Good morning, today is Wednesday, May 27, 2020. My name is Keith and welcome to the Worship Daily from Green Acres Baptist Church in Athens, GA.

2 Peter 1:1-11

Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,

To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours:

Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

His 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. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

A couple of phrases Peter uses stand out to me. The first is that Peter opens up his letter about the faith by calling this faith precious and received through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. I just think about those things in life that are most precious to me… But right here Peter speaks about a reality that I think all of us with faith can understand and relate to in some way. He calls our faith precious. Something that is so foundational for each of our lives.  I think perhaps what is most interesting about how Peter talks about faith is that you get this sense that his faith is something given to him. And, for Peter, faith is not just something that we do, not just a verb, but it is something we possess.

And Peter encourages us to add to our faith and thereby participate more in the “divine nature,” as Peter calls it. So we can surely relate to Peter’s idea that our faith is a precious gift and something integral to our lives, but this idea of faith producing a godly live that is participating in a diving nature may be a little more foreign to you. But, it is for this reason that it is beneficial to add goodness, knowledge, self control, perseverance, godliness, and love to our faith.

So, I encourage you today to maybe go back if you have some time and read through 2 Peter chapter 1. Look for how Peter is making a startling claim that a life of living in the grace and peace that we possess because of Jesus is participating in the divine nature. Our faith enables us to intersect with the very heart of God — his very own glory and goodness.