Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Effective and Productive

Christians - how would you describe your life? Ineffective? Unproductive? Then have I got a promise for you!
For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. -- 2 Peter 1:8
How awesome is that!!! What are 'these qualities', you ask? Just look back a couple of verses.
[...] make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. -- 2 Peter 1:5b-7
I highly recommend reading the whole chapter (while you're at it, the whole book. It's pretty short.) to get a better context about what Peter's talking about.

Notice that the road to effectiveness leads straight to God. It's not about activities or programs. It's not about volunteering and mission trips. It's about God, and your relationship to Him.

God will give you ministries, missions, opportunities. But these are God's gifts to us, not things we can successfully build on our own. Our responsibility is to focus on God and lift up Jesus. Work on building these qualities in your life. Then allow God to make opportunities in your life. Don't waste them.