Let’s summarize our journey together in II Peter. I encourage you to review it; study the notes and watch every teaching (especially if you’ve missed any). And let’s look forward to a place where righteousness dwells, where all things are in right standing and right alignment with Yahweh. What a glorious place.
As a true disciple, your life will be a beautiful journey that waves back and forth between difficult challenges and wonderful victories. It’s all a process of sanctification. Along the way you will discover some amazing things and find that support comes from strange places and oftentimes, so does the resistance. You will be tempted, more than you can imagine, to get frustrated and angry, even wanting to quit the mission. When you are tempted to fall back on the “No one is perfect; I’m only human!” excuse, remember this; that is NOT what the Bible says about you! You are being transformed from glory to glory into Y’shua’s image; focus on that! As a Christian, you are actually part human and part heavenly being! Say instead, “By God’s grace I’m called to perfection, and I’m on my way!” Think of grace as both a direct connection to an infinite power source and a universal eraser. You have been empowered for transformation and you get to practice with a cushy safety net below. If you fall, get back up as Y’shua gently whispers in your ear, “Try again; you can do it!” Remember, God does not ask us to do the impossible, because with God all things are possible. So, stop making excuses! You might fall short at times and identifying the reasons why is good, but also acknowledge that a reason is NOT an excuse. “Once you become good at making excuses, you will never again become good at anything else!”
And finally, Paul also taught in his own letters about the things in Peter’s letter! Throughout this series, I elaborated on Peter’s words most often by using Paul’s teachings. Peter was a simple fisherman; Paul, a genius Torah scholar. He used paragraphs to say what Peter said in a sentence or two. Use the simple ideas of Peter as a skeletal framework on which to hang the complex details of Paul, in order to “add to your faith… Unfortunately, Paul’s complex writing invites those with an agenda to take his words and bend them to their own belief system. If you isolate Paul’s words from their original context, you can create your own doctrine, even your own denomination or religion. Don’t do that! Don’t be part of that problem. We already have 40,000 sub denominations. They will not last; ultimately there is one faith, one baptism, and one God!
Peter revealed how untaught and unstable people twist Paul’s words to their own ultimate demise. In the end, the long list of obvious inconsistencies and apparent self-satisfaction-driven policies and doctrines will eventually cause their destruction. Their lust for power, attention, fame, worship and significance ends in total collapse. You’ve seen this, yes? A life lived in contrast to the truth of God’s word forces one to bend the scriptures to say what it needs to say to support a “pseudo-biblical” lifestyle. That is why the onus is on you to check the Word for yourself. Don’t believe the words of man, unless his words align with God’s words! It will take effort to know the difference, and that’s what it means to become a “Biblically Literate Disciple.” The wicked will twist God’s word, but when you’ve learned to “Think in Bible” it will become obvious. Here’s the endgame; after your life is redeemed for eternity, you are then called to grow in the grace and knowledge of God. The Bible is an endless well of living water. Dive in and fear not; no one drowns in this well. And when you feel like you’re going under, instead of panicking, you’ll make the awesome discovery that you can breathe under water!
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