TURN OFF THAT COMPUTER!!

This week I began reading 2 Peter, chapter 1.  When I got to verses 5-8 where Peter said:

“For this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.  For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

As I said in my previous blog, having endured a long period of spiritual barrenness and dryness, Peter’s words caught my attention.  I began to wonder, how diligent AM I to add these things to my faith?

I looked up the word diligence and found it had a number of synonyms: careful; persistent; effort; conscientiousness; application.

I began to think more about diligence in broader terms.

Careful to me has the meaning of not leaving it to chance.  The Holy Spirit is in the business of sanctification – the process of making me more like Jesus in all of the ways Peter speaks of, but I also have a part in that, that of cooperating with the Spirit, of obedience, of sensitivity to His voice as I stay close to Jesus. 

The Apostle Paul speaks of this cooperation between believers and the Holy Spirit in Philippians 2:12-13 when he says:

“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”

Persistent.  Keep at it.  A failure one day shouldn’t lead to giving up.  Sanctification is a life-long process.

Effort.  To grow beyond saving faith to know the Lord better, I MUST be a student of His Word.  Being a student takes effort!  Effort beyond just attending Sunday services.  I need to go beyond the basics, study, ask questions, dig deeper. I need to learn to feed myself not just expect others to do so.

Conscientiousness implies not just persistence for its own sake, but meticulous, keep at it, study – searching God’s Word, getting to know Jesus through it.

Application takes study one step further.  It implies applying what I’m learning to my life, learning to live out the principles of God’s Word, looking more like Jesus.

I asked myself the question, “So what ARE you absolutely diligent about?”  Here’s my sad and shameful list:

• Brushing and flossing my teeth.  I never miss a day of this.
• Checking email, Facebook and other computer sites.  I’m especially diligent about this.
• Putting make-up on before I go out.  I would NEVER go out without doing this!
• Attending church every Sunday.  I’m glad I could put THAT one on there!
• Being uber responsible about ministry involvement.  But not always for the right reasons.

That led me to the next question: “Am I giving the same degree of diligence to getting to know Jesus better, adding to Peter’s list of qualities to my faith?

Sadly, my answer was “No!”.  

• If I go to the gym or meet a friend for breakfast, I’m more likely to forego my quiet time. 
• In an effort to combine using the computer with devotion, I go through the motions of seeking the Lord but never really connect.
• A million and one things create a perfect storm of whatever the opposite of “diligence” is – neglect, laziness, mediocrity, carelessness, maybe. 

Which leads me to another question with an obvious answer (see previous blog):

How do I reorder my current priorities so that I give knowledge of the Lord and greater intimacy, the diligence it – and He – deserves? 

The first thing I need to do is so simple it's ridiculous.  Don’t even turn on my computer until I’ve diligently sought the Lord in relationship.  Surely if I can be diligent to brush my teeth and put on makeup, I can do THIS!