After 2Peter3:1 makes the appeal for “wholesome thinking”, for us to appreciate the reality that what we think/our thought life forms the foundation of who/what we are, 2Peter3:3-8 tells us that the enemies of God will have at their very core of deceitful weaponry, strategies that attack the TRUTHS of everything being CREATED “by God’s Word & the Power of God’s Sovereignty -> 2Peter3:3-7, ”Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation. "But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's Word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same WORD the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.”. Truth is that if we accept to think anything less than what God says as TRUE, then we have at best a mediocre appreciation for WHO God is. And this is where the enemies of God make their first strike in the minds & hearts of all men & women! This is why these verses in 2 Peter are emphasizing the TRUTHS of God CREATING EVERYTHING from nothing...exactly as recorded in Genesis 1...fully formed plants, trees, insects, fish, animals, reptiles...., & fully formed adult men & women. Sure, God could’ve brought life about any way He chose..., BUT HE CHOSE to create men and women as fully formed adults in HIS IMAGE! When we accept anything less than God’s “JOURNAL” of CREATION in Genesis1, our thinking/thoughts of GOD are far from WHOLEsome about GOD! And if our ideas/thinking/thoughts about GOD veer away from HIS AWESOME WHOLENESS, then our reverence for GOD is mediocre compared to what HE DESERVES! And our FAITH is based on thinking & thoughts about GOD that make our FAITH puny compared to what it should be if we were to KNOW GOD in HIS WHOLENESS! And we fall far short of having our lives changed by The Glory of Christ being offered to us by The Gospel of Christ! 2Peter3:17 has a “therefore” for us, since all these things about GOD are TRUTHS Peter says, ”Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. But grow in the GRACE and KNOWLEDGE of our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ. To HIM be GLORY both now and forever! Amen.” Peter is urging us to not only seek to know GOD’s TRUTHS, but to know them in such a way that we can also shore them up in our hearts & minds when they come under the attack Peter warns us about! A good book that talks about the truths of science and the TRUE facts of life and science, that they indeed align with God’s Journal of Creation is “The Evolution if a Creationist”,by Dr.Jobe Martin.You can find the book and other resources about this at http://www.evolutionofacreationist.com/ Dear Lord God, because my thoughts and ideas about YOU and all YOU have forever done and will do are puny, my faith is puny and far from where I need to be compared to what it should be if I were in FULL AWE of WHO YOU ARE & ALL THAT YOU HAVE DONE .Help me to grow in my appreciation for Your Truths and all that You desire for Your Creation to reveal to me about YOU and YOUR LOVE for me.

The Apostle Peter makes a statement in 2 Peter 3:1 that I have blown past a lot. Partly because it is short enough that reading “at full speed” I miss it’s significance, and partly because of it’s significance being a challenge for me! This verse says, ”Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking.” This “wholesome thinking thing” must be pretty important for Peter to say this is the motivation for his 2 letters to us! This is a discipline that the Holy Spirit has weighed so heavy on Peter’s own heart, the significance of how we think and what we think..., that THE Holy Spirit motivates Peter to write about what goes on in our thought life! The wholesomeness of our thought life has direct influence on what we are at the very core of who we are! We are very good at covering up a lot of what goes on in our thought life. It’s much like a dark secret place that we store things we would rather no one know we have, and then live like we don’t have these dark things hidden in our secret dark places. Peter is addressing these places and calling us to rid ourselves of all the dark secret thought places in our life....and clean them up permanently with wholesome thinking! To be wholesome is to be conducive to moral or general well-being! The only true source of “moral or general well-being” lessons are given to us by our Father in Heaven through His Word and through the Life of Christ! I need to ask The Lord more for His help in going through my thought closets and asking Him to help me clean them out...& fill them up with “wholesome thinking”! Dear Lord...I ask for Your help in drawing me to Your Word for the discernment to know the areas of my thoughts that are not wholesome by Your definition...and for Your Spirit to help me clean out everything that does not please You...and then replace these areas in my thought closets with the thinking that changes my whole life from the inside out to be more of a blessing to You and to those around me.

If our FAITH is based on anything less than God’s Word AND The Fulfillment of God’s Word through Jesus Christ, then our FAITH will be based on false teachings that “introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord...Many will follow their shameful ways and bring the way of TRUTH into disrepute...with stories they have made up” -> 2Peter2:1-3. Any time we begin down a path that veers from the ABSOLUTE TRUTH of God’s Word, we are bringing TRUTH into disrepute (losing respect for TRUTH in our lives!). If we were to bring the TRUTH of gravity into disrepute/lose respect for gravity, we would place our life in great danger any time we walked close to the edge of a cliff! When we bring God’s TRUTHS into disrepute in our lives, the perils we face are much greater because there are Eternal consequences that we face when God’s TRUTHS are not revered in our mind/heart/life. This is why Peter tells us about his eyewitness account of God Himself identifying Jesus as The Messiah, and that “we have the Word of the prophets made more certain” because of Jesus fulfilling every prophecy given in the Bible about Jesus (over 300!). Then Peter tells us that because we have the word of the prophets/God’s Word we “will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place....”(2Peter1:19-21). A light shining in a dark place means that God’s Word can be The Light that guides us everyday, keeping us from the eternal dangers of the darkness of the world we live in, as the Light brings The Gospel of Christ to bear on every aspect of our life. I had a teacher once say “how do you expect to learn anything if you don’t show up for class AND then pay attention”? Peter is telling us the same thing! We must open up God’s Word and then seek to hear and understand/pay attention to what God says through the prophets (1Peter1:21,”For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but they spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”). This is the first step in knowing the loving hand of God’s Spirit in our lives-HIS great love and concern for our every day life - by opening up The Bible and seeking to learn and understand/pay attention to what God says in His Word. Dear Lord...I pray that I PAY ATTENTION to these lessons of 2Peter...and that I have the HELP of Your Word and Your Spirit being The Light that reveals the dangers of the darkness and gives me guidance today, and every day…may my heart/mind/life be soft to receive the lessons YOU have for me in YOUR WORD and by YOUR SPIRIT…as I live in the days that YOU give me…

Peter says something in 2Peter1:15 that is a real “kick in the pants” for me! He says,”And I will make every effort that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things.”. Peter is talking about making every effort relative to the things he lists in 2Peter1:5-8, ”For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and  to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our LORD Jesus Christ.”. Peter says that the core motivation of his life is related to what those that he comes into contact with will remember about him when he leaves. Just as a rock dropped into water creates ripples in the water around it’s point of entry, so our lives create ripples in the lives of people we come in contact with-and this is what Peter is talking about. Our lives create a rippling effect in the lives of people around us...and those closest to us have the most significant ripple effects from our lives! These words of Peter’s are even more convicting for me when I read the last few words that give these things the context of “knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ”! These things Peter lists are for naught unless the context is “knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ”... Peter is speaking from an Eternal Perspective, and his concern for the Eternal Purposes of life...the Eternality Intersections Peter talks about in my previous journal entry. The decisions and actions and words we make a part of our every day leave ripples in peoples lives around us.... Soaking in these verses begs me to look at the ripples I am leaving....and change big time how I am living, acting, talking, & treating those around me...and ask the question, “is the core of these things based on the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” ->am I seeking to increasingly know more about Christ’s Mercy and His Wisdom and His Grace and have HIS Mercies and Grace(s) become more and more a part of my life and words...so that the ripples I leave in other peoples lives are at their very core from His Presence/Influence in my life? Dear Lord...I know the answers to these questions are not what they should be...I pray for Your Spirit to weigh heavy on my heart/mind/life, so that I may increasingly become more of a person the leaves Your Ripples in the lives of those I love, and those I connect with every day.

Everyone ever born has a wonder of spiritual things! Eternality is the subject that has always been at the core of all belief systems, whether you believe in Eternal Life or not...Eternality has always been at the core of what we base life on and our “philosophies” about life, whether we acknowledge it or not. There is a SIGNIFICANT reason that we all have this “wonder”! This is one of the many things God has knit into our being so that we will have every opportunity to know the TRUTHS about the Eternality of life and become aware of the things that have infected the world with the corruption that seeks to rob us of spending Eternity with God in Heaven/“perish”! (2Peter1:3-4 “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.”) God has given everyone, everything we need to have so that no one will miss the opportunity to know TRUTHS about life, especially the Eternality of life and how God desires that not a single person would die and spend Eternity in Hell (2Peter3:9”The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”). This is THE WHY that our common enemy, the devil and his minions, seek to influence our hearts and minds as we deal with Eternality of Life intersections of thought and behavior in our life. These intersections become increasingly significant, because the decisions we make at them determine where we eventually end up! It is at these life intersections that we make all sorts of large and/or small decisions where we choose to be guided by the TRUTHS that God has given us for our own GOOD, or choose to accept ideas & philosophies about life that veer us away from Absolute TRUTHS and lead us away from the only TRUE FAITH that is the ONLY paradigm for life that lead to the Eternal Securities that GOD’S awesome love so desperately desires for us to have. These intersections are where we make the choices about how we think; who&what we love; how we love; how we treat others; & most importantly what we rely on as TRUE KNOWLEDGE and BASIS FOR LIVING & LIFE! So,after Peter says the above, he tells us how to be careful about what happens at these INTERSECTIONS we all face->Peter says “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”. Peter is in essence saying that the ways we choose to respond to GOD’S TRUTHS will determine whether or not we have lives that truly have the “Grace and peace” that GOD desperately wants us to have (1Peter1:1-2. ”To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received faith as precious as ours: Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God (TRUTHS) and of Jesus our Lord.”). Peter is telling us that whether we acknowledge it or not, what we choose to do with GOD’S TRUTHS is indicated by how we think; who&what we love; how we love; how we treat others; & most importantly what we rely on as TRUE KNOWLEDGE/BASIS FOR LIVING & LIFE! We make all sorts of little and larger decisions every day that in some way are the true indicators of the intersection decisions we are making as we “traffic through” every day we live. These will either keep us on the path that leads to GOD’S Grace and Peace through Christ..., or veer us away from the Grace and Peace that only Christ is THE SOURCE of! Dear Lord...I am so many times in every day making choices at these intersections in my life that are robbing me of Your Grace & Peace! I pray for this lesson in 2Peter1:1-8 to bear on my heart and mind as I “traffic through” today...and all my tomorrows!