How Can I Live A Godly Life?

That question seems like it requires a very long and detailed response. And while we can spend the rest of eternity exploring the depths of what it means to be godly, I believe we need a simple starting point; one that I believe has been provided for us. God has told us how we can have everything we need to live a godly life.

2 Peter 1:3 - "His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness."

I'm going to put it in a way that will probably make you say: "well, duh!" In order to find out how to live godly, we need to learn more about the One we are trying to imitate: God. It sounds so simple doesn't it? And to an extent, it is simple, but it's not easy. It's simple to understand, but not easy to do.

God has given us a complete guide to godly living in His holy, inerrant, divinely inspired Word. The problem we run into is not necessarily that it's too hard to live a godly life. The problem is that we aren't willing to put in the work of drawing from the infinite, inexhaustible well of the knowledge of God.

We are content with a Sunday sermon and maybe a verse or two from a 'daily devotional' to get us by. We believe that God has given us scholars and preachers to do the hard work for us. But that's like saying that because your personal trainer is in great shape and teaches you how to be in great shape, you don't need to do any of the work yourself. Or even believing that one workout per week will be enough to prepare you to win a marathon; or even finish one for that matter.

Yet, we daily show up to run the race of faith with little to no preparation. We believe that our sheer desire to live right is enough, or that Sunday school answers will extinguish the flaming darts of the evil one.

I love that verse in 2 Peter because it begins with the power of God. It's so interesting to me that God has chosen - in His divine wisdom - to powerfully grant us everything we need through the knowledge of Him. We tend to think that God through His power should just rain down godliness on us. What we miss is the beautiful truth that God wants us to actually get to know Him.

It seems to me that the main purpose of God making us holy is so that we would spend the time getting to know Him. He absolutely wants us to be godly, but first He wants us.

God knows that if we spend enough time pursuing a greater knowledge of Him that our lives will change. If we would take our attention off of our favorite preacher and place it on Him and His Word, we will begin to know Him more and in turn become more like Him.

I spent part of an afternoon writing this blog post, but God spent thousands of years composting, through human authors, the wisdom and power that we find in His Word. So maybe, just maybe, there's more for us there than what a 30 minute sermon every week can give.

Of course, the discussion of how to live a godly life goes so much deeper than this. The point of this blog post however, is not to tell you how to be godly, but to point you to God Himself so that you can learn from Him.

As a matter of fact, if you open your Bible to the rest of that passage in 2 Peter chapter 1, you will begin to see specific ways that God wants us to live. So, instead of going back to Facebook after reading this, how about you pick up the powerful, life changing Word of God and spend some time with the one who has "called us to His own glory and excellence?"