Confirm Your Calling and Election

Daily Reading:  2 Peter 1

Scripture Focus: Be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1.10-11)

Devotional Thought: Second Peter begins on a high note of confidence: “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness” (v. 3, NIV).  And, since we have all these things at our disposal, then let’s add them to our faith.  Goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love - the ingredients to a successful spiritual life - have been given to us; we need only to appropriate them (verses 5-7, NIV).  That is why we must take the initiative to make what is certain sure: “Confirm your calling and election” (v. 10).

"By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2.8-9).  Our salvation is all by God’s grace.  But, we – through faith and obedience -  become willing participants in that salvation.  If we are warned against falling, then surely that possibility exists.  And if it exists, it is not due to God’s lack but our own, for “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9.8). 

Thanks be to God that we have the assurance of salvation!  All of heaven’s power is at work in our lives.  Let us then live with boldness and confidence, knowing that our efforts will be richly rewarded – "an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!”

Prayer: "Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul.  Thank you, Lord, for making me whole.  Thank you, Lord, for giving to me thy great salvation so full and free."  Amen.  (Seth and Bessie Sykes)

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 58.1-8

1 Do you indeed decree what is right, you gods? Do you judge the children of man uprightly?

2 No, in your hearts you devise wrongs; your hands deal out violence on earth.

3 The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray from birth, speaking lies.

4 They have venom like the venom of a serpent, like the deaf adder that stops its ear,

5 so that it does not hear the voice of charmers or of the cunning enchanter.

6 O God, break the teeth in their mouths; tear out the fangs of the young lions, O LORD!

7 Let them vanish like water that runs away; when he aims his arrows, let them be blunted.

8 Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime, like the stillborn child who never sees the sun.