Give It Away — Blessings for Everyone!!

SCRIPTURE: Is. 50-52; Ps. 92; 2 Pet. 1

2 Peter 1:3-11
^3-4Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received! We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you—your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust.

 ^5-9So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books.

 ^10-11So, friends, confirm God’s invitation to you, his choice of you. Don’t put it off; do it now. Do this, and you’ll have your life on a firm footing, the streets paved and the way wide open into the eternal kingdom of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ.

OBSERVATIONS: Big passage today. But it fits in with the theme of the weekend (Friday’s passage [see below] and Sunday’s message). Look for those who need an invitation to life. Pray for them. Offer them the blessings that you have received yourself; make those blessings real for them in their lives by relying on God’s promise to support them.

APPLICATION: Continue to pray for my ‘glow in the dark house.’ Find more folks who need the blessings I have been given — not for me to keep, but the ones designed to be given away — and bless their socks off.

PRAYER: God, give me more so that I can give away more. Not because I want it, but because I think that YOU want it. Open my eyes. Open my heart. Open my mind. I release all these things to you through them. In Christ, Amen.