4 C's and 5 D's

UV 4233/10000 4 C’s and 5 D’s Therefore, believers, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you ( be sure that your behaviour reflects and confirms yours relationship with God); for by doing these things ( actively developing these virtues), you will never stumble ( in your spiritual growth and will live a life that leads others away from sin); 2 Peter 1 v 10 Spiritual maturity implies that we should reflect Christ in our character, conduct, communication and choices. These four C’s are vital or of utmost importance in confirming and witnessing that we, indeed have a personal relationship with God. If these qualities or spiritual fruit are not reflected in practical and visible ways in our lives, we are akin to the blind or shortsighted person, the immature child who is not growing emotionally and intellectually as well as physically. Paul emphasizes that though we are saved by faith and grace, it requires diligence or the highest level of attention, priority and effort to ensure that we are growing, maturing, moving away from our past sinful selves. Diligence implies that we should spare no effort to accomplish the will and calling of the Lord in our lives. The daily choices we make should be in line or alignment with the overall purpose or call on our lives. To ensure the four C’s mentioned above are truly in conformity with the image of Christ in which we are now being re-created or transformed degree by degree, day by day, we need five D’s to be in place: Devotion to the Lord, Dedication to the calling, Discipline in daily habits, Determination to do what we have decided to do in line with our calling, Diligence in studying the word, the world, the work to ensure we are walking in line with the will of God as it is revealed progressively to us. The five D’s are the aspect of the teaching that we need to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. It implies that we should not be presumptuous about eternal life or irresponsible such that we live any way we like and make no changes for the better, for growth, for maturity, for living the new life in Christ responding to the call or direction of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our partner in so “working out our salvation.” This is the progressive aspect of eternal or abundant life. We need to make every effort, Paul wrote, to not just diligently appropriate the divine promises and blessings contained in the promises of the Lord but also to develop moral excellence, spiritual knowledge ( knowledge of the power of God, the love of God, the will of God, the peace of God, the word of God), control of self by the Holy Spirit both to restrain us from negatives or evil and stimulate us to good, unselfish love, thinking and seeking the best for others the Lord has placed in our lives. These qualities are the evidence of our faith, the proof that our faith is not useless, barren, unproductive.