything we need but it outlines a step by step plan for how to use what we have to achieve godliness.

So if God has given us all that we need and has laid out a step by step plan including a living breathing example who is perfect in every way, the very presence of God on earth, then what else do we lack. What else could we possibly need to do what God tells us to do and be like him.

Perhaps we need to take it one step at a time, the steps God lined out in his word, in the order he gave them to us and according to the example he himself gave us. God has given us everything we need to have self control, the word of God says so. He has given us everything we need to achieve godliness, His word says so. If we follow his word and his example we will also learn to love as he loves.

Of course we will not be as good at it as God is, we are not perfect. But are we not made in the image of God, are we not to be a reflection of who he is? Are we not designed and equipped to be the hands and feet of Jesus on this earth, and are we not commanded to do so.

What are we waiting for. Let us begin together. Let us commit to being diligent, morally excellent, gaining knowledge, learning self control, persevering, becoming more godly, learning to be kind, and learning to love each other as God loves us. We have all of the tools, we have everything we need, but do we have the nerve, do we have the courage, are we willing to try. God has given us the ability to accomplish a great and mighty work, the greatest of all works that mankind can accomplish, to imitate God. Are you ready, are you willing, will you take this journey with me? Will you take this journey for the God who loves you? Let us begin.