The nature of covenant (III) Resources

If we are to produce godly offspring, we will need to tap into His resources. God never expects of us what He does not resource us to fulfill! In 2 Peter 1:3 we read “His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him.” Note the tenses here. In particular, everything that we need to live a godly life has already been given. We do of course, need to tap into this. We looked earlier at the principles, promises and power that He has made available to us. This morning I want is to look at the resource of “the knowledge of Him” in terms of knowing in the way that we know persons, that is in relationship. In particular, we are invited into the presence of the God of all comfort, the God of all mercy, the God of all hope, peace and joy and the God of all grace (2 Corinthians 1:3; Romans 15:13; 1 Peter 5:10). All these virtues are available to us, they are already given, but do need to be received. We do this by spending time in His presence. We become like who or what we worship.

The essence of Christianity is not rules or regulations or rituals. No, the essence of Christianity is relationship. This is what was broken at the fall, and this is what God has gone to incredible lengths to make it possible to restore. Rules, regulations and rituals have their place of course. But they need to flow out of relationship, not replace it! The 2 Peter reference goes on to tell us that when we have escaped the corruption of the world through, among other things, His exceedingly great and precious promises, we actually become partakers of His divine nature. We become like Him! But, as the passage also makes very clear, this is not independent of our cooperating in allowing the new nature to swallow up the old (verses 4-8).

We need to think about this in terms of the divine romance. God is a jealous God, and as the great lover that He is, He desires that we pursue Him with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength (Mark 12:30). Though we need to be as little children in order to enter into relationship with Him, He wants the relationship to mature, so that He no longer needs to discipline us. He will discipline us if He needs to, and in fact this is a sign of His love (Hebrews 12:6). But He wants to call us up, not call us out. He calls us up into maturity (Matthew 5:24), He calls up to be friends (John 15:15), and, like Abraham did, He calls us up to act in the manner a true friend of God would act.

Father, our greatest resource is You. While You still called Abraham Abram, you told him “I am your exceedingly great reward (Genesis 15:1). As Abram, he was still operating out of an orphan spirit. But by inviting him into friendship with Yourself, You were calling him up to be Abraham, the father of many nations. This is what Abraham means. And You are our exceedingly great reward Lord. We don’t always see it, and we don’t always operate out of it! So this morning Father I am asking You to give us the grace that we need to pursue You with everything that we have. I believe it is only then that we will even start to know that You are indeed our exceedingly great reward. And we will give you the honour and glory in Jesus Name Amen