Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. Most Christians want to have a confident and compelling walk with the Lord, but simply knowing God's Word is not enough to create such a walk. We must remember daily the truth He has spoken through His Word, abiding in Christ and keeping in step with the Spirit in the day-to-day attitudes and decisions of our lives. How encouraging that as we make every effort to follow after Him, God is completing the work in us. He's teaching us to be Kingdom People. Let's listen to this message from 2 Peter 1, 10-11 titled Kingdom People. This is part 2 of the message, which was first preached on June 18, 2023 at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem.
But you get it, right? Be all the more diligent. Invest yourself in this walk with God. In other words, He's calling us to a passionate pursuit of the One who made us, redeemed us and reconciled us. And it begins with remembering.
It begins with remembering. Be all the more diligent to confirm your calling of election, to confirm here, nurture, what is He saying here? Nurture and bring to outward expression the reality, the divine reality within it. That doesn't mean I am God, but it does mean this. Christ is in me.
The Spirit of Christ is in me. I am a new creation. I'm not just forgiven. I am forgiven. Wonderful news, but I'm not just forgiven. I am new creation. That is a divine reality within me. Do you understand that?
You can't remember that if you don't first know that. Sam mentioned Romans 6. He says Rich had us memorize a few verses. I had the church memorize all of Romans 6. And we should do it again.
Because it is who we are in Christ. It is a powerful passage. I used 23 sermons to go through Romans chapter 6.
That was way back in 2010 I think. Really, really good passage. So do you understand who you are in Christ? Nurture and bring to outward expression the divine reality within. Because think of it this way. Do you know what is true of view inside? If there's nothing there, if there's nothing there, you can't bring it out.
Right? Otherwise if you keep trying to bring it out and there's nothing there, you're creating a vacuum that will eventually collapse in on itself. And I've seen people trying to live the Christian life that way. First of all, the reality has to be there. That you know that you are indeed in Christ. That you are forgiven by Christ. That you have His righteousness.
That you have been justified by God and you are reconciled to God. Do you know that about yourself? Remember that. Live as people who remember.
And then nurture and bring that to outward expression. By the way, this confirm is in the middle voice. It's in the middle voice so it means you are confirming it to yourself. There is nothing in this that indicates that my faith is based upon my efforts.
There's nothing in this about that. You are confirming to yourself you are growing more and more confident in your walk because the reality that is in there is becoming more and more evident on the outside. As you nurture and bring it to outward expression. Be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. Your calling and election. He's referring here to your status in Christ. One of my favorite verses that uses this terminology is Colossians 3.12, as the elect of God, holy and beloved. What does it mean that I am elect of God? It means I am holy and beloved. That's how God sees me. That's my status before God. I am holy and beloved.
Confirm that calling and election. And what it is, it is God's perspective. If you are in Christ and I am in Christ, it is God's perspective of you and me from his infinite transcendent perspective. God is not bound by time. It blows our minds to try to even comprehend that. But all that ever was or could have been or will be or is, all of it, God knows it right here, right now. He's not bound by past, present, and future. For him, it's right here. All of it.
Completely, completely, absolutely. Because time exists in God. Try to think of that.
You'll get a headache from it. Right? But this is God's perspective. And Paul lays it out in Romans chapter 8.
Remember that? Those whom he foreknew, he predestined. Those he called, he justified, and he glorified.
So think about it even now. How does God view Rich Powell right now? How does God view Susan Yudzi right now? How does God view Ken Heater right now? Because you are in Christ, God sees you as glorified. Seated with Christ. Glorified. From his perspective, who sees everything right here, right now, perfectly, absolutely, completely, his transcendent perspective, I am glorified with Christ from God's perspective.
Mind-blowing. But that's the God we worship and serve. I need to remember that.
And I need to live as one who remembers. See, the truth of the matter is, which is so important to understand in this text, when he talks about confirming your calling and election. Am I justified before God?
Yes. It means I am accepted. I, a sinful rebel, a self-preeminent rebel, I have now been accepted before infinitely holy God, based on the righteousness of Jesus Christ because I have received his righteousness.
That's justification. I'm accepted. And because I'm accepted before holy God, I am reconciled to holy God. I am regenerated in Christ. I am a new creation.
I am a part of the new humanity. And listen, the justification, the reconciliation, the regeneration, those are not states of which you and I go in and out of. God does this. Our confidence is in him, not our performance.
That's why this is a confident walk. So, you might ask, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. All this is true. So, what difference, what difference does our diligent discipline make if this is true?
Well, I'm glad you asked. Because Peter answers that here in the text. And all I'm doing is just following the text, right? Because the word of God sets the agenda, right?
Okay, so here we go. Therefore, be all, verse 10, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election for, here it is, here's the answer to your question you just asked. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall.
And then there's another one too, which is verse 11, but we're not there yet, so don't skip ahead, all right? If you practice these qualities, you will never fall. Notice that there are qualities, they're not duties, they're not performances, they're qualities. If you practice these qualities, in other words, he's speaking of regular exercise.
Let's admit one thing now though, because the apostle Paul did and I'm sure Peter did too. On this side of eternity, under the sun, you and I will never arrive. You and I will never get to the point where we have climbed the steps and we're just parked at the top of the steps. It's a continual keep walking the steps process.
But it requires regular exercise. Again, there's no coasting on cruise control. There's no drifting. If you're drifting, you're moving away from God. But if you have the regular exercise in this, you are growing stronger in the faith, in becoming like Christ. You are becoming more stable in your walk of faith, in your confidence in Christ, in your confidence before your fellow man. You're becoming more confident.
You're growing in this confident walk. If you practice these qualities, you're playing high school basketball and the coach made us practice free throws. After every practice, you had to shoot a hundred free throws.
And I had it down to a system, I was almost superstitious about it. Three dribbles, one, two, three. And you work on percentage. You want to increase that percentage.
You know what? Here's how it happened. The more you practiced it, what better you got. The more confident you're shot, the more accurate your shot, the more effective your shot.
It's like those who are in situations where they work in crises situations or the military where you have to do quick action, make split second decisions. You have to rely on your training because you're training muscle memory. Christians, listen to me. Are you training your spiritual muscle memory? It requires continual exercise. No drifting, no drifting. There's no cruise control coasting in this. There's no slumbering in your Christian walk.
Regular exercise. If you practice these qualities, you will never fall. Interesting terminology he uses here. The word fall, the idea to stumble, to stumble away or to err or even to fail. Technically it means to suffer a reverse. If you are diligent in exercising these qualities, you will not suffer a reverse. You've been listening to Rich Powell, the lead pastor at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The Delight in Grace mission is to help you know that God designed you to realize your highest good and your deepest satisfaction in Him, the one who is infinitely good. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 a.m.
