02.Feb.2009 Applying God’s Promises

2 Peter 1: 5-9: So make every effort to apply the benefits of these promises to your life, then your faith will produce a life a moral excellence. A life of moral excellence leads to knowing God better. The more you grow like this, the more you will become productive and useful in your knowledge of our Lord. But those who fail to develop these virtues are blind, or at least very short-sighted.

Continuing on the theme of self-leadership, but pushing into the idea of purpose, this week we discussed the Apostle Peter’s passage which centers upon the necessity of the application of God’s promises. God has promised His people many things—most Christians know this—but these promises, in order to be utilized, in order to be activated, must first be applied to render any sort of change.

How this ties into self-leadership is rather simple, actually: Leaders are men of action. And those who act, who move, are those who actualize their God-given purpose. One’s purpose, you see, is much bigger and deeper than their goals. Goal-setting is an important activity, to be sure, but simply putting pen to paper and writing out your dreams won’t prosper anyone. It is your decision to step out boldly, and crucially, your willingness to make some potentially weighty sacrifices along the way that will further your goals, and by extension, that will align you with your purpose.

There is a woman in my congregation who, years ago, at the inconvenient age of 39, decided that she wanted to become an attorney—a noble desire, but an impractical one given her age and circumstances. She was working as a paralegal at the time, so she was in the field—this was not a pipedream, in other words—but she wanted to take a step up in the professional food chain. It is a long story, as all tales of trial are, but in short it took her two full years to get accepted to the program, and in spite of the fact that she could only take on evening coursework, she earned her law degree in three years. She has, in fact, just opened up her own practice.

So don’t tell me you can’t. And don’t expect the prosperous road to be smoothly paved.

Now let’s get into the scripture a bit in order to pull out a couple of Peter’s finer points. Verse 6 is an interesting one, isn’t it? A life of moral excellence leads to knowing God better. One might think this would be the other way around, no? I always figured that the more I know God, the more moral I will become. But it’s the opposite, you’ll see, according to Peter. He asserts that the more I apply the promises of God, the more I align myself with His desires for my life, and then the closer I will become to Him. The workload, in other words, precedes the breakthrough. The implication here is that a person cannot merely ask God to change their circumstances or to rid them of their obstacles. One cannot simply pray for miracles. That’s lazy faith. That’s asking for a spiritual handout in place of putting out any honest-to-goodness effort. But God wants you to possess what He gives you. He wants you to seize it. Indeed, He offers you His help. But He gives you the tools to change your life from the get go.

On a more practical level, those who successfully self-lead concentrate on overcoming difficulties, completing tasks, and obtaining results. They seek what is right instead of accepting what is easy. Effective leaders do not worry about being promoted, but rather they concern themselves with the quality of their work. They demand excellence of their output. So rather than concerning yourself with office politics, about looking good, about promotions and perks, concentrate on producing quality in all its many forms: quality of the work itself, but also quality of attitude, quality of office morale, and so on. Your leadership qualities will get noticed more quickly this way anyway.

In the economy we’re in, those who produce are the ones with the jobs. And while that sounds harsh, it’s the way God works as well. If you’ll recall, Jesus’ parable from Matthew 25:14 tells of the three servants, one who is given five talents, one who is given two, and one only a single talent. And just as the master in this story expects productivity from all three of his servants, so does God expect great things from each of us. Indeed, He gives us our abilities in differing measure, but He still intends for us to produce something of them.

This process will not be easy, however, even with God’s backing. Leading yourself is as difficult an endeavor as anything you’ll take on in your lives. It involves sacrifice. It costs. The attorney in my congregation did not decide to go to law school thinking it’d be effortless or costless. Nope. It cost her money, time, and energy, but she expected it to and pushed in anyway. Now it’s paid off, of course, and she has the fruit to show for it. God prospered her, ultimately, because she trusted Him to move. And that’s how it will work for you too if you will only take the first step, if only you will get yourself situated and apply God’s principles. If only you will show up early, leave late, make sacrifices, sleep a little less, work a little harder, run up against another obstacle, push in a little more, and then *BANG* God will show up too. Enter the power of Heaven. This is how you take God’s promises and produce something from them: by steadfast determination, patience, and self-leadership.

So what do you want? What do you want? And what are you prepared to do—within the boundaries of God’s Kingdom, of course—to get it? No more victimization. No more laziness. No more passivity. When you start leading you, people notice. But only after God does.