School’s Back in Session -Today’s Lesson!
Thankfully school is back in session. Our teachers, staff, and students in the midst of what is still somewhat of a pandemic threat are braving it back to the classroom. Our prayers are needed that each and every person be safe, stay healthy, and experience a good year.
For believers, school is never out of session; we are constantly learning something new. Today’s lesson comes from Peter:
3-4 Everything 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.
5-9 So 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. 1 Peter 1:3-9 (MSG)
This passage provided the text for the vert first message I gave in a church. It’s a lesson that I am still working on, over fifty years later. Why? Not because I’m slow to learn, but because there is always something to “add to”. While we have basic faith and hopefully good character, our sensitivity to how we need to add to it discipline, patience, friendliness and love grows every year, if not daily. Fortunately our God does not reveal all the things we need to learn right away – we would become overwhelmed with our inner mess!
Instead our Father with gentle hands and a loving heart leads us through green pastures, patiently renewing and restoring our soul, as we are ready. As we yield to our lessons, we find that we begin to mature, we can see the Lord Jesus moving and operating in our life and we become joyful in our journey. When we refuse to yield to Him, than we forget that we once were lost and now we’re found, somehow thinking that we always were living for the Lord! While the Father doesn’t want us to live in regret of our past, He doesn’t want us to forget that we a treasure in earthen vessels that was a gift from Him – not we ourselves.
Thank the Lord for the lessons – become an eternal student in the Kingdom school.
Maria