Promises, Promises.

Today's Three-minute Bible Study
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Title: Promises, Promises. ------------------- Date: 1/17/2002
Keywords: "escape" "promise"
Welcome to eXXit, the web site designed to help you stand strong in the face of sexual temptation.

Passage: 2 Peter 1:2-7*

2. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord;

3. seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.

4. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

5. Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge,

6. and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness,

7. and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love.

Questions

1. If you know the God of the Bible at all, you know that He has made promises to you. Can you name a few?

 

2. According to verse 4 in today’s passage, what is the purpose of the promises God has given you?

 

Practical help

You have to be pretty spiritually immature to think that whatever you ask God, He will give it to you. We have all tried it, but it doesn’t work, does it? Some people have given up on God entirely because He didn’t do what they wanted Him to. Is this you?

So now, how does a spiritually mature person understand God’s "precious and magnificent promises"? The answer is in verse 4 (we talked about verses 2 and 3 yesterday). God wants us to "partake" in the "divine nature". In other words, He wants us to experience God in our lives and He wants our lives to have a spiritual dimension that enables us to represent Him to a fallen world. Now this is the cool part. He wants us to call to Him and ask for good things. He wants to hear from us that we agree with His plan and that we want to be used for His glory and honor. When we have this attitude He will pour out blessings on us. They might be material blessings, but they might even be better than that. He might enable us to walk through very difficult circumstances in a way that turns people’s hearts to Him. This is what Jesus was talking about when He said in the famous Sermon on the Mount, "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matthew 5:16).

Note that Jesus didn’t say that the purpose of your good works was to look good in front of people. No, He wants the works to show people how good God is so that they might want Him for themselves. You should be like John the Baptist who said, when asked about Jesus, that "He [Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease." (John 3:30) And remember it was about John the Baptist that Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist!" (Matthew 11:11a) We should strive to be able to say the same thing ourselves.

But not only does God want us to experience Him in our lives, He wants to help us escape "the corruption that is in the world by lust." Instead of being driven by our appetites (like sexual urges to view pornography), He wants us to live like Jesus did. Remember when he was tempted in the wilderness to turn the stones into bread? That is the temptation to satisfy our appetites by own power. And remember making bread is a big temptation for someone who hasn’t eaten for forty days. I dare say, if you don’t eat for forty days, you would be more interested in food than porn until that hunger need is first met. But what was Jesus’ reply? "It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’" (Matthew 4:4) In other words, I will wait to eat what God gives me, because He is good and will come through for me in His time. I won’t jump ahead of Him. You can do the same, friend. When tempted to view porn, fall back and ask God to meet your sexual needs in His way and His time. He is as good as His word and will come through for you in surprising ways.

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*"Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, © Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission."