2 John 8 (NLT) “Watch out that you do not lose what we have worked so hard to achieve. Be diligent so that you receive your full reward.”
Sometimes in life, we work so hard for something only to have it slip away. If you have ever owned a business or worked hard for a promotion at work, you know that once you obtain what you were reaching for you must continue working hard to keep it. During COVID many businesses went under, not for lack of hard work but because of the circumstances at that time. When you get a promotion at work there is always someone waiting in line behind you, waiting for you to retire, to move on or even waiting for you to fail. In order to maintain your position or even grow you must put forth the effort to acheive and maintain your goal. Knowledge obtained from God’s word should be our goal, not just obtaining that knowledge but applying it in our lives each and every day. Throughout the Epistles there are warnings to be on guard for false teachers, it was prevalent then and I suspect it is more so today. Often times they will wrap a falsehood up in a small particle of truth which may be why people are led away. The person being fed the information may hear something they recognize as being part of God’s inspired word, but they don’t recognize the falsehood, so they accept it as truth. That is why it is so important to continuously grow in His word, to increase your understanding and know the truth that Jesus led you to. Whether the false teachings are accidental or purposeful on the part of the speaker, it is up to us to be diligent in our pursuit of His truth. I have been known to ask someone “Where can I find that in the scriptures?” I do not do this to put them on the spot but because I admit that I am continuously learning and sometimes I read something without really thinking about what I’m reading, so I may miss the message. So, if what they are saying is true, I gain knowledge, and if what they are saying is false, I am able to protect what I “have worked so hard to achieve”. Knowledge does not come to us instantly when we accept Christ, we must search for it, chase after it, grab hold of it like the precious life-giving word that it is. Until next time may God bless you and bring peace to your heart.