At His Feet

2 Peter 1:5-8

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.

Are these different levels?

It says that to my faith, add goodness, then knowledge to goodness. What it brings to my mind is when I first came to Christ. I'm saved by God's grace via my faith in Christ. From there, I started trying to do good to everybody. I forgave when God told me to, I tried not to hide my faith, and I tried making other people have peace between them. However, I didn't do what the bible said about knowledge. It says that to goodness, add knowledge.

What that tells me (and from what I experienced) is that a person can do something from good intentions and believe it is good but if they don't have knowledge, that goodness isn't goodness. It can hurt someone deeply. I had to learn this the hard way with my sister. We stopped talking for a year because her and my dad went through a rough season. I was a kid in my faith, new, and wanting the fighting to stop so I would intervene in hopes of making them apologize to one another.

What happened was I made things between them worse. They became angrier at one another and my sister went a little depressed. I misrepresented God to them with my actions and my sister suffered for it. Looking back now, if I would have just listened to my sister, hear her out as a sister to cry on and just loved her instead of pushing her or scolding her – it could have led to different results.

At least she would have seen sooner that God was caring.

With knowledge, self-control is needed too. Again with my experience – if I would have sought God in that situation and gotten knowledge, I wouldn't have wasted energy trying to force a solution to my dad and sister's problem. I would have restrained from jumping ahead and doing my own thing away from God. I would have been more patient and persevered with them. I picture perseverance as a soldier having to trudge through deep, thick, mud. It seems like it takes forever to get through but they know if they stop walking, they'll get stuck where they're at.

Now godliness is a bit harder for me to understand. Would it means that after the first half – the second half is my character? Godliness means to be more devout to God – closer and more in alignment with Him. Could it be like the Israelites who had to cross the wilderness before going into the land of milk and honey?

With godliness, comes mutual affection, and from there comes love. It seems to me that the first half is the biggest battle because we're learning how to walk and training our bodies to walk God's way. There is a lot of pruning that happens but the more we walk with God, our mindsets, character, and hearts starts to shift for Him. We get closer to God like this, better to hear Him, and our hearts change for the better.

I think in my own life, I am learning more on self-control and perseverance. I'm gaining knowledge about where I end and where I need to let God take control. It is a battle. Before I easily gave into the things that hindered me. If I felt depressed or angry, I just went with the feels and that ended up with me crying my eyes out and abusing myself nights on end. If I was angry with my family, immediately I complained about them and started grumbling. Now, I find myself fighting those urges.

When I start to grumble, I catch myself and ask God to help me change my tune. I also been trying to read my bible more and start my day with it. It's not easy – today I didn't start with my devotional, but I'm still trying. God's been helping me so much too with all these changes in my life – especially with pulling away from my old ways even more.