Begin with two minutes of stillness and silence before God.

I have caught myself in a pretty predictable pattern recently. Right after Brooke and I got married, I realized I had too many random tools stuck in different places, so I bought a nice toolbox to keep all the most useful things handy. After a few years plus home ownership, I have collected all sorts of tools, of course, all of them are necessary. Now I keep all of my tools in our garage at home. A couple of years ago, I bought a big shelf to keep everything organized. There is a shelf for fasteners, a shelf for saws, and a shelf for random odds and ends. The shelf worked great until, somehow, things ended up scattered all over the place. So, a few months back I cleaned out the garage and created a whole corner to keep everything straight and together. The tool shelf, yard tools, all the things. It’s great. I love to have all my things right there because I know exactly where to go to get what I need at any moment. But this morning, I found a rubber mallet not in my toolbox, not on the shelf, not even in the corner. There it was just sitting on the stair railing. So here we go again...

It is one thing to have the right tools. It is a completely different matter to be able to find and use the right tools when needed.

In our text today, Peter encourages believers to “make every effort” (1:5) to use and build up the spiritual resources Christ makes available to us when we put our faith in Him. In fact, the list of resources Peter identified in verses 5-7 is incredibly like what Paul described as the fruit of the Spirit (see Gal. 5:22-23). Faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. According to Peter, if these qualities are yours (which they are if you belong to Christ) and are increasing in you (which they do the more you pursue life in Christ), they keep you from being useless or unfruitful.

You have what you need in Christ if you use it properly.

Take two minutes to reflect in silence.

Reflections:

• What does it mean to you as a believer that Christ has given you everything required for life and godliness?
  
• What can you do today to use one or more of your “spiritual tools?”
• Pray and ask God to show you opportunities to use your spiritual tools to serve Him and others.