Category: Leadership Perspectives

Give Diligence to Development! 

2 Peter 1:1-8

This letter is from Simon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ. I am writing to you who share the same precious faith we have. This faith was given to you because of the justice and fairness of Jesus Christ, our God and Savior. 

² May God give you more and more grace and peace as you grow in your knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord.³ By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. 

⁴ And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires. 

⁵ In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, ⁶ and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, ⁷ and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. 

⁸ The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹ But those who fail to develop in this way are shortsighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins.

A good leader empowers people with the necessary authority and tools to accomplish what he asks them to do. This is what God has done for us. He has called us to do a work, and He has given us all that we need in order to complete the work!

Second Peter is a letter that speaks to the empowerment of God’s people. Peter writes to show us that God has given us everything that we need to live a godly life. Through this we see that God will give us more grace as we grow in knowledge of Jesus! We participate with God by grabbing hold of His promises. We cooperate with God by developing ourselves. We then exercise the grace and growth in Jesus by being diligent in our service to Him! 

This process is present in this challenging growth season. By being diligent as a team we are laying hold of God’s promises. In return God grants us grace, which is His unmerited favor and strength to accomplish what is laying before us. 

Jesus detailed this whole process in Matthew 13:31-32.

³¹ Here is another illustration Jesus used: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed planted in a field. ³² It is the smallest of all seeds, but it becomes the largest of garden plants; it grows into a tree, and birds come and make nests in its branches.”

In order for a seed to accomplish its purpose it must go through a process. It must be sowed (released). It takes faith on our part to release ourselves and what is in our hand, but we are the seed that God is sowing. Have faith. Don’t be married to tradition. Launch out into the deep. Release the gifts that are inside of you.

After release the seed is planted (buried)! This again is a step of faith. Being planted often requires as much faith as being released because in the planting season we can experience negative emotions, including loneliness. Have faith in the process. Then the seed will begin to sprout and grow, which brings its own challenges.  

Notice that the seed contained everything needed to produce growth and fruit. It just had to be developed. Within you is everything you need to accomplish what God has called you to do. But you must remain diligent in developing yourself to be both fruitful and helpful! 

Look again at what Peter said…

Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, ⁶ and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, ⁷ and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. 

⁸ The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹ But those who fail to develop in this way are shortsighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins.

In this challenging growth season be diligent in development!