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A higher call?
Larry Chkoreff
Another way I have put it is, Grow or Die!
However, we have a choice, we can cooperate or
chose not to cooperate.
Most of us realize the moral corruption that is
in our cultures, all of them, no matter where in the world we are living.
Jesus wants us to escape this moral corruption,
not by avoiding contact with it in isolation, but by living above it, through
the power of the Holy Spirit.
We have all seen too many Christians who are
living by the moral code of the world.
God admonishes us in the following Scriptures in
2 Peter 1:3-11 to give all diligence to His path.
He calls us to virtue (moral excellence), to
knowledge (intelligence), to temperance (self control, so that we may apply the
knowledge), to patience (remaining constant through difficult afflictions), to
godliness (our character being conformed to His), to brotherly kindness
(philanthropic acts), and finally love (agape, unconditional love).
Obviously, God is not talking about adding some
sort of performance-oriented holiness to our lives.
He said in John 15 that if we do not abide in Him
and bear fruit that whatever comes will be counted as "nothing."
These attributes are all the fruit of the Holy
Spirit, but we have a choice to welcome them or to reject them.
Notice in verse 3, that God calls us to this path
by means of His own glory and virtue.
He exposes Himself to us, we sense His holiness,
His love, and His greatness, and we are drawn to Him.
We want more of what we have seen and sensed. We
have a desire to become as Him to the extent humanly possible.
When I first met the Lord in 1979, He gave me a
rare physical sense experience of actually smelling his holiness.
To me it smelled like sun dried white bed sheets
blowing in the warm blue California sky.
My mother used to hang out sheets in our back
yard to dry, and I can recall the absolute clean smell they would give out.
That of course was back in 1948 prior to smog and
pollution.
My reaction to that was a desire to escape the
corruption of the world and lay down all of my corrupt moral ethics. It has
been a path, not a perfect one, but an upward one.
As we walk this path of life, allowing God to add
virtue, knowledge, self-control, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness and
love to our character, we see that God has given us a positive and a negative
promise.
On the negative side (verse 8) He says that if we fail to walk this path that we will be
barren and unfruitful, even unfruitful in the knowledge of God, or in our
relationship with Him.
In verse 9 He says that we will be self-deceived,
blind, short-sided and will even become oblivious to the fact that we have been
cleansed from our sins.
This person will actually think that they are
walking in fellowship with God but will be deceived. Boy oh boy, what a warning
for all of us!
"Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord,
Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and
done many wonders in Your name?’" (Matthew 7:22).
On the positive side, the promises are
1. That we will partake of
the divine nature.
2. That God will supply all
of our needs for life (temporal) and godliness (our character) (verse 3).
3. That we will be rich in
the knowledge of God (our real time intimacy with Him).
4. That we will never fall (verse 10). "Never fall" means to me, to always be in the
center of God’s program for my life, and to always have my needs supplied by
His Word.
It means to know that no matter what affliction is occurring,
that everything is all right.
The final promise is that we will have an
abundant entry into the Kingdom of God.
I believe that last item refers to walking in the
Kingdom here on earth, now, and not having to wait until our body dies.
.
Remember Moses did not make it to the promise land on this side of eternity, but he finally made it.
.
Remember Moses did not make it to the promise land on this side of eternity, but he finally made it.
His problem was that he misrepresented God’s
character to God’s people.
I believe that God uses an incentive program. Not
only do we want to never fall, but also, we desire to be close to Him and to
please Him.
Those incentives are what should give us the
diligence spoken of in this Scripture.
Do you enjoy it when you encounter a believer
that "smells" like Jesus?
Would you rather see covetousness or charity?
Would you rather see love or selfishness?
Do you enjoy it when a believer sees you as an
object to meet their need, or as someone to whom they may help in some way?
How many people do you encounter in church who
actually have your best interest as the priority in their life?
How do you feel when you see a Christian
"bending the truth?"
How do you feel when you see a Christian who
makes excuses for his/her worldly ethics?
Mark Rutland says that we excuse our behaviors by
claiming a higher ethic, like "The end justifies the means,"
or by a lower ethic like "My boss did not know that I left ten minutes
early, and he has plenty of business anyway."
Our culture is not supposed to have godly ethics,
they don’t know any better. However, I believe that we will be judged, both
here and in eternity, for our ethics.
We have been given the path of life in order to
escape the corrupt ethics of the world and to live in the virtue of God
Himself.
Do you think that we will impact the world by
utilizing their own ethics?
One of our sons had a job at a local retail store
just before he married. His fellow employees made fun of him for being a moral
person and for not having sex before marriage.
He just continued to respond with love, patience,
and all of the above attributes. He endured much persecution for one full year.
Finally, one day, one of these employees ran to
him in a panic telling him that his life and his marriage were in a mess, and
that he had seen God in my son.
He asked my son to counsel him and to pray for
him. He stated that he had accepted Jesus as his Lord because of my son’s godly
ethics.
We have a higher call.
2 Peter 1:3-11 - "3 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,
"4 By means of these He has bestowed on us His
precious and exceeding great promises, so that through them you may escape by
flight from the moral decay (rottenness and corruption) that is in the world
because of covetousness, lust and greed, and become sharers, partakers of the
divine nature (Amplified).
"5 But also for this very reason, giving all
diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge,
"6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control
perseverance, to perseverance godliness,
"7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly
kindness love.
"8 For if these things are yours and abound, you
will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
"9 For he who lacks these things is shortsighted,
even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.
"10 Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to
make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never
stumble;
"11 for so an entrance will be supplied to you
abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ."
Larry Chkoreff Is the author of books
such as Grow or Die
Carol Chkoreff and Larry
Chkoreff never intended to start a ministry like ISOB. We were teaching 8th
grade Sunday School at Mt Paran Central and North since 1983. At the same time
we were overcoming very challenging circumstances in our lives. I ended up
writing about our overcoming through God’s direction and path for these 8th
graders. As we were ministering at Mount Paran Safehouse (downtown Atlanta) in
1994-1996, we were asked to develop discipleship lessons for the homeless
people. As we did that, the Lord spoke an unexpected promise to us through
Psalms 68:11. “The Lord gave the word, great was the host (army) of those that
published it.” We had no idea what that meant. But now we do. Writers write,
printers print, but publishers distribute. The great host of publishers that we
see publishing our books, freely of course, “blows our minds!” These
“publishers” are mostly simple pastors in Third World and persecuted nations.
Increase became exponential.
From 2005 to 2011 we have developed 15 books that are being distributed in more
than 43 nations, in thousands of churches. God has utilized these inner healing
and discipleship books to revolutionize tens of thousands of lives. The result
has included thousands of salvations, hundreds of new churches planted, and
many lives transformed by the Word of God by these simple but profound books.
We really do not even try to count or keep track any longer, the reports come
in too fast!
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