Infinite Fellowship Ministries

Walking In The Spirit – Make Your Call & Election Sure: Sermon By Rev. Sarah Muendo

Simon Peter, a servant and apostle (special messenger) of Jesus Christ, to those who have received (obtained an equal privilege of) like precious faith with ourselves in and through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. May grace (God’s favor) and peace (which is perfect well-being, all necessary good, all spiritual prosperity, and freedom from fears and agitating passions and moral conflicts) be multiplied to you in [the full, personal, precise, and correct] knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

For His divine power has bestowed upon us all things that [are requisite and suited] to life and godliness, through the [full, personal] knowledge of Him Who called us by and to His own glory and excellence (virtue). By means of these He has bestowed on us His precious and exceedingly 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.

For this very reason, adding your diligence [to the divine promises], employ every effort in exercising your faith to develop virtue (excellence, resolution, Christian energy), and in [exercising] virtue [develop] knowledge (intelligence), and in [exercising] knowledge [develop] self-control, and in [exercising] self-control [develop] steadfastness (patience, endurance), and in [exercising] steadfastness [develop] godliness (piety), and in [exercising] godliness [develop] brotherly affection, and in [exercising] brotherly affection [develop] Christian love.

For as these qualities are yours and increasingly abound in you, they will keep [you] from being idle or unfruitful unto the [full personal] knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One). For whoever lacks these qualities is blind, [spiritually] shortsighted, seeing only what is near to him, and has become oblivious [to the fact] that he was cleansed from his old sins. Because of this, brethren, be all the more solicitous and eager to make sure (to ratify, to strengthen, to make steadfast) your calling and election; for if you do this, you will never stumble or fall.

2 Peter 1:1-10 (AMPC)

God’s divine power has equipped us with everything that we need for this life and after.

We need to go back to the place of checking the prophetic words about us as individuals and also about us as a community. This includes the ones that have come to pass because they will increase our faith. We need to go back to the truths that God has revealed in His Word and in Rhema.

Your belief in God will colour your perceptions. You will begin to start believing in things about God that are not true.

You become a partaker of the divine nature of God through faith.

God’s word is going to keep you through every experience and circumstance. His promises create boundaries for the things we can and cannot do.

Lust is attempting to function outside who God says you are. You find yourself getting entangled in jealousy and envy because of lust.

God’s promises are important because they give you foresight into who God says you are so that you don’t loose taste as a believer.

God’s word gives you foresight in warning you in regards to the challenges to come.

The way God speaks to each one of us is very different.

God’s word is living and transformative. It’s impactful giving us the capacity to face everything in this life.

For this very reason, adding your diligence [to the divine promises], employ every effort in exercising your faith to develop virtue (excellence, resolution, Christian energy), and in [exercising] virtue [develop] knowledge (intelligence)…

2 Peter 1:5 (AMPC)

How many of us have been diligent to go back to God’s word to seek Him and tarry until we understand?

Excellent resolution and Christian energy is what will enable us to shine like stars. Christian energy is what enables people to see the Christ in us.

God gives us energy in the fruit of the Spirit and expressing it. Christian energy is the one that causes us as believers to shine in a depraved and fallen world.

The knowledge that God requires from us is us loving God with our minds and seeking to go deeper in His word.

My intelligence needs to be infused with Him. That I may think as He does.

God’s opinion of anything is truth and anything short of that is deception.

I can trust that everything God wants to come to pass will come to pass.

Anything that you don’t master you become a slave of.

Self-control is asking ourselves if it’s a good thing or if it is within the will of God. Self-control is the place where we look at the will of God rather than convenience. Self-control will keep you from submitting to your carnal temper.

Self-control will hold you back even when you are tempted to run forward for something you are justified to do. Just like Christ and the temptations He faced.

The endurance that is needed is the staying power to be steadfast in His promises even when things are hard. That patience to wait on God can only be developed within His presence.

Often times, God will develop different disciplines within you at the same time and within a cycle.

And in [exercising] knowledge [develop] self-control, and in [exercising] self-control [develop] steadfastness (patience, endurance), and in [exercising] steadfastness [develop] godliness (piety)…

2 Peter 1:6 (AMPC)

We are supposed to holy as He is holy and in the process become more like God. In developing Godliness, yes must be yes and no is no. Your Christianity cannot be summed up in the things you do rather than in who you are.

Brotherly affection cannot come without the other disciplines/virtues. Brotherly affection causes you to esteem other people higher than yourself.

Christian love is the only thing that we shall be known by and identified through by the world. God’s end game is always fruit. We will be known by our fruit.

If we claim to believe in God and to have faith, do we trust In God?

What perceptions are we holding towards each other as believers? Fruit is not in the tangible things. It’s in how we treat people and those around us.

Material wealth is not equal to the fruit of a believer. There has to be more than that. Money cannot transform your heart. Only God is able to change us and transform our hearts and minds. Money is the lowest form of dominion.

The most important time to follow Christ is when we lack and to rejoice in those times.

We cannot be believers who follow Christ out of convenience. We need to move away from the convenience of the flesh which is obvious.

Now the doings (practices) of the flesh are clear (obvious): they are immorality, impurity, indecency, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger (ill temper), selfishness, divisions (dissensions), party spirit (factions, sects with peculiar opinions, heresies), envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you beforehand, just as I did previously, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:19-21 (AMPC)

Fruit is about the inner things like developing character in God. It’s more about what we do rather than what we shouldn’t do.

Fruit is about overcoming temptation and saying no to sin.

Fruit is growing from one level of God consciousness to another. The things that prick God’s hearts also pricks yours.

Fruit is partnering with God in and out of season whether you feel like it or not.

God has a way of testing your heart especially when He has given you the things you have asked for. The things God has given us will become a witness and a test and increase responsibility towards the things of God. Our excuses are going to end the more God is going to bless us.

The things we are trusting God for are our responsibility.

On the day following, when they had come away from Bethany, He was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree [covered] with leaves, He went to see if He could find any [fruit] on it [for in the fig tree the fruit appears at the same time as the leaves]. But when He came up to it, He found nothing but leaves, for the fig season had not yet come.

And He said to it, No one ever again shall eat fruit from you. And His disciples were listening [to what He said]. And they came to Jerusalem. And He went into the temple [area, the porches and courts] and began to drive out those who sold and bought in the temple area, and He overturned the [four-footed] tables of the money changers and the seats of those who dealt in doves; and He would not permit anyone to carry any household equipment through the temple enclosure [thus making the temple area a short-cut traffic lane].

And He taught and said to them, Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have turned it into a den of robbers. And the chief priests and the scribes heard [of this] and kept seeking some way to destroy Him, for they feared Him, because the entire multitude was struck with astonishment at His teaching. And when evening came on, He and His disciples, as accustomed, went out of the city.

In the morning, when they were passing along, they noticed that the fig tree was withered [completely] away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said to Him, Master, look! The fig tree which You doomed has withered away!

And Jesus, replying, said to them, Have faith in God [constantly]. Truly I tell you, whoever says to this mountain, Be lifted up and thrown into the sea! and does not doubt at all in his heart but believes that what he says will take place, it will be done for him. For this reason I am telling you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe (trust and be confident) that it is granted to you, and you will [get it]. And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him and let it drop (leave it, let it go), in order that your Father Who is in heaven may also forgive you your [own] failings and shortcomings and let them drop.

Mark 11:12-25 (AMPC)

Christ would have been gratifying His own desires if He had turned stones into bread. But the fig tree’s problem was that the One who had created it had come and it was not able to produce fruit. The fig tree must do what the Master desires which is to produce fruit in season and out of season.

And so it is with us. He has come many times to us. Have we been found fruitful or are we lacking in production? Are we empty yet God has spoken and given us life? When God begins to call us back for what He has put in us, may we be found to be sound and fruitful rather than full of excuses.

Fruit is growing in the knowledge of God because as you know Him then you continue to grow.

Fruit is more than been a nice person. It’s about been entrusted with the Kingdom agenda.

Your life before physical death is a tithe. A tenth of eternity. How you live on earth will determine how we live in heaven. This life is also like a first fruit for eternity.

The fruit will also enable us to know how to pray. The dead things in our lives are transformed in God.

When we are so caught up in winning in life, we can easily forget to be holy.

2 Peter 1:10 defines Christian living. Revelation gives us divine power to provide everything that we need to exist. God’s promises will not become a reality until we are able to develop character and Christian disciplines.