KICKSTART DEVOTIONAL
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On every Mission Discovery mission trip, we begin the morning together in God’s word. One speaker is chosen to give the word of the day so that everyone else can meditate on the Scripture. Our hope is that volunteers engage in group discussions throughout the day and in their small groups.
Since the way ministry is being done has shifted, our goal is to serve by creating resources that will help others focus on God throughout the day, and influence family and small group discussion.
Join us every weekday as we explore God’s word together. We will have speakers from all over the US and the world. Here is today’s Kickstart Devotional.
Video: Jeremy Schnell // Make Every effort to grow in Godliness
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Make Every effort to grow in Godliness
Mission Discovery Mission Trips with Jeremy Schnell
Jeremy Schnell is a long time friend of Mission Discovery. He, along with his wife, work part time for the youth ministry at their Church in Iowa. He has been on many mission trips with Mission Discovery, including Mexico, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Nashville, Westmoreland, Tennessee, Rapid City, South Dakota, Houston and Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Hey everybody this is Jer Schnell from Iowa. An opportunity to share God’s word with you. I’m out here at the Schnell timber. It’s been in the family name since 1886. But anyway, just a beautiful place for us to be able to come out during the Covid 19 or we have to be away from each other and it’s a good place for us to have fun with the kids and do some cool things. So I thought I would just shoot this out here if you want to start looking up the scripture. We’re going to look at the second Peter 1: 3-11. So that’s what we’re going to speak out of.
Like I said I’m Jer Schnell from Iowa. I’ve been on lots of mission trips with Mission Discovery. I think 13 or 14, I’ve kind of lost track. We’ve been to Mexico, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Nashville, Westmoreland, Tennessee, Rapid City, South Dakota, Houston, Clarksdale, Mississippi. So lots of different trips with them but it’s just been a blessing to work with Mission Discovery.
I work full time, have a construction business building houses and my wife works full time. My wife and I work with the youth group part time and so it works out really good to partner with Mission Discovery on these mission trips because we have lots of full time work to do and so they just help organize a trip and just make it a lot easier for us as part time youth leaders. So they’ve just been a real blessing. So we thank you. Just thank Mission Discovery for all they do for us but let’s dig into God’s word.
We’re going to talk about spiritual growth just a little bit because I think we want a better time and we’re stuck in times like this. Where we have lots more free time than normal and maybe God’s trying to teach us something through that. So why not use this time to grow spiritually. And so here’s his words. We’ll read through all of it and then just break it down just a little bit and see what we can learn from God’s word today. It says in verse 3
“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us these very great precious promises so that through them you may participate in the divine nature. Having escaped the corruption in this world caused by evil desires.”
Verse 5
“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 perseverance, godliness and godliness, mutual affection and mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities and increasing measure they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of your Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins. Therefore my brothers and sisters make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble. You will receive a rich welcome entering the eternal kingdom of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.”
It’s God’s words. A lot of good stuff in this little piece of scripture.
We’ll start off just breaking it down. Starting with versus 3 and 4 where it just talks about his divine power has given us everything we need for godly life. We can’t get that anywhere else but through him and his divine power. And then also for the knowledge of Him who has called us according to his glory and goodness. So he’s called each one of us to do that. And this only comes through his divine power.
Nowhere else can we be able to do this. Verse four “through these he has given us every great and precious promise too.” We need to remember what God’s promises are to us. Throughout the Bible he gives us lots of great and awesome promises and one of them we know of that will help us get through this because he says he’ll be with us no matter what. He cares for us, so whatever we’re going through he will be with us. That’s one of his promises. “So that through you you may participate in the divine nature.” I really like that part. We get to participate in what God is doing here.
And so we really need to remember that in this time. How do we participate. What can we do to grow in our knowledge of him. And then it also says it says in that verse four “having escaped the corruption of the world caused by evil desires” we get to escape that corruption when we rely on him. We get to use his divine power and get to be a part to participate in his divine nature and that helps us to be able to escape from this world’s evil desires.
We know there’s lots of them out there and it’s easy to fall into the that. The next few versus talk about seven things that we can do and I think that’s the part where spiritual growth. If we work on these things, these seven qualities then that’ll help us in our spiritual walk. So in verse five it says “for this very reason make every effort to add to your faith goodness and to goodness, knowledge and knowledge, self-control and self-control, and perseverance and of perseverance godliness, and godliness mutual affection and mutual affection, love.
So these are seven things that we can work on. Oh man, I’ve noticed any time that God talks about things that we need to do and usually towards the end it’s always love and that’s what God wants from us. At a time like this when we’re want to be out of our homes we want to be back to work whatever it may be. We need to have mutual respect for each other and mutual affection. And we just show love to others. We need to persevere in times like this. I know I don’t like to sit at home so I need to be patient and just persevere through this time.
We need to have goodness we need to keep digging in and have knowledge of what God’s word says to us. And then the biggest one I think that we can be really hard is to have self-control in any time when we’re going through circumstances like this or whatever we may be going through, health issues, whatever we need to have self-control and just be able to say no to the things that we know will bring us down the wrong path. And so those are seven things that we can remember to work on in our spiritual growth.
And then after we enforce that assessment we possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep us from being ineffective and unproductive. And your knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Just I love the way it says that if we possess these in increasing measure it doesn’t mean if all of a sudden we do these seven things perfectly, then we will be productive and effective. It says if we do it in increasing measure, so that means it’s a daily grind. We keep trying every day to be more patient to be more kind to show love to others.
That’s something we do every day. It doesn’t mean all of a sudden when we ask the Lord in our lives and we do it perfectly. And he’s not calling us that. He’s just saying do these things in increasing measure. And I love this part too, and being productive and effective. Sometimes I have to look at my life and is what I’m doing in my life productive and effective for the Lord? Or am I being unproductive and ineffective? God calls each of us to be productive in our walks with him. Then verse 9 says “but whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.”
Man, that’s something we never want to do is forget what Christ did for us. We don’t want to forget that Christ has cleansed from our past sins. We all have sin in our life, but Christ, that is what he did on the cross for us. He died and he cleansed us from our past sins. So, we know we can forget about the past and know that God has our future. Verse 10 says, “Therefore my brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election or if you do these things you will never stumble.”
This is just his promise to us again, that if we do these things salvation is there for us and nothing can take that away. So if we just keep working on this daily we’re just gonna keep growing closer to him. And that says that we will never stumble or fail. We will make mistakes. But with Him, we will never stumble or fall away from our walk with Him. If we keep doing these things as the beginning of verse 10 says and again make every effort. We heard that earlier in the verses to today. To make every effort to work hard at it, not to be lazy and expect it to just happen we’ve got to put to work in.
And so we put the effort in. We know that he’s there when we do stumble and if we make mistake it’s never gonna keep us from falling away from him. Verse 11 is His awesome promise to you to each one of us. “And you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” so that’s his promise, this all throughout the Bible to each one of us. That we will have an eternal life with him, if we just keep doing these things.
We grow every day. We grow close to Him. So a time like this with COVID 19 has got us all slowed down a little bit in life. Whether we like it or not, maybe it’s a good time to just look at life a little closer. Are we being productive and effective on our walk? Are we drawing closer to him every day? Are we using this as a time to be negative and look down on what’s going on. God wants us to grow and to be productive in our walks of life. And so those are my words of encouragement to you today. Think about this, this week as you,
maybe you’re hanging out with your family or a few friends whatever, at home. You think about what can you do to be more effective and productive in your Christian walk. How can you grow spiritually every day? And that’s what God is calling us all to do and maybe this time where we’re slowing down is what he’s wanted us to do. Look at what we need to do to be more productive and effective in our Christian walks. Just keep growing our knowledge in him and just keep growing closer to him every day. So that’s my challenge for you to start looking at that here while we’re going through this COVID 19. And remember also that this sickness this virus is nothing that surprises God. Nothing that we do in life will surprise God. God’s got this and he’s in control. So don’t you think “Oh my. What’s God going to do through this?” He knows already. We just have to be willing to look towards him, grow closer to him and use this time to be productive and effective especially once we’re back into our normal lives. Going to work every day whatever that may be.
We just come out on fire because we’ve been using this time to grow closer to him and try and figure out how we can be more productive and effective on our Christian walks. Thank you again for just tuning in and we thank you for the devotion that Mission Discovery is doing every week, it’s fun to be a part of that. Take care and God bless.
