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Faith and Practice (2 Peter 1:3-9)
Faith and Practice – 2 Peter 1:3-9
Richard Jones, 8/16/20
PRACTICE makes permanent. Experience doesn’t make you wiser, it only makes you older. Evaluated experience – making sure what you’re practicing is what we could and should be practicing – makes you wiser. Whatever has been your practice: Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent. If it’s not evaluated, it just creates a rut; it gets you off track and creates the illusion, for you and for others, of a track that is really a rut. Evaluated practice makes better.
That’s how and why believers and followers of Jesus practice our faith – because we want to get better at being faithful.
As we renew our minds with the truth of God’s character, it becomes easier and more practical to verbalize our gratitude to God in prayer, and to others in praise of God. As we do, it’s like putting stones into our ruts of faithless behavior – we literally get lifted up, and out of our ruts, as we praise Him!
If you just try to praise God as a knee-jerk reaction, in order to just feel better for the moment, it can feel like a rock in the middle of your track, and you could miss it being the stepping stone out of your rut and into the rewards God has for those who believe: The promises of God, the power of God, and the presence of God.
In order to experience rewards in the present and in the future, we need to establish and stick to a routine.
Google defines a routine as a sequence of actions regularly followed; Merriam-Webster – a regular course of procedure; Dictionary.com – an unvarying and constantly repeated formula, as of speech or action; convenient or predictable response.
I want to show you a clip of convenient or predictable response that many consider a moment of greatness in football. In fact, the official YouTube page of the NFL categorizes it like this: “New York Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. makes the greatest catch of 2014, and arguably of all time.” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxbz3DDQzHU
VIDEO 1 – “Odell Beckham Jr. Makes Catch of the Year! _ NFL”
This next video is from his practice just before the moment of greatness we just watched.
VIDEO 2 – “Odell Beckham Jr Practice”
This moment was great to us because it had already become routine to Odell. Greatness isn’t achieved by luck, it’s achieved by discipline – consistency over time.
Spiritual greatness isn’t a new fad or book, it comes thru doing more of the same – hearing God day by day from His own words – words recorded thousands of years ago and preserved by Him ever since.
Thomas Edison was asked how he felt about the thousand failed attempts at inventing the light bulb. He said those weren’t a thousand failed attempts, they were the thousand necessary steps to inventing the lightbulb.
Odell Beckam Jr didn’t make that catch randomly. Thomas Edison didn’t invent the lightbulb randomly. And you won’t fall in love with the God of the Bible randomly, either.
We all want our life to matter more. This morning is all about how!!! I want 2020 to end better than it began for you. For many, that’s a pretty low bar. But I want it to be a chapter in your life where everything got better, and that you can look back on and know why.
A routine of more of the same is the path toward reward. If you want something you never had, you have to do something you’ve never done.
Spiritual greatness is Godliness. My job is as a COACH – leading you to do what you might not feel like doing in order to become what you’ve always dreamed of being!
Q: What if the truth was that if you are a believer, you lack nothing for getting there? If you are spiritually starved, God never starved you – you starved you! Cause you don’t know what you already possess!
2 Peter 1:3 – 3His [Jesus’] divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.
God’s glory and goodness draw
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By First Baptist Church Bartow
5
22 ratings
Faith and Practice – 2 Peter 1:3-9
Richard Jones, 8/16/20
PRACTICE makes permanent. Experience doesn’t make you wiser, it only makes you older. Evaluated experience – making sure what you’re practicing is what we could and should be practicing – makes you wiser. Whatever has been your practice: Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent. If it’s not evaluated, it just creates a rut; it gets you off track and creates the illusion, for you and for others, of a track that is really a rut. Evaluated practice makes better.
That’s how and why believers and followers of Jesus practice our faith – because we want to get better at being faithful.
As we renew our minds with the truth of God’s character, it becomes easier and more practical to verbalize our gratitude to God in prayer, and to others in praise of God. As we do, it’s like putting stones into our ruts of faithless behavior – we literally get lifted up, and out of our ruts, as we praise Him!
If you just try to praise God as a knee-jerk reaction, in order to just feel better for the moment, it can feel like a rock in the middle of your track, and you could miss it being the stepping stone out of your rut and into the rewards God has for those who believe: The promises of God, the power of God, and the presence of God.
In order to experience rewards in the present and in the future, we need to establish and stick to a routine.
Google defines a routine as a sequence of actions regularly followed; Merriam-Webster – a regular course of procedure; Dictionary.com – an unvarying and constantly repeated formula, as of speech or action; convenient or predictable response.
I want to show you a clip of convenient or predictable response that many consider a moment of greatness in football. In fact, the official YouTube page of the NFL categorizes it like this: “New York Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. makes the greatest catch of 2014, and arguably of all time.” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxbz3DDQzHU
VIDEO 1 – “Odell Beckham Jr. Makes Catch of the Year! _ NFL”
This next video is from his practice just before the moment of greatness we just watched.
VIDEO 2 – “Odell Beckham Jr Practice”
This moment was great to us because it had already become routine to Odell. Greatness isn’t achieved by luck, it’s achieved by discipline – consistency over time.
Spiritual greatness isn’t a new fad or book, it comes thru doing more of the same – hearing God day by day from His own words – words recorded thousands of years ago and preserved by Him ever since.
Thomas Edison was asked how he felt about the thousand failed attempts at inventing the light bulb. He said those weren’t a thousand failed attempts, they were the thousand necessary steps to inventing the lightbulb.
Odell Beckam Jr didn’t make that catch randomly. Thomas Edison didn’t invent the lightbulb randomly. And you won’t fall in love with the God of the Bible randomly, either.
We all want our life to matter more. This morning is all about how!!! I want 2020 to end better than it began for you. For many, that’s a pretty low bar. But I want it to be a chapter in your life where everything got better, and that you can look back on and know why.
A routine of more of the same is the path toward reward. If you want something you never had, you have to do something you’ve never done.
Spiritual greatness is Godliness. My job is as a COACH – leading you to do what you might not feel like doing in order to become what you’ve always dreamed of being!
Q: What if the truth was that if you are a believer, you lack nothing for getting there? If you are spiritually starved, God never starved you – you starved you! Cause you don’t know what you already possess!
2 Peter 1:3 – 3His [Jesus’] divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.
God’s glory and goodness draw