So don’t lose a minute in building on
what you’ve been given, complementing your basic
faith with good character, spiritual
understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm
friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the
others. With these qualities active and
growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass
without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can’t see what’s
right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the
books. 2 Peter 1:5 - 9 (TMSG)
By now you
may have memorized this text; if not, don’t fret – it’s better to internalize the message than
be able to repeat some words without understanding. Memorizing passages may impress people, but living the passage pleases
God.
Which is the
point of reverent wonder, or godliness.
The word “godliness”
(the most common translation) is a compound word meaning “good worship”. A similar, nearly identical word in Scripture
is “piety”. Unfortunately the only time
you hear this word is in a derogatory sense, when it’s used to describe someone
full of himself, acting
religious while everyone knows it’s false.
But, in the best sense, godliness…
…describes
an awareness of God in all of life—a lifestyle that exemplifies Christ and is
empowered by him…[1]
Praise is the
word I associate most with “reverent wonder” – and the most precious form of
praise is that which comes as a sacrifice, out of the darkness of life’s tough
times.
Joni
Eareckson Tada lives a praise-filled life in a wheelchair. She is a well-known Christian speaker and
singer who suffered a broken neck through a tragic diving accident in her teens
which made her a paraplegic.
She wrote:
A sacrifice of praise will always cost you something. It will be a
difficult thing to do. It requires trading in our pride, our anger, and most
valued of all, our human logic. We will be compelled to voice our words of
praise firmly and precisely, even as our logic screams that God has no idea
what he’s doing. Most of the verses written about praise in God’s Word were
penned by men and women who faced crushing heartaches, injustice, treachery,
slander, and scores of other intolerable situations.[2]
For You, Today…
What is it in your life that seems most unfair? Can you praise?
What has crushed you worse than anything else? Can you praise?
What is depressing you now? Can you praise?
Let me finish today with reverent wonder offered by
the Apostle Paul:
Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.
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