[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Hallelujah. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Hallelujah. Hallelujah. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] What's this That was love. Oh, love lifted me. Going to move that baby back. I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore, very deeply stained within, seeking to rise no more. But the master of the sea heard my despairing cry and from the waters lifted me. Now safe am I. Love lifted me. Love lifted me. Oh when nothing else could help. Love lifted me. Love lifted me. Love lifted me when nothing else could help. God lifted me. All my heart to him I give. Ever to him I'll cling. In his blessed presence live. Ever his praises sing. Love so mighty and so true. There is my souls with songs. Faithful loving service to to him belongs. Love lifted me. Love lifted me. Oh, when nothing else could help. Love lifted me. Love lifted me. Love lifted me when nothing else could help. God lifted me. Souls in danger look above. Jesus completely saves. He will lift you by his love out of the angry waves. He's the master of the sea. pillows his will obey. He our savior wants to be be saved today. Love lifted me. Love lifted me. Oh, when nothing else could help. Love lifted me. Love lifted me. Love lifted me. When nothing else could help, God love God lifted me. Father, that is so true. Oh, we wouldn't be here today without that love that that love that you gave. You went to the cross for people who didn't deserve you. We just we cannot fathom that love. But yet, we are so grateful that you gave it to us and you continue to give it to us each and every day. whatever we need, you're always going to be there for us. We thank you for that, Lord. As we gather here this morning, sing praises to you, look into your word, fellowship one another. Lord, just lift our hearts to be grateful of that this morning in Jesus name. Amen. You may be seated. Come on down. years ago, there was a gentleman, older gentleman. He was a grandpa. He was in a grocery store. And this is back during like in 2020, you know, four or five years ago, back when you had CO, remember COVID, all that mess. Well, he's standing in line. Uh well, he was not quite in line. There was a line of people and they were supposed to be everybody was supposed to be six feet apart. So there was people standing in line and he was older and he wasn't paying a whole lot of attention. Somebody went through the line. He just walks up to the register. He wasn't supposed to. He was supposed to be in the queue or the line behind. But he just walks up to the register and he's paying for his food, he thinks. So he reaches into his back pocket and he grabs what he thinks is his wallet, but it's just a pad of paper. And he's like, "Oh no." He doesn't have any money with him. His wallet is not there. He already cut in line. But the lady behind him saw what was going on. So she walks up and says, "I'll take care of his groceries." All it was was a a gallon of milk and some chocolate chip cookies. So she pays for his food and he's, "Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you." And and he goes through. Well, the cashier looks at her and she goes, "Um, aren't you upset that he just cut in front of you?" She goes, "No, no, not really." Well, why not? Well, she said, "You know, someday that be may be my dad standing in line, and I hope someone is kind enough and gracious enough to pay for his groceries when he forgets his wallet. So, it doesn't hurt me one bit. He cut in front of me. So, what? I'll probably do that someday when I'm older and not paying attention." It doesn't bother me that he did that. And I It cost me hardly anything to pay for his food, but I know what it meant to him. And I know what it would mean would mean to my father if it happens to my dad someday. So being kind, being gracious, doesn't hurt. Scripture tells us, be kind one to another. Forgiving. Someday, maybe it's happened at school. Somebody got something that you should have received. Somebody cuts in front of you. Someday you're going to be drivers. Have you learned to drive yet? Oh, just wait. Somebody's going to cut in front of you and you're going to you're going to have an opportunity to lay on your horn or you're going to um there was this little boy sitting in the backseat of a car. His dad was something was going on. His dad was going, "What's the matter? Don't you know how to drive that car?" And the little boy goes, "Dad, what? What? Can they hear you?" "No." "Then why are you talking to him?" And the dad goes, "Oh my, he's right. What? I'm setting a poor example for my kids in the back seat yelling at somebody who can't hear me and it's not going to accomplish anything." It was a good lesson learned. Being kind, being forgiving. Sometimes it's not easy to do, especially when sisters compete against each other for whatever reason or sisters and brothers, you know, get at each other. Be kind and forgiving because it's what we're supposed to do. It's looking at others needs. It's not being selfish. Since I deserve better, I should do now. It's appreciating the fact that sometimes people do things and they make mistakes and they hurt us. But we can be kind and we can be forgiving. Okay. Father, it's not always easy. Sometimes it's very hard to forgive people who have wronged us, offended us, hurt us, and we don't want to. We'd rather just, you know, we'd rather make things right and get even. But that doesn't honor you. And it's selfishness. And it's pride. What good does it do in the long run? We thank you, Father, that you've given us everything we need to do the right things at the right time if we just listen. Um, thank you for your word that challenges us and encourages us. May this day bring you honor and glory. Thank you through your son. Amen. You're dismissed. It is well with my soul. Our next song, stand with me, please. [Music] When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea willows roll, whatever my life, thou hast taught me to name. It is well. It is well with my soul. [Music] It is well with my soul. [Music] It is well. It is well with my soul. Oh, Satan should buff it, though trial should come. Let this rest assured control that Christ hath regarded my helplessness day and has shed his own blood for my soul. It is well with my soul. [Music] It is well. It is well with my soul. My sin. Oh the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin not in heart, but the whole is nailed to the cross. And I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, oh my soul. It is well [Music] with my soul. It is well. It is well with my soul. Oh Lord, the day when my days shall be s High be roll back as a scroll. The trump shall resound and the Lord shall resend. Even so, it is well with my soul. Oh, it is well [Music] with my soul. It is well. It is well with my soul. [Applause] Amen. I hope that he went through some terrible, terrible stuff when he wrote that song. I don't know if you know the story about his family on I don't know if there's that panic or one of those ships lost them over there, but um can we do that? Can we say it is well with our soul when we're going through those valleys? It's we're singing about love and stuff this morning. This is like it's always going to be there to help us go through those things, but we have to avail ourselves of it. So 135 in your chorus books. Shout to the Lord is our next one. [Music] My Jesus, my savior. Lord, there is none like you. All of my days I want to praise the wonders of your mighty love. My comfort my shelter tower of reu and strength. Let every breath all that I am. Never cease to worship you. Shout to the Lord all the earth. Let us sing. Majestic praise to the king. Mountains bow down and the seas will roar at the sound of your name. I sing for joy at the work of your hands. Forever I love you. Forever I'll stand. Nothing compares to the promise I have given you. 73. Our next one, if you want it in your book. Blessed be the name of the Lord. We'll sing through this one twice. [Music] Blessed be the name of the Lord. He is worthy to be praised and adored. So we lift up holy hands in one accord. Sing blessed be the name. Blessed be the name. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord. He is worthy to be praised and adored. So we lift up holy hands in one accord. Singing blessed be the name. Blessed be the name. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Father, blessed be your name this morning. Lord, we just thank you for who you are. Amen. And just you are you are the Lord. And reading in uh uh Levia's Deuteronomy, it just you keep telling them, I am the Lord. I am the Lord. Lord, you are and you demand praise. you demand our our sacrifices and and and following you. And Lord, Lord, I just pray that each one of us would praise you not only because you demand it, because we want to because of what you've done for us. We just uh give the ser rest of service to you and thank you for each one that's here and for the opportunity just to worship and fellowships one another in Jesus name. Amen. You may be seated. I remember years ago, I can't remember if it's a pastor or maybe at a youth rally or something like that. I just remember whoever it was stood up and said, "How many of you would rather be here today than in the best jail in the country?" Whatever. Um, not sure if that's the proper question to ask, but he asked it. All right, we have a few merry heart moments. Yesterday, I bought a world map, gave my wife a dart, and said, "Throw this, and wherever it lands, I'll take you there." We're spending three weeks behind the couch. Yeah. Okay. Oh, this one. While you wait, feel free to browse our pamphlets and get paranoid about symptoms you haven't even noticed yet. Don't raise your hand on this, but how many of you have self- diagnosed and you've gone on the internet and you've looked for things. This is my symptom. Oh no, I've got this worst disease. I can't even name it, but I know I've got it. Oh, it's horrible. Horrible. Yeah, we Yeah. Okay, next one. Apparently, I snore so loudly that it scares everyone in the car that I'm driving. Yeah. Okay. The next one is not funny. Okay. The world may say everyone has their own religion, but it will never be able to say each one has his own savior because there are many religions, but there's only one savior and his name is Jesus Christ. Amen. That's right. Back to second Peter. We're going to be looking at a particular word. The very last word in that verse is what what we're going to be looking at. We'll get there. We're going to cover a few of things before we get there. And we've been looking at this verse according as his divine power. All that ultimate power god eternity has given unto all things all things the gifts the fact that we have been blessed by him that pertain to life and godliness. We have everything we need. There's nothing we lack to be what we need to be in our walk with the Lord. And if anybody ever says, I just whatever something's missing, I just can't get there. It's not because the information, it's not because the grace and the power and the strength is, it's it's there. It's because we are not allowing ourselves to realize it, to understand it, and to implement it into our lives. How does it come about? It comes about through the knowledge of him, which is gained by spending time with him. It's by spending time in the word. It's in fellowship. It's in every opportunity we have to be together with the family and in the family of God, which is the word is from Genesis on. It's we're all part of that family. Life and God is through the knowledge of him that has called us. I used the illustration, not here recently, but I've used the illustration before. Remember back in high school, if you went to high school, and especially if it was a game like dodgeball, which dodgeball for years was outlawed, you know, because well, little Johnny might get hurt. Uh, how did we survive high school? man life. I got hurt all the time. Get one in the face in the nose. I mean, you we were getting beat up all the time for something. But we survived. I broke teeth on the trampoline in high school and whatever. So, we've been called. So, here you are. Everybody's lined up. Two people are chosen. You here, uh, Mark, you're going to be one. And Mark, you're going to be one. Okay. So, you guys, you guys choose who's going to be on your team. Who do you choose? First of all, you choose the football players because if they're going to be on your side, there's a good chance you're going to win. They're gonna they're going to kill somebody the way they throw that thing. And then who's going to be left? Poor little Ralph over here. You know, he's 5'2 and he weighs 96 pounds. You're not going to test, you're not going to try him out there throwing this dodgeball. But the guys who are called first, they strut, right? Yeah. He called cuz he knows what I can do with this ball. You know, where's little Ralph? He's sneaking behind people and he's taking people out left and right cuz they can't they can't find him. Here they were thinking he You know, when God calls us, he knows what he wants us to do. God calls us because he has a specific purpose. I haven't used this example in a long time either, but if God calls you to be a spit tune for his glory, be the most shiny spit tune you can be. And if people spit all over you, let them spit all over you. Paul knew what was going to happen. He knew he was going to be abused. He knew he's going to be mistreated. He knew he was going to be treated terrible. But it didn't matter as long as God could be glorified through his life. You and I have been called to glory. All right. Going to review this again. What is glory? Just picture God. got up on the mountain and Moses is down there and lightning and thunder and earthquakes and the people going ah you know we don't want Moses you go talk to God we don't want to get near that mountain we're scared half out of our wits but you go talk so he goes and talks and he comes back and what's you look like he's got this glow about him why because he spent time with God and the glory of God was all over him you will express the glory of God through your life when you spend time with him. You spend time in this book. You spend time in fellowship with him. You spend time in prayer. You fellowship with other believers. You centralize your life around biblical truth and practicing the word of God and biblical principle, the glory of God is going to be on you. You can't help it. Not only that, when the glory of God is on you and you're with other believers and the glory of God is on them, who's the glory of God going to affect? Why is the church powerless in our society today? Why do we not? Because we don't spend we spend time with all kinds of activities. We go to this and that. We need personal time with God so that his glory can rest on us. So that the world can see that there is a reality to the word of God changing people's lives. And you don't have to push it when you're out there. If the glory is on you, it's going to be recognized. it will be there and virtue. And that's what we're going to look at here in a little bit. Second Peter 15 says this, "And beside this, giving all diligence to be diligent. I'm going to put my heart and mind into this. I'm not going to just take this as I'm going to discipline myself to get somewhere in this, giving all diligence." And and when Peter wrote this, he's giving the challenge in these first several verses of chapter one in second Peter. Uh add to your faith, virtue, virtue, knowledge, knowledge, temperance, and so on. He has these things down that he says when these things in your life, it's going to make a difference. We'll look at that here in a minute. So, giving all diligence, put some effort into this, add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge. So add to your faith virtue. If you're adding something, you're putting it in, right? When you make a cake, make a pie, you add ingredients because you want it to turn out the right way. You want it to be what you intended it to be, what whatever you're making. We're with diligence, we're so supposed to be adding these things into our lives so that we can be what we need to be. So the glory and the virtue of God's presence on our lives makes a difference in the world around us. When God went to Israel and said, "I didn't choose you because you're better than anybody else. I chose to set my love on you because I want my love through you as a nation to be an example to the rest of the world around those other nations that there is something special about following after God. There is something special about allowing me to be the control, the head of you as a nation." What? Let the world see what I can do when I provide. Let the world see what I can do when I protect you. Let them see there's a difference in those who have said we're going to worship the one true God. Let that be a difference. Back to verse two or I'm sorry, back to verse three. He says, "According as his divine power hath given us all things." All right. According as his divine power unlimited can't fail, supreme, you know, we we people like to watch Star Wars and let the force be with you. All right, that kind of stuff. That's nothing. That's man-made stuff. That's science fiction, right? But when we talk about the divine power of God, we're talking about the God of eternity, right? Remember, talk been talking about this for a while. Is that divine power available to be worked through your life? Yes. You can't you can't do it. Don't think that you're going to be Thor with your hammer, right? You don't have that power. You have the you have an opportunity to be available for the eternal power of God, that divine power to work through you to do things that you never thought you could do. When David took that sling and that sling, he threw that stone and one little stone went into the air and the sling went round and round. No, see, and the and the giant came tumbling down. All right. The giant came tumbling down. Why? Because David said back when everybody else was doing nothing, "Who does this guy think he is defying the God of Israel?" The Philistines had their gods. And at this point in time, the Philistines believed their gods to be supreme over Israel. Because where was Israel when when Goliath was out there defying them? What are we going to do? So, David comes along. His brothers, you little twerp. You're just You're just curious. You just came out to see what's going on. You don't really care. What did David say to his brothers? No, he didn't. He could have. He just like, "Whatever, guys." He goes and talks to the king. I'll go. King Saul. Head and shoulders above everybody. King Saul, a big guy. Here's David. No idea how long how tall he was. He was handsome. Not that that makes you a good worker, but the scripture says he was handsome, ruddy in complexion, really good-looking guy. Saul says, "Here, take my armor." I can't do that. I've never tried it. Besides that, you know, it's not going to work. David just goes out. He's got his shepherd's clothes on. Whatever. Got this sling. And along that old song, I know you met some man. Along came John. You know, David, David goes out there and he looks at Goliath and what does he see? What does David see when he looks at Goliath? He sees someone mocking God. Yes. Does he see someone bigger than he is? Well, he does. But you know what? He really sees someone a whole lot smaller than God is. Perspective, right? Did he doubt that he could do anything with that sling? No. I took care of a lion and a bear. By God's strength, God's power, I took care of a line. I can do this. Divine power. If God wants to do something through you, God can do things where he can change a nation. And he has done so through individuals. He has to use us. We are his arms and his legs and his voice. We are the power that he's going to work through in this planet, right? He's not going to use elephants. He's not going to use monkeys. He's not going to use birds. He's going to use us. I mean, he can use birds and elephants. He uses animals to express his glory all the time. Some fascinating stories how God has used animals to express his glory. But his divine power has given everything we need. All right. Through that knowledge we talked about. Why? Because it's God's desire that we would walk worthy because he has called us into this kingdom. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, which means through us on earth as it is in heaven. God's glory, God's will, God, nothing fails in heaven. It's not possible. If God determined it, it's going to happen on earth as it is in heaven. The question would be then if we look at this, God has given us everything we need. We we have no limitation except our will and our defiance against him. When it says that you would walk worthy because you've been called, shouldn't that should that not cause us to go me? Really? You're call you're asking me serve you the God of heaven. to God. You're asking me, you're giving me the privilege to be called on the team, to take on the bullies, to to see the Goliaths fall. You're asking me. Wow. Thank you. But where are we? David had a bunch of family back there. He had his brothers. What were they doing before David got there? What were they doing? Well, you know, we don't know. Goliath, he's big dude. He's got four brothers out there. I mean, these guys, look at these these dudes are monsters. Who are we against these guys? They could pick us up and throw us like footballs. Well, they have footballs, but they could they could hurl us anywhere they wanted to. We're just nothing in their eyes. We're grasshoppers. They had the same God. They had the same opportunity. What stopped them from doing what David did? They weren't walking with God like David. They didn't believe God like David. Their faith was shattered for whatever reasons. And David said, "No, no, not happening. Not with me. I've seen God do too much." You know how many people need to see in your life that you're trusting and walking with God? You may be the very one that they see in you the power that is possible to be useful in his kingdom. And they need to see your example because they're standing back and they're timid. When Goliath came down, what did the rest of the army do? Charge. They took off and they chased the Philistines. Why? because they saw the potential of what could happen when they believed God through David. What about you? I learned this term this past week. How many of you ever heard of the humble brag? Do you ever hear it? It's it's a real thing. Humble brag. And you know what it is? Humble brag is, "Oh, please stop. Come on." No, no, no, no. Not I'm not really that good. Oh, well, okay. Well, you know, just a little more. No, no, no. Stop. Stop. That's humble brag. Humble brag is saying, "Well, you know, I don't have the most gifted and the most talented grandkids, but I tell you what, they are far above and beyond most grandkids that I see." That's a humble brag. The humble part is they're not as great, but boy, I tell you what, they really are superior. You know, that's humble brag. We we sound like we're humble, but we twist it and we get a brag in there to kind of, you know, balance out our humility. Adam's always walking around, you know, humility and how I attained it, you know, that kind of stuff. Humble brag. We're talking, we're going to be talking about virtue. And virtue is a quality that humble brag does not fit. As we look at virtue, I want you to understand how easy it is to be a humble braggard. Okay? Because everybody in this room at some point in their life has been a humble braggard. You know, we don't outright just brag because that shows pride. So, we cage it with a little bit of humility and then brag on the end so that we still get our point across. Mark Twain said this. I like this quote. The weakest of all weak things is virtue that has not been tested in the fire. Every man will proclaim his own goodness. Scripture says, "But what is the rest of that passage?" But a faithful man who can find. We like to brag ourselves up. We like to talk about ourselves. This guy, an ethicist, he says, uh, you know, teaches ethics and so on. um says, "Ethics is all about how we meet the challenge of doing the right thing when that act will cost us more than we want to pay." Now, if that doesn't make sense, what he's simply saying is, "I know that to do the right thing is going to cost me an awful lot. It's going to cost me more than I really want to pay, but I know I don't have a choice because virtue or the power to do the right thing is driving me greater than the cost I think I'm going to have to pay. Even though I know I'm going to have to pay the cost. Let me give you an example if I can remember the example. Um um I read through a whole bunch of them this past week and I and I didn't I didn't put it down so I'm trying to remember. I don't want to mess the story up too bad. Well, I would use this one. A guy's a salesman for a company and he knows that if he there's certain things he can do to really enhance his sales ability, but to do so he has to lower his own moral standard. He has to lessen his virtue. And he goes to the office and the president says, "You need to d" and he goes, "I can't do that morally. I the guy and the president says, "You either do it or you're getting demoted. I we need these sales." And the guy, I cannot do it. And he gets demoted. And you like say, "Well, it probably worked out great for him." No, he got demoted and that was his job. He got stuck at that job. The president or whoever, whatever, whoever the authority was, that was it. There was no it wasn't like well you know it proved out good and no it wasn't there was no honor given to him because he did the right thing except the honor that he knew before God he had done the right thing and his character was more important to him he could go home with a clear conscience he didn't need the whoever that authority was he didn't need that reward the reward he needed was a clear conscience and knowing that God was pleased with what he Now, in verse eight of that chapter of second Peter, there's a there's a purpose and a promise given to us in our obedience. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence. So, we're back to that again. It is effort. Don't ever think that the Christian life is a cakewalk because it is not. When you are tested, when you are t when you are put through the fire as Job or people in our congregation, when you are when you are drawn through those experiences, my my father used to always say, he said, I or no, maybe it was my brother, my older brother. Anyway, one of them, he said, I felt like I was pulled through I was pulled through a meat grinder backwards. Now, why backwards? I don't know, but just to be put through a meat grinder would be bad enough. But he always said it felt like I was pulled through a meat grinder backwards. In other words, I was chewed up and spit out and that was hard. It was difficult. Sometimes the walk of the Christian life is like going through a meat grinder because it's tough. Give diligence to make your calling and election sure. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. What that simply means is again you've heard me talk about that to work it out. Make it practical. Live your Christian life in such a way that it affects every single thing you do every day. It affects your walk, your talk, your actions, your attitude. You are you are careful to make sure that when you express yourself, your first thought is, wait a minute, is this about me or is this about God? Whatever the situation is, am I going am I saying this because I want God-honored or do I want to make my point? Am I saying this because I want people to be impressed with what I know or am I saying this because I know that truth needs to be spoken. Of course, biblically speaking, most of the time, truth needs to be spoken. Okay? Make your calling and election sure. Bottom line, live it out. Live it out practically every single day. For if you do these things, now look at this. For if you do these things, if you're willing to put if you're willing to put forth some effort, if you're willing to make sure that your life is lived out by biblical principle every day, that you are cautious to make sure those attitudes and actions, those responses, even those choices, the things you think about, dream about, so on, those things are really brought under the authority of God's word in your heart and mind, your spirit. If you do these things, you're not going to fall. You think you're not going to fall. That's you think, well, okay, it's not talking about tripping and falling and injuring yourself. What's it talking about? You're not going to fall morally. You're not going to give in. Remember, part of the passage talks about we've been redeem uh from the um um the lust, the um corruption in this world through lust. The corruption that comes to us through James says, every man is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. And when when lust is conceived, it bring forth sin. And when sin happens, what? Death. So what it's talking about, you're not going to fall. You're not going to give into the temptations that would cause you to fall morally, spiritually, uh mentally, physically, even uh when Jesus was in the wilderness and he was tempted, he didn't fall because he did not depend on himself. He quoted the word of God back to Satan. He didn't fall because well of course he was Jesus but he did the right things. You and I we fall because our focus is taken off of honoring God and our focus is placed on the situation. What do I want to get out of this or whatever the case may be. So there is a purpose and there's a promise. Why? When Peter was writing he was saying I want you to add to your life. I want you to add to your faith. I want you to add to your salvation, your relationship with God. I want you to add to that virtue. I want you to put forth the effort that your life will be seen as a virtuous person. And we're going to look again a little more at that. Verse 10. Wait, what did we just look at here? Yeah, we just looked at verse 10. Okay. But the next slide has verse 10. Uh, and I want you to see this in uh the um easyto read version. Okay, so if you'll bring that one up, Ben says this in the easy to read version. Uh oh, go back one slide. It's not there. Oh, okay. I left this one out. All right. Well, I'll just quote it to you or read it. This is the same verse 110. my brothers and sisters. So when when Peter said uh in the King James version it says wherefore the rather brethren give diligence. This is the easy to read version. My brothers and sisters God called you and chose you to be his. Do your best to live in a way that shows you really are God's called and chosen people. If you do all this, you will never fall. shows you really are God's called and chosen to live with virtue to evidence that next then the next slide he brought up with the knowledge of such great and precious promises it should not be hard to find the motivation to give our best to know that these great and precious promises I don't have to live a life that is bound by sin I don't have to live a life of defeat I don't have to live a life of discouragement. Yes, we're going to face situations. We're going to face trial face trials and all that. I don't have to live in this poor little old me attitude. I don't have to live in a way that's just God, why? Why? Why? Why? Why does everybody else seem to have such happy good lives and here I am struggling through just barely making it? I don't get it. And you're absolutely right. If you say that I don't get it, you're right. You don't get it because you're viewing God from a wrong point. If you have great and precious promises, it doesn't matter. Should not matter. Let me put it that way. The circumstances of your life should not matter on how you are responding to God allowing you to go through that. If he's chosen you and said, "I'm going to ordain you for this purpose because someone needs to see you respond properly through that circumstance. I want you to go through this because I'm trusting you to be the one who's going to be that testimony. Now, we all say, "Hey, God, how about you trust me on this side? Why don't you trust me with a million dollars and see how well I respond to that and let people watch me do that?" Um, you know what? How many of us would fail more miserably tempted by a million dollars than we would be to be tempted by some other physical thing or spiritual thing or circumstance in life? We might do better in that. We might be tempted with a million dollars and blow it big time and dishonor God in such a way dishonor our own selves, dishonor family and friends. We could blow that wide open and then regret that we were tempted. We would have chosen rather to be tempted with something down here than something like that because we see what it did to our life. But on the on the surface, we look at that and say, "Oh, I could handle that." Mhm. Sure you could. If you're not handling it now, you're not going to handle it then. With the knowledge of such great and precious promises, it should not be hard to find the motivation to give our best to the to the deepening and strengthening of our faith by adding those qualities. And we're going to continue to go through those over time, those qualities that are listed there in second Peter chapter 1. Now, what does it mean to be diligent? To be diligent is to be eager. You're hungry. You're at a church banquet. What's that? Somebody said they were. You're You're at a church. You're at a church supper. Service is over. Pastor went long. Not this one, by the way. You know, happens. Whatever. Pastor Pastor's long. You go downstairs. Where do you put yourself in line? First. Somebody's got to be first, right? If some somebody's got to do it, so might as well be me. Okay? Or do you stand back and say, "Look, I'll wait and whatever's left over, I'll eat. And if I don't get hardly anything, so what? I'm fine. I'm surviving." You know, look at me. Do I look like I'm starving to death? No. So, you put yourself Which one are you? Not that it's wrong to be. Somebody does have to be first in line. You know, somebody's pushing you. Go ahead and go be first in line. It's a hard attitude. Okay, it's not it's not wrong to be first. What's wrong is that you are pushing yourself because I'm so hungry. I'm going to I don't see that there's only one piece of coconut cream pie there and it's mine. I'm not even eating that stuff right now. Anyway, anyone trying to convince themselves that the Christian life can be lived without effort, not about your salvation, okay? Not about your Ben if you want to bring that up. not about the sanctification process, your spiritual growth and so on. Anyone trying to convince themselves that the Christian life can be lived without effort must ignore this passage as well as many others. Eager add put forth effort. The Christian life is work not you're not working out. You're not trying to be a better you. You are saying it's hard work to study to show myself approved. It's hard work to understand the disciplines of scripture and apply them to life practically speaking because the old nature doesn't want to. The old nature wants to have its own way. The old nature wants to give in. The old nature wants to live for me. Uh Evan and I visited Nancy Blackist in Friday night and I'm reading this book. Ben gave this book to me before he passed away. It's called The End of Me. Don't read it, man. Oh man. Well, actually read it. Uh I say don't read it because unless you really want to see the end of you, don't read the book. Uh you talk about a book that just slaps you in the face and let you see where your pride Oh man. Oh man. Oh man. It's a it's a very good book. Uh hard on the spirit, hard on the flesh book. But she said, "You need to listen to this song." And the lady's name I thought it was Damoris, but is it as is Demarish? You you've met her, I think. How is it? What's Anyway, it's one of those her and her last name is Carval. And she sings this song um um not the end of me, death of me or something to that effect. And the whole song is about coming to the end of the self-life. And it's like saying, "God, help me. I need to say goodbye to me. I need to say me you're dying which is biblical by the way. We have been crucified with Christ. I Paul I am crucified with Christ. We are to bear that cross. We're to take we're to die to the old self life takers who wants to die to the old life who wants to say my life doesn't matter anymore except what God can do through me. That's all that matters. Now, it's easy to say that. We can walk around big pies pious platitudes. It is no longer I who live by Christ who lives me and the life which I now live by. I live by the Okay, we can say that. Paul did and I believe it. But that's a whole lot easier to quote that passage than it is day by day to live that. When someone says something and my feelings get hurt, they say, "Well, if that's the way you're going to be, then fine. Well, go someplace else. How quickly are you to for How quickly do you forgive someone when they've said something and it offended your spirit? We wear emotions right there, don't we? I mean, they're right there. We're just ready for someone to hurt our little feelings. You say, "Man, pastor, you're being awful cruel." No, I'm being real. Because that's too often how we live. The self-life is so much alive. And God is never glorified in one second of it. And yet we do it without giving a thought whether or not he's glorified. How easy it is for me to get back into my self life where it's all about me, what I want, what I think is right, what I blah blah blah. Peter says this to add or supply or to contribute to the deepening and developing of our faith. Faith is the root the tree. It's supplied by the faith. You know John where Jesus is talking about that what is right and avoiding what is wrong. Is that so hard? No valor, true character. Well, you know, we have in our in our U military and Helen would be more aware of this than anybody probably, they have a medal of valor, right? And the you don't get awarded that because you're there. You don't get a ribbon because you're in the service. You you have to earn that medal. You have to earn that honor, that valor award. Okay. So, there is something offered which I didn't know. I don't know anything about those things. But so, and we're grateful for those who are serving. By the way, I'm not trying to make light of that. But what I'm saying is there is that those because you're there and they have sacrificed and said, "Hey, we're going to go." But there's those other levels of deepening and that should be part of us here. Will William J. Bennett, some of you would recognize he wrote a book um the book of virtues. Okay, this is an older book, but he said this. For children to take morality seriously, they must be in the presence of adults who take morality seriously. Valor. If you were to if you were to look at our media today, how many media outlets would you say push valor? How many media outlets would you say are pushing for moral character? Who do they mock? Most TV shows, who do they mock? Well, they mock God. Christians and men, right? Men are demeaned. Men are considered stupid, goofy, lazy, whatever the case may be. And who gets pushed to the top all the time? And I have, look, I sometimes you're being me. No, there are women have great capacity, great abilities, and so on so forth. I don't have a problem with that. I have a problem when women are pushed up when men are made to look stupid. Are there women have greater ability than some men in certain areas? Hands down, of course they do. Yes, they're gifted. They're talented. They're intelligent. But when men are made to look stupid, God's design was for men to be leaders, right? Not that not that a woman can't do those things, but men were designed by God to do that. But when men are shoved out, it's not it's offensive to God's design. And that's exactly what Satan wants. And for no other reason, we need to be careful of that because it honors Satan and his will, steal, kill, destroy, and not God. He said this also, we learn to order our souls the same way we learn to do math problems or play baseball well, through practice. Add to your faith virtue. How? Just like how do you learn to play a game? Well, how do you learn to do anything? Well, practice. Practice. Practice. Work. I mentioned it last week. I mentioned it downstairs this morning. I like to watch track and field. I like to watch these people run. I like to watch them do the hurdles and the shot put and the high jump. What? 18 feet. feet are jumping up over that. Okay, I mean practically speaking in in the long-term scheme of things, it's not a it's not track does not benefit anybody, right? It doesn't produce a product. It doesn't give us it doesn't make us any better. But I understand what the purpose is. Anyway, I like to watch this. And I because I'm fascinated as they slow way down and you see the muscles arms and I mean these muscles are just h just the design of the body to do what it does and to see that you can train the muscles of this body to do certain things. They h it all has to work in coordination so you can be the next guy who's a tenth of a second faster. I mean, that's that's a that is a not it's it's not even a blink. It's like a twinkling. It's that it's so fast. It's discipline. Why do we think we sit here and we watch football players and basketball players and and we watch all these sports things. If if you do them, don't blame me if you don't. But we sit there and watch these things and we go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." You know, Mark, she even Jerry here going to be happy here sometime soon, maybe. because Notre Dame's gonna be playing football again, right? They're gonna go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." Okay, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Um, we honor these guys because they have practiced and practiced and practiced and practiced and practiced. They catch the ball in ways that I can't even begin to contort my body and still get up and walk. You know, they catch the ball and fall down. They look like a ragd doll. And they get up. Yeah, let's go again. you know, I'm not even getting up, let alone let's go again. Why? Because they've disciplined their body to not just to be able to do it, but to handle the abuse. And yet, when it comes to the Christian walk, where are we? How many of us discipline ourselves to be able to take the beating that the world is going to give to us? Because, you know, it's going to The world hated me. It's going to hate you. Get used to it. Thank you, Jesus. I added a little bit there for emphasis. Are you ready? We honor those people. In reality, we honored in Christendom, too, because we see people who are serving the Lord and great things are happening under them. They are serving the Lord. They're they're doing who who knows what kind of work. There's so many things. So many Christian organizations accomplishing so many things and we're grateful for what they're doing. We honor them and we should. And I'm not asking you to be one of them. I'm not asking you to be anybody else than who you are. What I'm asking for each one of us is to be There was the old commercial for the army. Be all you can be in the army. Be all you can be in the service of our God. Discipline yourself. Go through that boot boot training of being in the book. Put forth some effort with all diligence. Add to your faith this moral character, this excellence, excellency of character that is so different than what the world is putting out there. Be different. Stand out. Not because you want people to say, "Wow, you are something." You want people to say when they make a comment and you say, "Boy, my God, my God, I'm only this way because my God is awesome. My God is good. My God is doing this work in me and he gets the glory and I'm thankful." I'll close with this. I mentioned this yesterday morning downstairs in the men's meeting. uh Friday night when we Ev and I were with Nancy Blackston, Ben used to do this and she picked up on it. She said, "If I see people, women uh and she said, you know, if I see these people with tattoos, I go up to them and I say, she'll say, so I see your tattoos. Is that a story of your life?" And because you're not going, "What are you wearing tattoos for? Don't you?" you know, as soon as you ask a question like that, she said they open up. This one girl had her arms full of tattoos. And she said, "Well, yeah. As a matter of fact, these are this was this and this is all about my dad. My father died when I was 9 years old. These are all stories of my dad." One one of them was I can't remember what a phrase or something. Then there was one was a piano. And the lady said, "Do you mind if I give you a hug?" And Nancy goes, "Sure." She gave her a hug and she said, "The last tattoo I had was on my thigh. Do you know what that is?" And she goes, "No, I really don't want to know. I mean, we're in a store. I don't really, you know, I don't want to see your thigh." And she said, "Well, the it's a song." And the song on my thigh is I can only imagine. Some of you know that song. I can only imagine. And it's talking about heaven. What's it going to be like? And she said, "That's the song on my thigh." And she said, "Can I give you another hug?" And Nancy said, "Well, sure." So she gives her a hug and she said, "I haven't been walking with the Lord for a long, long time. I needed this today to remind me I need to be back in my walk with the Lord." And Nancy's going, you know, young man comes into her house. She said, she said, I don't know how else to say this, but she said, he was a very young, handsome black man, and he was just, she kept saying, he was just such a good-looking young man, but he had these tattoos. And she said, "Okay, is that part of your story?" She said, "He began to cry." Almost instantly began to cry. Shares her story. So she she has these tracks things that she uses. She hands him out. She shares the gospel with him. He trusts Christ that day. He said, "I can't wait to go home and tell my brothers what just happened." All because she recognized tattoos. I have never looked at tattoos that way before. I do now. never looked at him that way before. What is it? Looking for opportunities where that moral excellence, that virtue, and you know, Nancy, now I'm not trying to I'm not trying to build Nancy up. Nancy is probably watching. Sorry, Nancy. Um, but she she wants her life to be used that way. Can can you do anything greater than to bring people into the understanding of the gospel message? Whether they accept or reject, can you do anything more powerful, anything more rewarding? No, you can't. So do it. Add to your faith virtue. Trust God to work in you and develop that moral character that says, "I know why I'm here. And it's not for this place. It's for that place to be a testimony, to be an example." Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the challenge. I still think of that song, The End of Me. Oh boy. Father, we know that's where it's supposed to be. We know that we are supposed to give up as your servants. We're not supposed to have a life. We're supposed to say, "Hey, I just did what I was told. I'm just an unprofitable servant. I'm just being obedient." Well, great. That's what we should be. And father, I know I, you know, in even preaching this message, I know this is not something we can do in our own strength, our own ability. You have to be the one working through us. We have to be yielded and trusting and walking in the spirit, fellowshipping with you, praying so that we can say, "Father, here I'm yielded. Please teach me, lead me, guide me, strengthen me, all those things." And as as Paul said, your grace in our weakness, that's when your grace shows itself the most mighty, the most powerful. We can is there's nothing wrong with admitting to you. We don't get it. We don't understand it. We don't even know how to apply it. but you're more than willing to teach us and show us and lead us by your grace and truth in those areas. Thank you, Father, that it's real. This is not this is not pipe dream stuff. This is what you want to do in us and through us. You want us all to be ready and willing and available to be serving you. Thank you, God, for your word that still keeps our feet to the fire, that challenges us, motivates us to do what is right because it's about your glory. It's about the testimony of your kingdom. and your son. Thank you. Thank you for this fellowship today through your word, through this time. Amen. All right, folks. Thanks for being here today. I trust you to have a blessed week. uh my wife and my family, we're going to be heading out kind of early today because