Tonight I had a Bible study with a friend, looking at 2  Peter 1:1-8. It struck me again what tremendous, wonderful and amazing truths there are in this passage. Let me mention three.

Verse 3: "His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life…” EVERYTHING!  We already have it—we just have to learn to appropriate and use what He’s given us, such as patience, grace, joy, peace and self-control. For instance patience: when stressed, we can  turn to God saying,”Thank you for this hold up, Lord. I repent of my impatience and take up your great patience, remembering that my times are in your hands.”

Then verse 4 with an even more astounding statement: “...through his very great and precious promises you may participate in the divine nature….” Participate in the DIVINE nature! The nature that created the universe, hung the earth on nothing, redeemed our lives. This nature resides in us as the Holy Spirit. What a tremendous privilege as every day we walk around with the divine nature within us, with us, working through us. What a great truth!

And verse 5 says, "...make every effort to add to your faith goodness… knowledge...self-control…perseverance…godliness...mutual affection…love.” What this means is that God has provided these things for us to take up and add. It is like God has presented us with a big box filled with tools for living a godly life. If we don’t open the box and take up the tools, they are useless to us. So, God has laid out the course, readied the supplies, we only need to learn to take them up and add them. What wonderful provision. Are we going to join Him in the adventure?

Tomorrow we’ll talk more about appropriating and using these spiritual “tools” God has given us.