Our sermon is taken from 2 Peter 1:3-4. The message is called, “Everything We Need.”
Have you ever been in a situation where you think to yourself, “I have bitten off more than I can chew?” “This is way above my pay-grade?” It can be a very common experience for new and old believers to think that living a life of faith and obedience in the situations in life in which we find ourselves is more than we are able to handle or negotiate. Does God expect too much of us?
Joni Eareckson Tada remembers reading in the Bible where Moses wrote: “What does the Lord your God ask of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?” (Deuteronomy 10:12-13). She was a teenager who had broken her back and was learning how to live as a young quadriplegic Christian in an extraordinarily difficult trial. She said that there were times when she thought God was asking way too much of her. Listen to what Joni writes: “As far as I could see, God was asking way too much of me, a kid new to the Christian faith. Well, that martyr complex, I have since come to realize, was fostered by—now listen closely to this—by concentrating too much on what God was asking of me and not enough on what God had given me.” Friends, the call of 2 Peter begins not with what you can do for God but what God can and will do in the lives of those who seek to become increasingly like Christ. Discipleship is not mustering the strength to become someone that we can never become. Discipleship is discovering that the strength to become who God wants us to become is found in Him. God supplies what God requires.
Come and see how God intends to work His good in our lives as His people. He will give us everything we need to become everything He wants us to be. If you are feeling overwhelmed and under-resourced this is a helpful and necessary perspective to know and to share with other people.
