Gifted for Godliness

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Our text today, we're going to be looking at the book that I don't think I've ever preached on this book. It's a smaller letter. It's 2 Peter. It's in the New Testament, and if you don't have a New Testament with you, we have a few available. Yes, Dick, go out. Yeah, yeah. Your wife told you to move. You better move. Okay, anybody need a New Testament? We're going to be in 2 Peter chapter 1, verses 3 to 11. Okay, it's way in the back. It's a small letter. It's on what page? Somebody got it in the New Testament? No? Okay, now on your bible.com app, you will also notice you can go to live, and as you go to the live side of things, under the more tab, okay, let's see. Let me make sure I can do that myself. I'm not that tech savvy. Under Bible app, you go under more, and then to live, and it should show up. Gifted for godliness, Thrive Community Church. We have notes there along with the text itself, so that's one way to do it, okay, as well. And if you need to know how to get to the YouVersionBible.com, we'll talk to you after the service, but you can get notes then for the sermons and learn a lot that way as well throughout the week. So let's read this, 2 Peter 1, 3 to 11. His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate. We are awake now. Yeah, we're having fun. We mixed things up a little, if you can't tell. We've got the soundboard in the back today trying it out. Bear with us. Okay. Where am I now? Okay. Through these he has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness, and to goodness knowledge, and to knowledge self-control, and to self-control perseverance, and to perseverance godliness, and to godliness mutual affection, and to mutual affection love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election, for if you do these things you will never stumble, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Long text, right? And probably have to give you a caveat up front. We're not going to get into it. If I preached on everything in this, the rains would sure be done today by the time I got done. So we're going to just try to focus on just a couple points to take home and kind of simmer on this week. So we said you are gifted for godliness. That is, your life, my life, we have a direction. We have a goal. We have an aim. We have a target, you might even say. The question is, what is that? What's the aim? What's the purpose? What's the goal of your life? Now, when I was growing up in a church in Michigan, don't hold that against me, Michigan, but I don't recall ever really hearing much about a goal or purpose or aim for my life. It was more like you believe and then you wait until you get to heaven. And in between, well, good luck. Hope it goes well. Be nice. Try to find a good way to live. Be a good citizen of something, one thing or another. But basically, what's the aim or goal of life? Well, to get to heaven. Sound good? But then what do I do for the next 50, 60, 70, 80 years? Just wait until I get to heaven? Is this just God's waiting room and we're waiting around? It's kind of the big whatever? Is that what's going on? So that's kind of the question I have today. No wonder many people, when they made their decisions, at least in my childhood church and growing up, basically kind of just decided to, let's say, oh, I'm going to go with this career or that goal or that direction, and then I'm going to get this and then I'm going to get that and then go here and then go there. And my question would be to you, then what? Is that all there is? Is that what it's all about? It reminds me of a legend that happened in the old English countryside. I think this is just kind of a legend. But that the people at the time were noticing there was someone like a William Tell around who could always, whenever an arrow was shot into the trees in the forest, hit the bullseye every time. Every time it was a bullseye. Every time that arrow was there, boom, center of the target. There's a William Tell out there again. And they were trying to figure out who it was until one day a couple of the peasants went around and found a 12 year o...