Six Childish Ways of Thinking That Distort Our Spirituality

Many years ago, I met a man who didn't want his child to grow up eating candy.

So what he did was every time somebody would offer his child a piece of candy, he would tell the child, don't take that. You will never like it. You don't like it. It's terrible. And the child would go, oh, okay. I mean, the child believed him.

Now, I understand what he was trying to do was teach his child not to eat candy. But I often wondered, because this was many, many years ago, that child would be a middle-aged adult now, but I've wondered, what happened when the first time that child finally did eat a piece of candy? Did he say, my dad lied to me? Because I guarantee he didn't say, oh, that is terrible. I hate chocolate. Why would anybody eat that? Okay, that's not what happened. And it made me think about how there's things that happen to us as children that are just childish ways of thinking that we can carry on into adulthood that distorts our view of life.

And I wondered if this child had a distorted view of something because of what his dad had taught him, thinking he was trying to do something good. I mean, the dad had good intentions.

So I started thinking about all the things we do as children. I remember doing as a child I remember my children doing, and I watched my grandchildren do all the time.

And of course, my parents would give me a little lecture, and I gave my kids a little lecture, and now it's fun to watch my daughter give them the same lecture.

But think about some of the things we think as children, and we're going to go through six of them, that affect and distort. If we hold on to those immature ways of looking at things, that actually distorts the way we see the world, it distorts the way we see life, and unfortunately, it distorts our spirituality as we become an adult.

Remember, as a child, hearing something like this, he got a bigger piece than me.

Oh, that's... You know, it's fun to watch... You ever want to watch something interesting happen? Get four children together and give them a candy bar with five pieces, and tell them to break it and share it. I mean, you talk about an intense group of kids. They're hovered around, and whoever... Okay, they're breaking it so... You know, and then one doesn't get broke, just not right. Oh, wait a minute! No, wait a minute! Or they grab it, or someone says, that's not fair! And they're all upset. There's this... Trying to make sure I get my piece.

I get my piece, and really, nobody else deserves a bigger piece.

In fact, if there is a bigger piece, it's mine.

Other than that, everybody has to get the same piece. Same size piece. How about this? She did that on purpose. I bet you, in the last four months, or three months, since my grandkids have been here, I hear that. Ah, I don't have it. He did that on purpose. She did that on purpose.

And then I start asking questions, and then he'll leave the room.

Because I say, do you really want to go where this is going to go? Or do you want to change the way you're looking at this? It's up to you. Well, you did it on purpose. Uh-huh, what did you do? This. Why? Why? Well, yeah, well, he just did it on purpose. No, no. Why did he do it?

Why did he grab it out of your hands? Why grabbed it out of his hands? Okay, so he grabbed it out of you grabbed out of his hands first. Yes. So you're right. He did it on purpose. But then you do it on purpose when you took it for him in the first place? Ah, see, no, we get into down. We go. That's not fair. Oh, man. That's not fair. I mean, it's always said with just anger, you know, that's not fair. And of course, the little lecture is who in the world told you that everything in life was fair? Who told you that lie? What should be fair? It's supposed to be fair. Not much in life actually is fair. But as a child, we want it to be fair. And I understand that to a degree, because you don't understand why certain things happen that aren't fair. You and I ask that question still as adults, and we're going to talk in a minute about what happens if that becomes an overwhelming view of life, a distorted view of life, because it's not always going to be fair. Why is it that one person gets sick and the other person doesn't? I mean, I've actually had people ask me, why is it that my husband or my wife got COVID and was sick for two weeks and I was around them and I didn't get it? Why? Why did God allow that to happen? Because every time you get sickness or you're in a car accident or anything that happens that's out of the ordinary and is causing you distress and pain and trouble, and you say, why? This just isn't fair. Not at this time in my life. Why is this happening? And this one too. You hear this one. Has anybody ever said any of these so far or heard them? Okay, there's a few. Okay. Wait till I get you back. This is the viewpoint that justice isn't enough. We have to get vengeance. In other words, you did something to me and you have to suffer for it. If mom and dad... because they run to mom and dad. And what happens is if mom and dad doesn't give the verdict they want, you see them punch the kid. The other one is they go buy them, right? And I say, hey, I'll tell this about my daughters. They're not here.

One of them loved money and I can't remember which one it was. I mean, just loved money.

And the other one got mad at one of them over something they said. And oh, I remember one of them wet their pants a little bit and they were at the age that was really embarrassing. So the other one got up on the fence and screamed over the entire neighborhood.

My sister, I was out, you know, just peed her pants. And of course now she's just crying and upset. And I came out and I said, well, what do you want? I went down. I mean, she would you want her to get up and say, I'm sorry.

I shouldn't have said that, but he just, she just peed her pants. And he, what do you want me to do? She said, I don't know. It's just, it's just wrong. It's okay. I said, well, I'll tell you what I'll do. Bring me your piggy bank. She brought it to her. I said, now you hurt her reputation, right? Of course, nobody heard it. I mean, I don't know how you heard the reputation of a six-year-old. But anyways, you heard her reputation. Good. You have to, there's, there's a payment for this and it's all the money in your piggy bank. Oh, no, oh, god, you tell everybody I peed my pants.

I don't care. And you know, but there has to, but this whole point is you have to pay for it. Well, in certain times you do. There's retribution and then there's certain times you forgive. If you maintain this attitude for your whole life, which sometimes we do as adults, we have a distorted view of life. If you don't do what I want, I'll hold my breath. I always think that's such an interesting one. Okay. Now, I never had one of my kids say that, but I remember my son one time saying, I don't want to do what you're telling me to do.

We're driving the car and I said, well, you have to. He said, I'll show you. He said, I am not going to put on my seat belt. And my wife and I looked at each other and Kim and I started to laugh. I finally said, I'll wave as you fly through the air and go through the windshield. How's that? I said, because I can't stop you if that happens. I can't. I don't have the ability to stop that force. So I heard it click. I said, I guess that's what will happen because what am I supposed to do? Cave in because you've given this threat? Say, I'll hold. And I've seen children hold their breath.

So they're blue. Unfortunately, none of our kids did that, but I've seen other kids do that. I'm going to force you to do what I want and look, you're hurting me. And then the last one, you're not the boss of me. You hear them say that to each other all the time. You're not the boss of me. And you just use these, the younger ones saying it to the oldest one, right? Firstborns. All the firstborns raise their hand. We are the boss of them.

They just don't get it. Okay? You're not the boss of me. And that's, of course, a hatred of any kind of authority. It's not just the older one. Of course, it's sometimes you're not the boss of me. It goes to the parents or to the teachers or whoever. Now, as children, we watch them do this and we just realize this is part of learning relationships.

This is part of the things they go through. But as adults, here's what happens. Okay? There's actual terms for what happens when we keep those viewpoints and become adults. We keep these jealous viewpoints. One is called magnification. Magnification is when a person just overly reacts to everything around them emotionally. Every time something happens, they have an emotional outburst that's way beyond what's actually happening. So you can have your boss come in one day and he doesn't say hello how you're doing.

He comes in and he says, look, I need this done right away. Please get this done. And he walks out and you think, boy, he was mean. And then you literally believe you work for a tyrant.

You over... we overreact. That's what happens when we keep these six childish viewpoints. We tend to overreact to everything. We tend to believe that people are enemies.

We tend to... every situation we come into, we have an emotional reaction way out of proportion to what's really happening. We also have what's called personalization. We actually believe that everything that's happening to us is on purpose. Now, children think that all the time, right?

You know, you did that on purpose. No, I didn't. Yes, you did. No, I was walking by... the person's walking by and bumps them by accident. No, you did that on purpose. I know you did that on purpose. Now I gotta get you back. Now, personalization literally means that you look at all the events around you and you think they're about you. You know, well, they're just thinking about me. The truth is most people aren't thinking about you. They're really not. They're thinking about themselves and they're thinking you're thinking about them. But most people really aren't targeting you. Now, some people do. I mean, there are people who are just rude and mean and treat each other badly. That's fine. And then there's people that it's actually not you. It's everybody. That's when I started to realize, you know, about the people who cut in line at the grocery store. It's not about me. They're just rude people. If it wasn't me, it would have been somebody else.

So I don't take it personally. It's just a rude person. Other times, people will do things and not even know it. But we take it personally. You know, you can be upset with somebody for cutting in line. I've literally thought, well, that was rude. And I have the person suddenly turn on and say, I'm sorry, I didn't see you there. And then you feel bad because you just thought they were rude. And you say, oh, that's okay. Go ahead. Because you realize you just judged them for something they didn't do. That's what personalization does. We make everything personal. And so what happens when we do that is very difficult to love other people, because we're obsessed with how everybody's treating us. There's polarization. And polarization is when people see everything is black and white. And if you don't agree with me, you have a problem.

When you polarize everything, you're always defensive. You're always ready for a fight. I mean, you are always, you know, your fists aren't clenched, but they're ready to be clenched. Because you're polarized on everything. If you disagree with someone, you could never walk away.

You can never say, well, that's not even important. I don't care. Or sometimes you think, well, that is important, but it would do us no good to have this discussion. So I'm just going to walk away. You can't do that. In a polarized person, everything is about me being right.

At all costs. I mean, there's times it extends, but this kind of polarization viewpoint is about making a stand for right and wrong. It's about me being right. You understand the difference? It's not making a stand for right and wrong. It's about I have to be right.

The one I call the, I can't see the force for the tree syndrome. And that's where we get so obsessed over little things in life. We can't see the bigger picture. Now you think about it. That is common for children, right? Children are caught up in the moment. They don't see a bigger picture. They're just caught up in the moment. They're not thinking about what they have to do tomorrow. They're not thinking about what are we going to have for dinner until it's five minutes before dinner. They're in the moment. And they trust their parents to take care of them.

Sometimes what happens to us, though, is that we get so caught in that we don't see the bigger picture of what God is doing, and we become distressed. We're so stressed out in every moment.

And everything we see in life feeds that negativism until we live in just fear. We live in anxiety.

Overgeneralization. I find this all the time in marriage issues, and it goes back to these childish inventories. We all have one of these, or some of these, or maybe some of us have all of them.

Overgeneralization is, yes, I've come to you because my husband never, never says anything nice to me.

And his response is, well, my wife always puts me down.

And I'm thinking, is that true? So, okay, did she put you down today?

No. But she did yesterday. Okay, so you can't say always. Has he never said anything good to you?

Did he say anything good to you today? Well, he said, he did say as before we came over here, that I look nice. He said, so you can't say he never says anything. And what we do is overgeneralize, which gives us permission to basically treat that person however we want. When you overgeneralize, you could treat that person however you want, because they never do it right, or they always do it wrong.

And then the last one is that because of emotional reasoning, we believe that if I feel something, it's true. Children always think that. If I feel something, it's true. As adults, we can still be, well, if I feel it, it's true. Feeling something doesn't make it true. It just makes it a feeling, but it doesn't mean it's true.

If I tell you I feel that the moon is made out of green cheese, remember there was an old nursery rhyme about the moon being made out of green cheese. If I feel that, there isn't a person in this room that's going to say, oh, that's okay. You're all going to say, maybe you need a vacation, right?

Because my feeling isn't reality. My feeling isn't reality. But children believe their feelings are reality. And I can tell you something. We live in a world that more and more and more reality is determined by feelings, not by reality.

That's what's becoming mainstream in our society, that your feelings determine what truth is and what reality is. That's a scary place to be.

It's interesting, in Western civilization, there's never been, ever, any civilization that believed that your feelings equal reality. There have been in Eastern, like in Hinduism, and some of religions like that, that affected society. There's sort of those beliefs, but that hasn't been in the Western world. So we're entering a whole new world here, that feelings equal reality.

So these are all, you know, we're looking at these, I get these six sort of ways children say things. We hear it all the time. We said it as children, some of them. And we see those in children. We know that's the way they are. Now we're looking at issues that adults have. They're actually based on the same six distorted views of life. It's not fair. Wait till I get you back. Who made you the boss of me? And those same things, those same childish emotions, still control all of us to one degree or another. How do we mature? Okay? How do we mature? How do we grow in maturity? And I'm talking about spiritual maturity. How do we grow in spiritual maturity, so that we are looking at life less and less, so that these distorted sort of childhood beliefs and see life the way God has created it. First of all, you have to go to God and ask Him to help you understand your distorted views. So this is something you have to actually ask God. Help you to understand what distorted views you have that many of them come from. We just didn't grow up in certain ways.

All of us as human beings, and there are certain parts of us I wish didn't grow up so much, are curiosity. You know, I'm still a curious person. That's why I just love playing with kids.

You know, my wife the other day, I was with the grandkids, and what are you doing? I had a steam shovel from the 1930s, and I had it open up, and we were stuffing grass and stuff and down in there. She said, what are you doing? And I said, watch. And we got it already, and I lit a match and shut it, and all of a sudden smoke started pouring out the smokestack. You know, she's like... And the kids are laughing and giggling, and like, wow, this is so cold. I'm thinking, yeah, it is. I looked at her and said, when I was seven years old, I built fires in this little steam shovel, because when my dad was seven years old, he built fires in this steam shovel, and we watched the smoke come out the smokestack, and we thought it was so cool.

She just walked away.

And then the baby came over, decided to stick her hand in it, which I'm glad she wasn't there then, because I was, you know, she would have panicked, so we got the baby away. You know, there's a curiosity children have. So there's certain things I wish we kept we should keep more of, but these distorted viewpoints are really sometimes emotionally debilitating and can keep us from growing spiritually. Secondly, we have to understand the process of growing in spirituality. Now that's a process, yes, it is. And there are the passage we're going to read today and study today actually talks about a process. So let's go to 2 Peter chapter 1. 2 Peter chapter 1.

And verse 1. Simon Peter, a bond servant and apostle of Jesus Christ.

And those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ are two of those. So he's writing it. First and second Peter were not letters written to specific churches. They're called the part of the general epistles because they were written to a general audience. They were written to Christians all over. And here's what he says.

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

Now this is real important. He packs an awful lot into this. Peter tends to be very practical, but there's times he's almost like Paul and that he'll just pack so much into a few verses that we can just expand and expand and expand upon it. If we really read it, we really understand. And when he's saying, he says that grace, now this is the grace of God, the favor of God, and peace can be multiplied in your life. If you want more of God's favor, God's attention given to you, and you want more peace, then he's going to tell you how to do it here. Then it can be multiplied in the knowledge of God. So it starts with the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ.

The more we put our emphasis in our lives on knowledge that is not knowledge of God and Jesus Christ, the less favor and peace we will have. Favor from God and peace comes from God.

So the more we place our focus and our priorities on other things, the less of this we will have.

And then this next statement is really important for us. If you have been baptized, if you receive God's Spirit, if you're thinking about someday being baptized and having God's Spirit, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue. He says here, God has given us through His power everything you need in this life and for the future He's preparing for you. I don't know about you, but it's so easy to go through life feeling like, I don't have enough, I need more. You don't even know what you need. You just somehow need more. And He says, though everything you need God is going to give you, we just have to believe that and live that way. Everything you need in life, now it may not be what I think I need in life, but everything that God says you need in life He's going to give to you. And that especially means spiritually, which is the whole point here. So sometimes we live in this fear, fear of responding to God, fear of really stepping out. You can be baptized for 20 years and never really step out. Or even holding back from baptism out of fear, what if God won't?

No. What if God does? Start thinking not what if God won't, but what will God do?

Because look what it says next here. Through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises.

God promises to do certain things in your life. Now, His requirement is you submit.

His requirement is you give your life to Him. You know, I've seen lots of baptized people receive God's Spirit and still holding back giving their life to God 100%. They're still holding back something. And then we wonder why we're not growing spiritually, why we're not maturing. Because the maturing He's talking about here isn't getting gray hair.

Okay? The maturing He's talking about is maturing in our hearts and minds.

That's what He's talking about. We just showed immature emotional processes and thought processes that lead to... and I used most of those terms are... that's what those terms mean when you look at, you know, a psychological sense. These terms mean this.

I didn't make them up. These are problems people have.

And why do they have them? Because we learned them as children. They're just childishness. We never grew out of... Now, the one I did add was about how we just think feelings as truth.

Because that's just the proclivity of human beings.

A mature person sometimes has to say, I can't trust my feelings.

Talk to Fred Keller every once in a while. Because I'll call Fred, ask him if I do this. He'll tell you this. I'll call Fred every once in a while and say, Fred, you're going to have to talk me back from the ledge.

He'll say, you're upset over something? Yep.

And he'll talk me back from the ledge. Because I know he will.

You've got to be self-aware enough to know, I can't trust this feeling.

Usually he'll say, wow, you have a right to be upset. But you don't have a right to be mad like or do actions. I know, I just need to hear you tell me that. I need someone to back me up. See, if we're self-aware, we actually become aware of this. We actually seek help from God and from other people. We don't try to do it ourselves. We seek help. And here he says, you have promises from God. You have to believe those promises. If you're here, God's called you here and he's made promises to you.

And then the next part of the sentence.

That through these you may be partakers. Here's the greatest promise he gives you. That you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escape that is in the world through lust. When God gives you his spirit, you become a partaker of the divine nature. I want you to just try to wrap your mind around that.

Because you are a partaker. I am a partaker of human nature. And human nature is imperfect and corrupted, right? It's corrupted. Satan's corrupted it. We corrupt each other. We corrupt ourselves. Human nature gets messed up real quick. I don't know how long it takes. Maybe you know, babies born, you think, oh well, they're so innocent. And then it doesn't take long before you think, well, what this kid has a real temper or this kid has a real attitude or this kid is what's happened to my baby? Okay? It's called human nature. It all becomes corrupted. It all becomes corrupted. So everybody in this room, we share, every one of us, we share human nature. Think about that. Now, that's why in some ways we're all different. I find that amazing. And yet in some ways we're all the same. Same nature just developed differently.

But when you receive God's Holy Spirit, you become a partaker of the divine nature, the very mind of God. John talks about that and Paul talks about the mind of Christ. Okay? Comes into you and you are bonded together with God. And in that process, now, he wants you to spiritually mature.

He gives you the knowledge of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ. We've just read this. He gives you his divine power so that you have everything you need for this life and godliness. He gives you exceedingly great promises and god can't lie. The only way that we don't receive the promises of God is we reject the promises of God. And that through this you may become partakers of the divine nature and escape the corruption. In other words, you get eternal life. Now, that's how he introduces this. Now, let me explain how you begin to grow spiritually. He's writing to people, by the way, who are members of the church. Peter's not written to the world. He's not writing a letter to the world. He's writing to people that many of them have either received God's Spirit or they're people that are there that are seeking to someday receive God's Spirit. He's talking to people God's Spirit's working with them because before you receive it, it has to be working with you or you can't get there. I mean, how do we get prepared to receive God's Spirit? It's something we do. No, it's something God does. We just keep submitting to it. Now, we have a part to play, but it's submission, not somehow we do it. We submit to what He's doing. So let's go back now to 2 Peter.

I should have left a marker there. 2 Peter, chapter 1, verse 5. But also for this very reason, this reason that God has done all these things, okay? Remember, we just read the reasons. Here's what God is doing in your life. But also for this very reason, giving all diligence. That's a very interesting term. You have to give something here. You have to give all diligence. In Greek there, that word literally means working. It's like you're giving everything you have. You're holding back nothing. So He says if you fit this category of verses 2 through 4, that God's doing this in your life, that God's called you, that He's going to give you, or He has given you His divine nature. If these things are happening, then you must give everything you have. And by the way, the working there doesn't mean like a single work. It means a process. You continue to work. So this is why I said it's a process. You must participate. Give everything you have to this process. And what is the process? What is the process? Okay, verse 5.

Giving all the diligence, add to your faith virtue. What? We got to add something to faith?

I mean, I have faith. I believe in God. He assumes here, if you've come this far, you have faith.

He assumes you believe that God exists. He assumes that you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He assumes you believe that you need to repent of your sins. He assumes that you have received God's Spirit, or you're headed towards a point where you are going to receive God's Spirit. So understand, he starts with, I know you believe. I know where you are. This is why you're here. And it's not enough to grow spiritually. You have to add... Oh, I know what it is. Now, he's talking about a process. You don't do this in one day. This process is a lifetime. But touring is a... You know, I'm 64 years old. I'll be 65 in April. And I'm not spiritually, totally spiritually mature yet. I'm not there. I haven't arrived yet. I figure you'll know when I arrived, I'll drop over dead. God will say, ah, I finally got him there. Let's let him die before he messes it up. Right? But I'm not there yet. This is a process. And you start with your faith, and you build on it. And he says, what you do is you add to that virtue.

It's interesting that for Peter, just like for Paul, faith isn't static. Faith is a dynamic force of interaction with you and God. And the word virtue here is very interesting because it literally means, in Greek, moral excellence. In other words, he's saying here, you add to this a total dedication to living by God's way. See, if we put more of our daily effort into what we're reading here in 2 Peter, there's a whole lot of other issues in life that would not seem that important. Because if you're doing this, God's going to be directing your steps.

God's going to be directing your steps. And we're going to start dealing with these childish things we brought into adulthood, every one of us had.

And something else is going to happen to us. Moral excellence.

And we're no longer going to be worried about, he got a bigger piece than me.

Or life isn't fair. Those things won't matter a bit. They won't matter at all.

I mean, if the Almighty God, the Creator of the universe, is personally involved in your life, can you tell me what more you want? Well, I'd like the great Almighty God to be personally involved in my life and a new Cadillac. Okay? That would make life perfect. What are you going to add to?

The Almighty God is personally calling you son and daughter. What more do you want? Well, let's see. I would really, really like a bigger house.

Or a nicer boss. I mean, what are you going to add to that? Really, think about it. See, all of a sudden, these childish things go away. It's never going to be fair. Times are going to be hard at times. Life is going to be rough. And life's going to be good. And ups and downs and up and down. And there's only one constants. And this is this. Learning to move forward and grow up spiritually. You have to add moral excellence. When we begin to live God's way in moral excellence, that's more than just keeping the letter of the Ten Commandments. It's actually keeping the spirit of the Ten Commandments. Something changes. You know what changes? You no longer are obsessed—remember, obsession is part of what happens as children. We get obsessed in the moment.

You're no longer so obsessed with your own feelings. You actually are concerned about wanting to understand other people's thoughts, other people's feelings. You're a whole lot less defensive. And you're also willing at times to say, you know, that person is really, really blunt. They just need some forgiveness. But you don't get thrown back and forth by other people. We can get thrown all over the place by people. We just get thrown all over the place by people.

I do it at times. You do it at times. We all get thrown all over because we let people pull us all around. No, you're in on God. And then, instead of being pulled by other people, you start finding yourself wanting to help and serve other people, even the people that are maybe being really stupid at the moment. Something changes. Moral excellence.

We don't do what's good in life because it's comfortable or because it's fair. We do what's good in life because God is good. Oh, moral excellence. We do it because God is good.

Then he goes on. He says, and you add to your virtue knowledge.

We have to know this book. The knowledge there he's talking about isn't a master's degree in, you know, marketing. There's nothing wrong with a master's degree in marketing, but that has nothing to do with 2 Peter. 2 Peter has to do with the knowledge of God.

That means we've got to be in this book. It means we have to be on our knees. It means we have to be involved in Sabbath services. Sabbath services are part of our commandment to grow in our relationship with God. That's why I'm so glad so many of you are connected today. You can't get out, but you're connected. We have to add knowledge. Then he says, you have to add to knowledge self-control. Wait a minute. I thought faith was enough. Now, bit by bit by bit, you think about even in a non-spiritual sense, we will say that what?

That when we look at self-control, we understand that that means being able to give up something in the immediate to have a better gain in the future. In other words, you work real hard in your job so that you can move on to a better job in the future. And there's people who can't do that. They will say, you're just in mature. You don't have self-control. Well, here it says spiritually mature. We have to learn to have self-control. We have to learn to control those urges. We live in a society that says give in to every urge you have. You want to go out on Friday night, drink a lot, pick up somebody? Do it! It's okay. Give in to everything that's on your mind, every feeling you have. Self-control means you don't do that. You have a criteria. That's right. Knowledge comes before this, by the way. Knowledge gives you the criteria by which you make your decisions, and then you learn through the process of life. You know, you can say, well, I need more self-control. I hope by next week I have that mastered. If you're working on self-control, I tell you what, five years from now, let's talk about how well you're doing. Because it takes a war. It's a battle. But just like you add virtue, you add knowledge, you add self-control. You keep adding these things on as you spiritually grow up.

And even then, you can have self-control over something, and 10 years later, you know, I've talked to people, said, I haven't had a drink in 10 years. And the other day I went and said, oh, I can take having a drink. They're alcoholic, they had a drink, and then they ended up drunk. And they said, how did I do that? Well, welcome to the problem of growing up, spiritually growing up. It's a constant growing process. So what are you going to do about it?

Well, let's work on another year. Let's go another year without a drink.

This is what maturing is. He says, and then you add to self-control perseverance.

Perseverance is the ability to not surrender to circumstances, to keep doing what's right, not surrender to circumstances, but keep doing what's right. That is so hard because you can be doing what's right and usually what happens. Somebody else comes along and messes it up.

Or some other problem comes into life and messes it up.

And it's like people said, man, I was really doing good in my Bible study and prayer and this, that, and the other, and COVID came along, and now I'm just so depressed, I just sit. Yeah, welcome to perseverance. We learn to work through this. It is normal to feel some of the things we're feeling. It's normal to go through these kinds of struggles.

It's normal for you to struggle with sin. We all struggle with sin. The point is we struggle. We keep persevering and God wins. Do you understand? God wins. Remember, this is God doing this through the divine nature. It is the divine nature that prods us through this process. And this is the process. This is the hard stuff of Christianity. And yet this is what we have to be doing.

He says to perseverance, godliness. That's an interesting word. It's actually two Greek words, and they didn't quite fit together. They couldn't translate them exactly. It literally means good worship. Godliness. Good worship. In other words, in this process, you become a true worshipper of God.

In this process, you become someone who truly worships God, who appreciates God, who loves God, who wants to be pleased by God, who wants to, I'm sorry, to please God in our actions. You literally have a relationship with God, and you worship Him in Jesus Christ.

There's some piety, maybe the closest word in English, but who says piety today? It doesn't have a meaning. It does mean, by the way, that there's a devotion to religious duties.

In other words, well, worship does include what we've been talking about in terms of faith and moral excellence and knowledge and self-control and perseverance. It doesn't mean being a legalist, but it means you're serious about how you worship God. You're serious about your prayer. You're serious about your Sabbath observance. You're serious about the Holy Days. You're serious about the Passover. You're not just a little over two months away. The Passover. We're serious about that. We worship God. We have good worship. We have this godliness. And you add to godliness brotherly kindness. You know, as we work through this and work through this, we can get so centered in on our relationship with God that we forget that this has to produce something outside ourselves. And so we literally dedicate ourselves every day to being kind in every situation we find. We can be kind to anybody. We're just kind to people. Think of all how it is hard for children sometimes to be kind. Or they can be kind until they're around each other for about 15 minutes. And then they have a hard time being kind.

Because he got a bigger piece than me. She did that on purpose. Think of all the things we do.

It doesn't matter if they get a bigger piece. See, it doesn't matter. We are to be kind. We are to be kind. Because that's the way God is. This is maturity. We look and search to be kind. Because the six childish distortions we talked about all center on emotions and selfishness.

And emotions can't always be trusted. They just can't. It is how you feel. I mean, emotion is necessarily wrong. It just can't be trusted to produce the actions we want. We have to have a standard here. And kindness is one of them. And then the last thing he says is to brotherly kindness love. And the word here is agape. And that's a whole... Someday I did years ago, probably 10 years ago, I did a series of sermons on agape. I think it was seven or eight sermons. I'm going to give them here sometime. I'm going to go back to that. Revisited that. Probably, I know I have things to add. But agape as a word, it's a fascinating word in Greek.

It means the greatest love, basically. And it can be used a whole lot in different ways. One Greek dictionary I have at home has 50 pages of explanations and uses for agape. But what Paul does is something unique. Paul is a philosophical word. You know, brotherly love is people love each other. Agape is something bigger. It's sort of like the greatest love. You know, it's bigger. But the Greeks, it's a very big word. Paul said, let me explain to you what agape is.

It's the love of God. And here's how that translates into human actions and human thoughts. He took that word and gave it basically a unique meaning. Because you find agape even used a couple different ways in the New Testament in Greek. But he used it, let me explain to you. If we take the greatest love, okay, that's God's love. But what does that mean? Let me tell you. He went beyond any Greek philosophy of what agape was to create a whole new concept of what this is. And he says, this is where we go. Notice the brotherly kindness and agape aren't the same thing.

Agape is the very core of God's character. And that's the maturity we're working towards.

We're working towards the time when we have the mature character shown in Jesus Christ, which is the character of God. I don't know. That's a little discouraging in some ways, is it? But remember how he started this? God has given you everything to get there, including He's taken some of His divine nature and He's put it inside your mind. You are connected to God. I mean, this isn't like the Eastern religions that were all somehow God. That's what that means. God and you are separate. You and I, we're not God. And then God takes some of His nature and He takes our human nature and He combines it so that we can obtain what we could not obtain on our own. You and I can't do this on our own. And this makes us mature. And this makes us mature. Or we can stay trapped in all those things we talked about. You know, we can stay trapped in our ideas of that's no fair. We can stay trapped in, where do I get you back? Or if you don't do what I want, I'm going to hold your breath. You can do that forever. You have a problem with God, He doesn't breathe. So I guarantee you He'll outlast you. See, we can keep doing those things. Oh, we don't literally hold our breath, but we try to control everybody. And if I can't control every situation, I'm filled with anxiety. I'm filled with anger and angst because I can't control everything. Oh, welcome to being human. You and I control almost nothing. We can give control over to God. And God says, okay, here's what I want you to do. I want you to march on Washington. Yeah. Oh, here's what I want you to do. I want you to get all the churches together and go tear down the local abortion clinic. No. What do you want me to do then? Give me control, and I'm going to make you sort of like me.

Oh, wow! I can't go there. And His answer is, no, you can't. But you can follow and I'll take you there. And, and, and notice what Peter says, add to this, this, add to this, this. And you have to do this diligently, which is a working process. Every day this is what Christianity is. Every day it's what it's supposed to be as we become the children of God. 2 Peter 1. Let's go back now.

2 Peter is the only passage I'm going to read today. Every once in a while I'd just like to take one passage and tear it up a little bit. And you know what? I could have talked for two more hours on 2 Peter on this passage. What does this mean? 2 Peter 1. And now let's go to verse 8.

He ends with, and to brotherly kindness agape. For if these things are yours, if these things, what? What's he talking about? Faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, guideliness, brotherly kindness, agape. If these things are yours, this is what God is developing you into. So they actually become you. You become virtue, moral excellence. You become faith.

You become these things. You become agape, the character of God. He says, for if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things, what are we looking for? So much of our lives we're in angst, looking for something, for a solution to the problems. There are no solutions to the human problems. This is it. Become a child of God. That's the only answer. We want other solutions. There are none. He says, for he who lacks these things is short-sighted. Remember, he's talking to people in the church. He's talking about people in the world who are short-sighted. It's not who he's talking to. For he who lacks these things is short-sighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. We forget you and I were absolutely washed before God. We were forgiven. We forget those things don't matter. We forget that we can receive forgiveness every day for our sins. Why? Because we are to be growing into becoming his child. We have faith. We add to that. We add to that. We add to that. God adds to it as we submit and we go through this work process, this diligence, this working process that'll last the rest of your life. The rest of your life is to be this working process.

So that you're growing and growing and growing until someday, he says, you're starting to get it. You're finally starting to think like me.

You're starting to stop being a child and you're starting to be a spiritually mature adult.

He says, even to blindness, he's forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call on election sure. He's back to that diligence. Keep working in this process.

For if you do these things, you will never stumble. You're going to make it because God's going to do these things in you, by the way. I mean, here I talked about you have to receive the divine nature to do this. So it's like, oh, I can't do these things. No, you can't. But you can, if you submit to God. For so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly and with the everlasting kingdom, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He says, now when Christ returns, you're going to be there. You're going to be there because you grew up. But you can't grow up as a human being, spiritually grew up. It is impossible. A human being with human nature, without the divine nature given to them, can't grow up.

We stay children. The only way we can grow up is by having God give us His Spirit. And when He does, He will complete this process in us, assuming, and that we literally will become His children.