Urgency

​In his book Younger Next Year cowritten with Chris Crowley, Dr. Henry Lodge states that “Over 50% of all illness and injuries in the last third of your life can be eliminated by changing your lifestyle in the way we suggest.”[1]   The major way they suggest is to exercise forty-five minutes a day six days a week. Four of those workouts are aerobic and two involve weight training.  The reason most people grow weak and more susceptible to disease is directly attributed to their failure to exercise!

​I have noticed at the age of 52 that my lung capacity, stamina and upper body strength have all decreased.  Traveling makes it especially problematic to exercise and it is easy to make excuses that I’m just too tired to work out after a heavy day of travel with multiple time zone changes.  No more!  I resolve whenever possible to put in at least 30 minutes a day of exercise six days a week.  Already I am noticing the difference and it is encouraging! 
 
Meditation
2 Peter 1:10—Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. (ESV)
 
Just as physical exercise is critical to staying in good health, so spiritual exercise is critical to preventing moral decay.  The Apostle Peter gives us a sure formula for spiritual exercise.   His advice must be executed every day of the week—there is no day off!  In fact, the English word we read as diligent in the verse above comes nowhere close to communicating what Peter expresses in the Greek as  which means “to be in a hurry, to give diligence, to exert effort.  The word stresses the urgency of his plea that they should determine to live for God.” [2]  So what is Peter’s plan?  What are we to be urgent about?  The answer is found in the preceding verses 5-7 of chapter one.  We must be urgent to:

• Supplement our faith in God with goodness
• Strengthen our goodness with knowledge
• Buffer our knowledge with self-control
• Enhance our self-control with endurance
• Season endurance with godliness
• Apply to godliness care for each other
• Fulfill caring for each other with love.  

​In verse eight, Peter tells us that these qualities keep us from “being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Just as not exercising physically may lead to an early death, so not practicing with urgency these qualities can cost us our calling.  We fall morally when we fail to exercise spiritually.  “Therefore I will always remind you about these things, even though you know them and are established in the truth you have” (2 Pe.1:12). 
 
Inspiration
God must be the very focal point of our lives if we wish to have godly character and conduct.  This point cannot be overemphasized.  Too many of us focus on the outward structure of character and conduct without taking time to build the inward foundation of devotion to God.—Jerry Bridges inThe Pursuit of Godliness
 
©2011 Daniel York  ARR. Reveration is the weekly devotional ministry of First Cause.  If you would like to receive these devotionals go to www.firstcause.org and click on the “Click here to receive weekly devotionals” box.  Unlimited permission to copy this devotional without altering text or profiteering is allowed subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.      
 
Ecclesiastes 12:10-The Teacher sought to find delightful sayings and to accurately write words of truth.  (Holman CSB)
 
 


[1]Chris Crowley & Henry S. Lodge, M.D. in Younger Next Year, (New York, 2007), 7.
[2]Michael Green in the Second Epistle General of Peter and the General Epistle of Jude.  Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, (London, 1970).