God gives us many promises in His Word. Here are a few.

He promises nothing can separate us from His love. Rom 8:38,39

We are redeemed from sin 2 Peter 1:4

As we seek Him He gives us rest from life’s troubles. Matt 11:28,29

He is our ever sure protection. Psalm 121

EVERY promise He made about the Messiah in the Old Testament came true in the New. There were over 300 of them! Jesus fulfilled them to the last dot! That is statistically astronomical.

He is with us and gives us peace, He gives wisdom, answers our prayers, undergirds us with His grace, forgives us, heals, gives eternal life, gives us new hearts, helps us overcome temptations, puts an end to sorrow and so much more!

His power already gave us all we need to live Godly lives so we can actually become a partaker of His Divine nature. What is our response to be to this? Gratitude, awe, love, and yes, there is effort we are to exert back to Him.

We believe His promises. We add diligence (steady, earnest, energetic effort) to the promises and exercise faith first.

We move those faith muscles in action to develop virtue, that spirit of excellence.

Then we exert virtue to come to a new level of knowledge and understanding. It’s like Jesus asks, “what is your take away on my death and resurrection?”

The next level is to give some umph with knowledge to develop self control and from there we move mountains as we wait with patient endurance for what He has said.

The next step is exertion to develop Godliness, and as we flex muscle with Godliness we develop brotherly affection and then the final rung on the ladder, LOVE. It’s a ladder and it takes our steady energetic effort to abound in all these qualities so we can know Jesus to the fullest extent possible in this realm. We “make sure or ratify” our calling so we never stumble so we gain entrance into His eternal kingdom!

This ladder is found in 2 Peter 1:4-8. It is amazing.

Shalom Shalom

Kathi