My Corner Online

 

2 Peter 1:3-4, Granted!

 

9/5/2015 I found this fun resource for a Daily Bible Promise. I learned that there is someone who has counted 3573 promises in the Bible and others as much as 7,000, so it is not really possible too count them, but there are certainly a lot of them.

As always, when I get into the Bible study while creating my graphic, God always seems to lead me down my own path, but that is okay! It is all about spending time with God. I spent one and a half (1 1/2) hours doing just the underlining and all the text around as I meditated on God's Word. It's crazy, huh? On just two verses! It always amazes me each time.

While looking at the words, I was drawn into the word "granted" and my mind kept saying "but not to be taken for granted." How true is that! Do I take God for granted? Do I thank Him enough? Do I underestimate the value of His gift to me by not living thankful and serving enough? Probably not! So thank God for his forgiving me for not living thankful and serving enough and for making me enough through His forgiveness! Ah! Love that!

Then I started to type "God gives" and thought for a moment and realized that "gives" might not be an actual synonym to "granted," so I looked it up! Granted is defined as "agrees to give."! Ohhhhhh! That put a whole new light on things! Of course! God agrees to give us what we need for eternal life and godly life, but we first must do something. Yep. We must first receive His faith! Oh, yeah! And then from the verse, we receive by answering His "call" and seeking "knowledge of Him." It's amazing how when I am thinking the words from the verses pop right out at me and fall together.

Then the word "escape" kept popping out at me. Why? Because I love to escape from the real world. Sometimes I can go river wallowing (as my readers know) and escape while enjoying God's creation. Sometimes I can escape the world by watching t.v. and forgetting about real life problems. With the new adult Bible coloring trend, people escape real world by sitting and coloring and letting their mind go.

But that is not the "escape" in this verse. We can escape the corruption and the sinful desires of this world through His forgiveness! Yep! We fail and and then we escape the punishment for those failures through His forgiveness. Ahh! Love that!

Hubby and I had a discussion about how "scripture interprets scripture." The verse says God gives us "all things that pertain to life and godliness." We want to take this verbatim as all "life," both eternal in heaven and earthly, but the verse does not really say if it is all, one, or the other. Using scripture to interpret scripture, John 16:33 reminds us that "In this world you will have trouble." God never promises us in the Bible we will always have enough food to eat on this earth, but rather says we will have to work "by the sweat of our brow" and there will be "thorns and thistles." Genesis 3:17-19 There are many other verses that relate. The Bible does say that we will endure troubles, and oh does it ever feel like I am constantly confronted with troubles!

So with scripture interpreting scripture, we can see that God "agrees to give" us all we need for eternal "life" and "godliness." What a great privilege to be able to pray for our earthly needs and wants! We don't need to pray for our "eternal life" and skills to be "godly" because God promises that through faith He agrees to grant these things to us. I love standing on His promises and feeling loved.

There more from my study, but you can read it in the graphic if you want and take time to soak it in and do your own Bible study.

However, I must say, as many times as I have said in my life I enjoy "life application" Bible studies, and as many times as I try to make it about "me" and what God is saying to me, since I have been doing these Digital Bible Journaling pages, God keeps pointing out to me that it is NOT about me at all and all about Him! I knew that it was about Him and to keep the focus on Him and I never thought it wrong to try to apply it to my life, but now I am wondering as I hear God speaking to me through these studies.

These verses aren't anything about me being able to feel positive and confident as I go about my daily life because God gives me everything I need. These verses are about what God has given me, and about the cross and faith and forgiveness, the very root theme of the Bible, and about worshiping Him.