The Pattern for Godliness

our Father in Heaven, we pray as we have just sung that you would send your Holy Spirit, living breath to breathe into us new life, to come abide with us, to come speak to us, to come open our ears and quicken our wills that we may hear and that we may obey all to the end that you would be glorified and that your power would be made evident in our lives as we grow more and more into your image. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. We come this evening to 2 Peter 1. I said last week that 2 Peter 1 has a sort of mini sermon at the beginning of the book after the initial greeting in verses 1 through 2. There is something of a mini homily in verses 3 through 11. We are looking at these verses over these three weeks, this is the second, to see the power for godliness, the pattern for godliness and the premise for godliness. And tonight we look at the pattern. What does godliness look like? Follow along as I read beginning at verse 5. For this very reason, this is pulling down all of the rationale that was given in verses 3 and 4 in particular, his divine power granted to us through these great and precious promises for this reason. 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. We see here laid out clearly a pattern for godliness. What does it look like when the power of god is evident in your life? What does it look like when you are becoming partakers of the divine nature? Here is the pattern. And I want you to note three things about this pattern for godliness. And we are going to spend most of our time on the first. And that is this. The pattern requires efforts. The pattern requires efforts. When we come to look at the pattern itself, which we will do in the second and third point, you'll see that it overlaps in large part with the sort of things that we were looking at over the summer and the fruit of the spirit. And so we'll move through that more quickly. But I do want us to ruminate for a bit on this simple and yet profound command at the beginning of verse 5. Make every effort. Sometimes because we are good-reformed Christians and we do want to exalt, and in fact, we would be willing to die for the precious truths of the faith that we are justified by faith alone through grace alone and Christ alone to the glory of god alone. Sometimes out of a well-meaning desire to so emphasize Solafide, we can act as if efforts is a four-letter word in the Christian vocabulary, something that we ought never to speak of. Surely it is law and not gospel if we are to talk about making an effort as Christians. And yet here we have very plainly, it's right there. You can't go and say, well, the Greek really says don't make an effort. The Greek really says what it's translated here. It is the consistent witness of the New Testament that growth in godliness requires exertion on the part of the Christian. Romans 8, 13, by the spirit we must put to death the deeds of the flesh. Ephesians 4, 22 through 24 says we must put off the old self put on the new. Colossians 3, 5 tells us to put to death what is earthly in us. Ephesians 6 speaks of the full armor of god and that we are to stand fast against the schemes of the devil. First Timothy 6, 12 tells us to fight the good fight. Jesus told us to strive to enter the narrow gate. So what is going on here? Notice we are not saved in terms of justification by our efforts. That's not what this passage or any of the other passages I just read are speaking of. This doesn't mean that god saves us by faith and then he says, well, you got one freebie, you got to get out of hell free card and now the rest of your life just you better work your tail off to be a good Christian. And that's clearly not what he's saying because of the beginning of verse 5 for this very reason. Well, what is the reason? The reason is found in verse 3 that we are called to this glory in excellence, that we have these very great and precious promises, verse 4, and that we are partakers of the divine nature. So we have this union with Christ and we have power at work within us. So don't hear make effort to be opposite from god is working in you. It's the classic text from Philippians 2, work out your salvation with fear and trembling for this god who works in you both to will and to do according to his good purpose. Hebrews 211, for he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all of one. So this all surpassing power comes from god, not from us. And as the power flows in us for sanctification, we must make every effort to work according to that power. The difficulty in why so many of us have an allergic reaction to language of effort is that we tend to collapse justification and sanctification. We just highlight in several sentences the difference between justification and progressive growth in sanctification. Justification is a declaration about us. It's something that god says in declares to be true of us. Sanctification is a work wrought within us. Justification refers to a righteousness imputed to us. That word was absolutely essential for the reformers. Imputation means that it is a righteousness that we do not possess in ourselves but is rather reckoned, credited, imputed to our account. It is an alien righteousness. It is the righteousness of Christ imputed to us. Sanctification refers to a righteousness that is wrought in us. Justification is once for all. It cannot be added to. It cannot be subtracted from. If you are justified, you are justified once for all. You cannot say, well, I'm a little more justified today than I was a week ago. In tomorrow's Monday morning, I'll probably be a little less justified than I am right now. That's now how it works. Sanctification, on the other hand, is a repeated process and allows for growth and for setbacks. That's what we're talking about in the pattern here that you are to add to your faith. There is to be a growth in godliness. Justification is finished. Sanctification is ongoing. Justification is wholly dependent on faith as an instrumental cause, apart from any moral efforts. Sanctification is born of faith and depends on faith, but also requires moral exertion. So it would not be right to say we are sanctified by faith alone. We are sanctified by faith. We saw that last week. We believe promises. Sanctification is a fight of faith, but when we say we are justified by faith alone, we mean that faith solely is the instrumental cause and we contribute nothing to it. In sanctification, we work as god works in us. So justification is monergistic. I've heard that word, that term before, monergism, mono meaning one and air go meaning work. So justification is by one working or is often applied to regeneration. When we are given a new heart, we do not cooperate. It is god, monergistically, he is the one working and he therefore declares us to be righteous, imputed with the righteousness of Christ. Sanctification is not monergistic, but rather Philippians 2 again, as god works in us, we work out with fear and trembling. Think of the Exodus as a proper analogy, that god came and delivered them from Egypt, that they might worship and then he gave them the Ten Commandments, that they might obey. So the Exodus story is not god saying work hard, here's Ten Commandments, I want to see some real good effort to get the Ten Commandments down and then I'll come and I'll save you from Egypt. That would be to say first sanctification and then justification by the same token. Neither is the Exodus story, god saying I love you, I set you free, you are no longer slaves in Egypt and now do whatever you want. Now that would be justification without any corresponding sanctification, we know the Exodus story is first redemption therefore obedience, not obedience to be redeemed, not redemption and then obedience is irrelevant, but god sovereignly unilaterally redeems us and we obey. Justification is the ground from which sanctification springs, grace always precedes demand. So it is absolutely essential that we understand the difference between justification and sanctification. Last, we think that verse 5 is telling us you need to really prove to god before you can be a Christian. No, this is written to people for this very reason, they are already participants with the divine nature. They are already born again and because of that reality now he says make every effort. I use this illustration and one of my classes recently, it's it's the sort of thing you got to see the little clip, but it's a scene from a movie which I haven't seen so I can't say whether you should see the movie or not, it's not really important, but there's a scene of somebody who's a surfing instructor who's trying to teach someone else how to get up on the surfboard and so he's laying on the surfboard and the instructor is like get up and so he pops up, this is no, no, no, you're working too hard, you're working too hard, get down, get up and he gets up a little slowly, no man, you're working too hard, you're doing too much, don't do anything, just get down, he says all right now get up and then this time he doesn't move at all, well yeah you've got to do a little bit more than that, that's kind of what it can feel like in the Christian life, people are telling you no, no, no you don't work, you don't do anything, just you don't have to make any effort at it and then you make no effort, well I mean a little bit of effort, that's because I think in our spirit we're confusing justification and sanctification or we only relate to God as a judge and not to God as a father, see God as a judge, you're either righteous or you're unrighteous, you're guilty or you're innocent and can go free, well that's one way to relate to God and that's in justification but God as a father also can discipline us, can be pleased, can be displeased, he wants us to grow, I want to take a little bit of a historical theological detour here, I told you this first point was going to be the longest, I think this will be helpful for us because some of us perhaps have been influenced by this certain stream of evangelical theology even if we couldn't put a name on it and we'll say oh that sort of makes sense, where did that come from? So bear with me for a few minutes as we take a little historical, theological detour that I think will help us understand why this phrase to make every effort lands difficulty on some of us. So there's something in the history of the church that goes, dates back to the second half of the 19th century called chesic theology, K-E-S-W-I-C-K, it's one of those British words I just don't like to say the W's, it's not cheswick but chesic, chesic is a little town up in the Lake District of England but became well known for having a convention there, the chesic convention and from that came this chesic theology. Now the chesic convention has become a very different sort of convention in the last couple of generations and they have D.A. Carson, they have Sinclair Ferguson, so the theology here associated with it is no longer the theology that would still be associated with that convention but there was this thing called the chesic theology and I'm pulling here somewhat from a friend of mine Andy Naselli who did a dissertation on this and I'm just giving you five minutes of some of the highlights and I think this will be helpful for us. It was a convention that started in Britson in 1875 and has been very influential on certain strands of evangelical Christianity and theology. Very influential for people like and maybe you've you've read some of these people perhaps especially some of our our older folks, people like Andrew Murray, A.J. Gordon, G. Campbell Morgan, the him writer Francis Havergo, influenced Dwight Moody, chesic was very influential in the Christian Missionary Alliance, Dallas Theological Seminary, by one estimate, various times half of fundamentalism was essentially in line with chesic theology. The movement did a lot of good things, launched missionaries like Hudson Taylor, Amy Carmichael, so they're encouraging things but there are some significant problems with their doctrine of sanctification so that's why I'm bringing this up. This was the view of sanctification of these early chesic leaders and what came to be known as the chesic theology. Sin, they viewed the law of sin at work in the believer but yet it could be overcome. So they said we have this tendency to sin but the Christian does not have to sin. It is possible to live without known sin. Daily sinning is not inevitable. Now this showed up in this chesic convention actually they had several days to the convention. This was typically day one as they would teach you and instruct you in this doctrine of sin. You have the law of sin in the believer but it can be overcome. Day two we'll talk about the cure for sin and the key to curing sin and this really gets to the heart of their theology is to realize that there are two classes of Christians and you need to move from one class of Christian to the other and some of these categories will ring a bell for you. So there's two classes and they go by different names. A carnal Christian or a spiritual Christian or someone who is positionally in Christ and you move to someone who is experientially in Christ. Someone who is not abiding in Christ, these are all categories for Christians so a Christian not abiding in Christ and the key is to become one who does abide in Christ or you can be a believer and you need to move to becoming a disciple. Some of you may remember at various times in the last 20, 30 years, different iterations of the Lordship controversy. Can you have Christ as Savior without having him as Lord? Well it comes from this strand of Catholic theology that says, well you can be a believer in not yet a disciple and so in certain strands of fundamentalism it would not have been uncommon to hear people talk about. I accepted Christ as Savior when I was eight. I accepted him as Lord when I was 16. That's where the Lordship controversy comes from. You're a carnal Christian. You're still a Christian but you haven't yet moved to this other class of Christianity where you're not just having the benefits of being saved but you're actually a disciple. No power for service. You need to become a Christian who has power for service. You are a Christian who is stuck in the lower life. You need to be one of the higher life. So sometimes this is called higher life Christianity or you are in the shallow life and you need to move to the deeper life or you are a Christian who is living in a defeated way and you need the victorious life. You are in spiritual bondage. You need spiritual liberty or you are trying when you need to be trusting. There's a different sort of categories. A different language would describe this shift that you need to undertake from one class of Christian to another. The next step in the process was consecration. So, Catholic theology said there were only two conditions for the victorious life. Surrender and faith. And it's from this Catholic theology that we get this expression, let go and let God. That's all one time. One of those inspirational office sort of posters and there's a man climbing the face of a rock and he's reaching for the next grip and it says let go and let God. Well, that is sort of the problem with the theology but it falls very much in line with the other premises that you, the problem is you're trying in how you move from lower life to higher life is to stop trying and start trusting. Surrender unconditionally to the mastery of Jesus. The key is trusting not trying and victory comes immediately. So there is a crisis moment where you are then sanctified by faith alone and you grow but it is not through effort. It is through confirming over and over your consecration and surrender which is somewhat why in some traditions people are constantly recommitting, re-dedicating their life to Christ and on one level certainly nothing wrong with saying yes I do really want to follow you but it was part of a pattern that sanctification happens by re-surrendering, re-surrendering, re-surrendering. Day four in the convention was about spirit filling. All Christians have the spirit, Keswick said, but not all are filled with the spirit. So you get spirit filled by clearing away evil things, by yielding unreservantly, by believing in order to receive and then you thank God for doing it even if you don't sense that he's done it. And then the result of this is powerful Christian service. Now you have power that you did not have before, particularly power in soul-winning and in cross-cultural missionary work. You can see how this theology which comes out of England in the last part of the 19th century is going to open up categories for Pentecostalism at the beginning of the 20th century. You may have the spirit as a Christian but you really haven't been filled with the spirit. This is this Keswick theology. One of the books that is filled with this, perhaps some of you have heard of it, the Christian secret of a happy life by Hannah Whitehall Smith with her husband Robert Piercehall Smith. There was a time in my previous church early on when part of what got me into researching this was there was a Bible study going on that was reading this book, the Christian secret of a happy life. And in some devotional circles it's something of a classic, but it's very problematic. It's filled with mystical passivity. Entire surrender absolute faith is the secret to the happy victorious Christian life. If you just surrender enough you don't have to make effort. In fact, making efforts like the guy in the surfboard you're trying too hard. And one of the sad realities with that book is Hannah Whitehall Smith. Her life was anything but happy. She had a bad marriage. She was pressed into writing the book by her husband who later committed adultery. She eventually became an early feminist or the end of her life. She wrote to a friend that she had jettisoned orthodoxy, embraced all sorts of heresies, religious pluralism, universalism. Her life was marked by doubt and seasons of despair, great unhappiness. Not that everyone who embraced the theology did. I'm not suggesting that. But in this particular case the Christian secret of a happy life was not her life. More well-known to us, and I told Trisha's, heading to church, I said, I hope I don't ruin one of our beloved hymns. Francis Havergill, again who's a godly hymn writer, her hymn, which most of us know, take my life and let it be, was her consecration hymn, very much in keeping with this chesic theology. Verse 1 talks about my life being consecrated to thee. Verse 5, take my will and make it thine. It shall be no longer mine. Take my heart. It is thine own. It shall be thy royal throne. Now there's certainly a way that we sing that, just like Jesus says, not my will, but yours be done. But strictly speaking, take my will, make it thine. It shall be no longer mine. The will has been eradicated and removed and now just filled with the divine will. Just not what we believe. We believe, rather God reanimates and invigorates our will to do what is right. Francis Havergill said about writing the song, take my life and let it be. She speaks about visiting a house and she says there were ten persons in the house, somewhere unconverted and long prayed for, some converted, but not rejoicing Christians. So there's a sort of two-class category of Christian. God gave me the prayer. Lord, give me all in this house and he just did that. Before I left the house, everyone got a blessing. The last night of my visit, I was too happy to sleep and pass most of the night in the renewal of my consecration and these little couplets formed themselves. So when you hear that in the context of the chesache theology, it makes sense. She spent the night in the renewal of her consecration and then wrote, take my life and let it be as a consecration song for those Christians who did not yet become rejoicing Christians, higher life Christians. You see some of this in her hymn from the same year, 1874, like a river glorious. Like a river glorious, his God's perfect peace. Overall, victorious in its bright increase, perfect yet it floweth, fuller every day, perfect yet it groweth deeper all the way. I'm not suggesting you shouldn't like that hymn or that you shouldn't sing it, sort of like Wesley's hymn and can it be, there's a way that most of us interpret the lyrics which may have been different than Wesley as in Arminian meant them and so it may be with some of these hymns from the higher life movement. Well, very quickly moving off of this detour, the demise of this theology, especially in reformed circles, can be dated to 1955, J.I. Packer wrote an article comparing chesache theology of sanctification and reformed views of sanctification. And Packer, who you know this summer just went to be with the Lord, was very adamant that he felt like this chesache theology just about brought him to serious depression, almost suicidal thoughts because he just couldn't surrender enough and he felt like he was paralyzed. He didn't know what to do to grow as a Christian. He had so infused this doctrine that just said, let go and let God. John Stott spoke at the chesache convention in 1965 and preached on Romans 5 through 8 and reset the trajectory of the convention with good teaching on the chapters from Romans. So now chesache is much more on the broad stream of reformed evangelicalism. And I think I haven't been there but I know many people who have and who have been blessed by it. So one other note on this before we come back to the text, and I told you this was going to be the long part of the sermon, many of you may have read JC Ryle's book Holiness, which is, yeah, top 10 of my favorite Christian books. I commend it to you. JC Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool, wrote the first edition of Holiness in 1877. Two years after Chesache began, he doubled the size of the book by 1879 and that book was written as a response and a corrective to the chesache theology. If you know the background of the chesache theology and you read Ryle's holiness, all sorts of light bulbs are going to go off. He starts the book by asking a series of questions that are meant to undermine this let go and let God theology. So Ryle asks, is it wise to speak of faith as the only thing required in sanctification? Is it wise to make so little of the many practical exhortations to Holiness and daily life? Is it wise to use vague language about Christian perfection? Is it wise to assure so positively that the seventh chapter of Romans describes an unregenerated man? You can see that was part of the chesache theology that Romans seven, the things I do, I don't want to do. Well, that can't be a regenerated man. Certainly can't be the apostle Paul living the victorious Christian life because you wouldn't have those struggles if you had really surrendered. That's what felt so damning to someone like Packer. Is it wise to use the phrase Christ in us without explanation? Is it wise to draw such a deep wide and distinct line between conversion and consecration? Is it wise to teach believers that they ought not to struggle against sin but ought rather to yield themselves to God and be passive in the hands of Christ? Those are the questions that Ryle asks at the beginning of Holiness and knowing what the chesache theology was about. You can see very much what Ryle is attempting to do. He wants to make the case, a biblical case, from verses like 2 Peter 1 verse 5, that growth in godliness requires effort. Think of all the language in the Bible. Strive, fight, beat your body, run, be a good soldier, be like a hardworking farmer. If you ever meet a holy person, you can count on it. They have labored hard and prayer in the word and it's fighting against the flesh. It did not become the holy person that you wish to emulate through passive, quietistic resignation. The Bible is certainly telling us more than effort as this text makes clear. It is a power at work within us through the precious promises of God. But effort, not in justification but in sanctification is absolutely biblical and critical for us to understand if we are to make progress in our sanctification. We'll circle back to this at the very end but some of us are likely altogether too passive and we will work hard at dozens of things in life and we've come to this mistaken conclusion that to become more like Christ simply just to sit back and let the surf board just take you out into the ocean. Second, I promise the first point was the long one and these are quick. So the pattern requires effort. Second, the pattern is rooted in faith and culminates in love. Notice make every effort to supplement your faith so it starts there but it doesn't end there. Sometimes Christians make the mistake. They make a profession of faith and they think that's the end of the journey rather than a continuing step along the journey. If you're here tonight or you're listening watching online, you think well I'm a Christian. Maybe you got it from your parents, you grew up in the church, maybe you read a CS Lewis or a Tim Keller book, maybe you've been a Christian your whole life, maybe a month ago, that's wonderful. You believe something, you believe the Bible is true, you believe in Jesus. Don't stop there. It's sad if you meet an older professing believer who made the mistake long ago that they professed Christ and that was the end of the story for them. They'll go to church once in a while, you know, as sort of a stab to their conscience, throwing a few bucks in the offering plates. They aren't really persistent in wanting to grow to become more like Christ. Mark this very well, all of you, especially young people, there is no such thing as a non-practicing Christian. He's a non-practicing Jew, he's a non-practicing Catholic. He's a non-practicing Christian is not a logical sentence. Christian is not an ethnic group, it is not a people group, it is not something that you inherit from your parents, the only kind of real Christians are practicing Christians. So it starts with faith, that's what makes this list different from just a list of stoic virtues or basic morality, which would have been common in the ancient world. There are overlaps with many of those virtues by common grace. Christ's Christian living won't always look markedly different from basic human decency, but the ground, the motivation, the whole conception of morality is different because it starts with faith. It starts with faith and it ends in love. So supplement your faith with virtue so that is moral excellence, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desires, and then add to that knowledge. So you're growing and you're discernment, you're growing and you're understanding of the faith and of yourself. Add to that self-control. This is contrasted most immediately with sexual libertinism that we're going to see as the problem that Peter is addressing with people much like in our own day who said whatever you want to do sexually is fine. Peter says, no, no, no, you add to your faith self-control, but it's not just sexual self-control. We might think about our video habits, our phone habits, our spending habits, our food habits, self-control. Add to that steadfastness. So this requires endurance, hard work, patience, add to that godliness, to that brotherly affection, the way we care for each other, brotherly affection, thinking of the body of Christ. It's also thinking of your own brotherly affection for your family, isn't it? Often the most difficult people to love well are the people that are around you all the time. That line that comes from finding Nemo, what does the dad say to Dory? I like you. That's why I just don't want to be around you. It's a very complicated emotion. Have you thought that about your children? Have they thought that about their parents? You thought that about brothers and sisters? Listen, brothers and sisters, literal brothers and sisters in this room. If you're a Christian, you love Jesus, you're growing in Christ, you will be growing in your brotherly and sisterly affection toward one another. There's nothing in the Bible that says you have to be a Christian, but when you come home and when you have to share a room with the sibling, you don't have to be a Christian then we ought to grow in brotherly affection. Perhaps we will have opportunity as a church to show brotherly affection for our own bodies when people are sad, grieving out of work. The line from Tertullian reporting that the pagans remark see how they love one another. And I love how that paragraph ends from Tertullian. We often don't hear the end of it. He says, one in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. And this is a great line. As Christians, all things are in common among us but our wives. Well, good clarification. And then add to that love, we ought to be better neighbors. Now maybe people will say, oh, I have one of these Bible-thumping Christians moving in. And they may think the worst about you because of what you believe. But let's prove to them that they will not find a better neighbor who cares more, who's more self-sacrificing, who's more long-suffering, who demonstrates more the interest of others. Would this not make a good prayer list as you think of praying for your spouse or your friend or your pastors or your kids to pray through these lists of these seven godly characteristics that they may be growing in us? The pattern is rooted in faith, culminates in love. And then finally, the pattern is a process. We'll get to verse 8 next week, but just look at it for a moment. If these qualities are yours and are increasing, increasing, one of the surest signs that you are a Christian is that you are growing. Where you are today doesn't matter nearly as much as where you are headed. You are not going to get rid of all your bad habits the moment you become a Christian. I think it's a mere Christianity reflecting on it. Why do some non-Christians actually seem like better people than Christians? One of the reasons he gives is because you don't know where those people were starting. Maybe the non-Christian who had all the benefits of great socialization and education and loving parents started with a basic common-grace set of morality and then the non-Christian maybe had nothing by way of those advantages. You don't know how far that person has come. Let that be some encouragement to us, not an excuse, but an encouragement that God is looking not so much at our position but our trajectory. Are you growing? Can you say that you have, don't look day-by-day, that's bound to make you discouraged or even weak by week. But what about six months, year after year? Is there growth in virtue in you? Or are you more lackadaisical about what you watch and what you wear and how you speak than you wear when you were in college? Is there growth in knowledge? Do you seem to be wiser in your judgments, more discerning, more understanding of the scriptures? Is there growth in self-control? Or do you find yourself more given to fits of anger and impatience more prone to giving into temptation? Less careful with your eyes. Is there growth in steadfastness? Or are you more cowardly, less courageous, not finishing what God started? Is there growth in godliness? Spending more time with God than thinking on yourself? Is there growth in brotherly affection? Do you feel an increasing sense of kinship with other Christians? Do you feel growing within you a greater and greater desire to be at church, to serve in the church? Because those are your brothers and sisters. Or do you think, I really don't, I have fewer close Christian friends than I used to and I'm much less interested in church than I once was. Are you growing in love? Or do you boast more, envy more, ruder than you used to be? It's a process. So in closing, let me remind you of the good news and then look at the other side of that as an exhortation. The good news is this, God is not looking at your life for perfection. Here's the challenge. He is looking at your life for progress, momentum. And remember, there's power. There is divine power available for us in this work. You will not be ineffective if you are growing in Christ's likeness. We'll come to that in verse 8, but it is one of the foundational planks in my whole philosophy of ministry. And I think I committed to you and your whole philosophy of life. If you are a growing Christian, you will have a positive effect on your children. You will have a good effect on your spouse. You will have a positive impact on your friends and on your co-workers. If you are growing, as a verse 8 says, you will not be ineffective,

is Godliness one of the things you're willing to work at. Many of you work hard at school. Maybe you're working hard on your appearance, exercise, your weight, your yard, your car, an instrument, your athletics, your career, your home, all sorts of areas of life where we are working hard. Are you willing to work hard and make an effort at Godliness? And this is for everyone. Don't say, I'm only 12. I'm a kid. Are you a Christian? Don't say, I'm 92. I'm about done. Are you a Christian? God has growth yet for you, is new things to teach you, new ways to use you, new things to show you about Himself. Make every effort. God does not expect your perfection. He does not expect your progress. So much of the message around us says, what will you do to change the world? God says, let me first work in you as you work out that I might change you. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we give thanks for your word. We pray that we would be discerning with it. We would rightly divide the word of truth and you would give us power, strength from on high that we might grow in Godliness. May we not give up in the fight, O Lord. You have given us the pattern. You have for us the power. And now help us to make every effort in Jesus we pray. Amen.