07-03 Work of Diligence

➡ Paul, from God Is Government, shares a daily devotion about growing your spiritual connection with Christ. He emphasizes the importance of diligence, or serious commitment, in faith. He explains that faith is like a seed that needs the right environment to flourish, and this environment is created by adding moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, and brotherly kindness to your faith. These elements help you glorify God, stay focused, endure trials, and support others, which in turn allows your faith to grow and express its full potential.
➡ The text encourages us to help others in need, even when we ourselves are struggling. It suggests that by showing kindness and love to others, especially those we may not naturally gravitate towards, we reflect God’s nature and this can lead to personal growth. It warns against forgetting the sacrifice of Jesus and the importance of spiritual growth. The text concludes by urging us to remain diligent, keep faith, and continue to positively impact the world.

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voice for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pughe at God Is Government, called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ’s teaching of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today’s focused discussion will be on understanding the work of diligence. Diligence means zeal.

In other words, what Peter is getting ready to tell you, take seriously. Apply all diligence. Don’t take what he’s getting ready to tell you casually. Don’t think that this is some minor thing. All diligence. This is deadly serious. If you want the divine nature to express itself in your soul, then take this down seriously, he says. With all diligence. In your faith, that is, with your salvation, he says you have a common faith. You’re already saved because he’s talking to born-again believers. In your faith, here it is, supply. Let me stop at the word supply.

He’s going to list seven things. Seven is the number of completeness in the Bible. He’s going to give you seven things that will grow your seed, seven things that will grow your seed, and this is what you must supply. You say, but wait a minute. You told me I already have everything. You do. But now you’re telling me I must supply something. The seed has the whole stalk of corn and its possibilities in it. But if you don’t supply the soil, then the seed has no place to express its potential. The supply he’s talking about is not adding on to what God has done.

The supply he’s talking about is creating an environment so that all that he’s done can flourish. Okay, you go to the grocery store, you get a can of orange juice concentrate, you get a can of apple juice concentrate. In that can is a pitcher full of juice, but it’s concentrated, it’s been collapsed and concentrated, but its design is to serve your whole pitcher. So what they tell you is to add water. Now, all the water is doing is expanding what you already have in the can. You don’t have to buy a pitcher full of juice if you buy juice concentrate, because a pitcher full of juice is in juice concentrate.

But when you add water, what you’re doing is expanding the juicers capacity to give you more. When he says add, he’s not saying come up with more juice. He’s saying create that which gives the seed the capacity to give you more of God. Are you with me? So this addition is not adding something new to what God has done. It’s just giving God that which he can expand on. So here’s what you do. He says supply. First of all, number one, moral excellence, moral excellence. Some versions translate the word can be translated virtue, virtue.

Now the question is, what does that mean? Moral excellence or virtue meant giving something what it needs to fulfill what it was designed to do. To give something virtue was to give it what it needed to fulfill what it was designed to do. So now that you are saved, add to your faith virtue. When you till the soil and fertilize the soil, you’re giving the soil what it needs to produce the crops you want to have. So you give the soil virtue. Okay, you must do this. He says, you must give the orange juice, concentrate the water if you want the pitcher full.

Okay, the question is, what is this thing you must add? What is this thing that he’s telling us to add? That’s what I’m designed for. Just flip over one page to chapter three, verse 18, but grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory. Here it is. You were made in your divine nature to bring glory to God. That’s your DNA and divine design. So if you want the seed in your spirit to expand, you must add to your salvation the goal of glorifying God.

First Corinthians 1031 says, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. So you must now live with the consciousness of glorifying God, which now adds virtue to your salvation. You must ask, how will this make God look? How will this expand how God is viewed? How will this make God look bigger and better? How will this put God on advertisement? How will this put God on blast? How will this make God be advertised more? When you become conscious, functionally conscious of the purpose of spiritual growth or your salvation, which is to bring glory to God, what you just added to your faith is moral excellence.

God will not make you glorify him. He will not even make you be conscious to glorify him. He will say, if you add that the seed will pick up on that and the seed will pick up because it’s divine nature, it will pick up on he’s trying to bring God and make God look good in this situation. And the seeds going to shake a little bit. Seeds going to move a little bit because the seed is responding to the fact that God is being glorified. So he says, add to your salvation, your faith, moral excellence or virtue.

Then he says, add to your moral excellence or virtue knowledge. Faith is not blind. It must be informed. To put it another way, you cannot grow beyond what you know. You cannot grow beyond what you know. In other words, when you see how you should glorify God, God wants you to add to that glorifying of him, the virtue, more information. Because if I add more information to my glorifying him, what did I just add? The ability to glorify him more. That’s why people go on for a master’s degree. They want to master a subject.

They don’t just want to have the general information. They want to have the specific targeted information in a given field. He says, God wants you to become a master Christian. He doesn’t just want you to be a high school graduate Christian. He doesn’t even want you to just be a BA born again Christian. He wants you to become a master’s degree saint, where you have now mastered. Why? Because when you go for a master’s degree, you have to accumulate more information. You learn Bible study, because now I can glorify him more.

And the more I glorify him, the more my seed’s going to rumble and the more my seed rumbles. Though I’m going to see some fingers pop out here in a minute, because now the seed is expanding in the soul. He says, don’t stop there. Add to your knowledge, self-control. Self-control means holding onto oneself. It was used regularly of athletes who had to discipline themselves in order to maximise their skill in a certain performance. Add whatever you need to stay focused on your goal. Whatever you need to not lose focus. Why? Because that’s what the enemy wants to do to us.

He wants to shake our focus to erode our discipline. So we jump off the track, so we get off the wagon, so that we lose our focus. And he knows that that’s what the enemy wants to do. So whatever you have to add is self-control, so that you keep getting the knowledge, so that you keep expanding the virtue piggybacking on your faith. So you may need accountability to stay on task. He goes on and add to your self-control, he says, perseverance. That means in everyday language, hang in there. Don’t quit. Don’t quit.

Perseverance is almost always related in the Bible to trials. When the Bible talks about perseverance, most of the time you’re going through a rough time. He says, I know it’s hard. I know it’s hot. I know it’s heavy. But if you’re putting these other things in place that preceded this, I want you to add, you’re putting in self-control. I want you to add, hanging in there. Why? Here’s a little secret. The worst things get, the closer you are. That’s my little secret. The reason he doesn’t want you to throw in the towel yet, is because the worst things get, the closer you are to whatever God is planning to do.

The worst things get. The reason he says don’t throw in the towel is because the closer you are. He says, persevere. And to your perseverance, add godliness. Because the temptation when you’re persevering is to quit and say, I don’t want the God thing anymore. To bail out on God. Hang on to living for God, even though you don’t see anything happening. Okay, watch this now. Watch this. He comes to the next one. Brotherly kindness. The Greek word there is Philadelphia. Brotherly kindness. Here’s a secret. I know it’s rough because these believers were going through trials.

I know it’s tough, but you want the seed to grow. Here it is. Find a brother or sister who’s going through something similar to you and minister to them. Brotherly kindness meant to selflessly reach out to another member of the family of God and pour into them. I know what you’re saying. I need somebody to pour into me. I know what you’re saying, but you know, remember Luke 638. Give and it will be given to you. Pour it out to a brother or sister. If you need healing, to whatever degree you can minister to somebody else who needs healing.

If you’re battling depression as tough as it may be, and as best as you can, minister to somebody else who’s depressed. If you’re going through marital struggles. And I know it’s tough, minister to somebody else who has marital struggles. Whatever you are needing, give. Brotherly kindness. Kindness to another member of the family of God. I know it doesn’t make sense because you have a need, but what’s going to happen is your seeds going to start shaking because God is seeing you be like him and he’s getting excited in there. So now I got feet showing up and hands showing up and now I got eyes and now I can read the gender because God’s nature is being shaken within you.

Then he says on top of that, the last one adds to that love. Add to that love. Well, wait a minute. Didn’t I just show love with brotherly kindness? Brotherly kindness is to a brother. That’s to a brother or sister. That’s to another Christian. That’s to somebody who’s on your side, on your team. That’s somebody you don’t mind talking to, dealing with, because they’re brother or sister and they’re going through what you’re going through. So you can relate. This is somebody you can relate to. But God demonstrated his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

When he talked about love, he’s talking about folk you aren’t particular about, folk you wouldn’t naturally gravitate to, folk you may go in the other direction from. This has to do with ministering to the irregular people in your life. Let’s talk about ministering to somebody who you I don’t know that I want to talk to her. I don’t like her. God demonstrated his love in that while we were sinners against him Christ died. He’s saying go there because now the seed is going crazy in you. Because now you acting like why Jesus came and died.

You are acting just like the sacrifice on the cross and God is going crazy inside of you. Now we got hair growing out the head and we got eyebrows coming in and we got all kind of stuff happening because God’s nature is being reflected in your seed in your spirit. What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen? I’m almost out of time. What’s going to happen? He said this is going to happen verse 8. For if these qualities are yours and are here it is growth increasing they render you neither useless nor unfruitful.

Here it is in the true. Epigenosis in the true knowledge the authentic knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. He says you’re going to become fruity and we’re not talking about crazy we’re talking about fruit producing. God has a lot of Christians with no fruit. They’re still Christians but nothing is coming out of their lives that God can use. Why would God bless somebody that’s unfruitful? Fruit has three things going for it. One, fruit is always visible. You’ve never seen invisible fruit. Fruit’s always visible. You can see it. Secondly, fruit always bears the character of the tree of which it is a part.

Apple trees don’t produce oranges because that’s not the character of the tree. It reflects the character the tree is a part. Thirdly, fruit is always for the benefit of somebody else. Any fruit eating itself is rotten. When you see fruit eating itself that’s rotten fruit because fruit exists for somebody else to bite it. When you see this seed shaking and God moving in you and you’re seeing this you’re discovering all this stuff because your spirit is taking over your soul. You’re going to discover something. You’re going to discover that it’s now visible.

Like a pregnant woman you can only hide that stuff for so long. It’s going to become visible as something is going on inside of you. Not only will you become visible you will reflect the character of the tree of which you are a part. You’re going to look more and more like Jesus. What happens if you don’t do this addition? You just say I’m saved as I’m enough. Verse 9 in closing, for he who lacks these qualities is blind and myopic. That’s a Greek word for where we get our English word myopic short nearsighted.

Having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Wow he says if you don’t add these qualities you think in short term. He says for those who lack these qualities you’re not thinking. You don’t have the big picture. You’re just living day by day. You’re missing the big picture. The person who says I only want to go through the ninth grade and that’s it. That’s it. He says no. Think of the bigger picture. Both of time and eternity. You will become fruitful. Life will become meaningful. He says in the root problem in closing.

Here he says the root problem is the person who won’t develop these qualities on the spiritual growth level has forgotten his purification from his former sins. You forgot Calvary. You forgot the cross and whenever we forget the cross we’re in trouble. I’m in trouble. You’re in trouble. When you forget the cross. When that just becomes something that happened two thousand years ago. He says you’re in trouble because now you won’t see the need. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of the work of diligence. Until next time remember to keep the faith, stay strong and continue to shine your light in the world.

To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread please log on to BodiceGovernment.com. Goodbye and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].