Christian Virtues that I need to develop and perfect

Last Sunday night I had the blessed privilige to hear Francis Chan at Cornerstone preach from 2 Peter 1:5-8 and I was just blown away by what he had to say about the character of Christianity. The quailities that he mentioned in 2 Peter 1:5-7 are goodess, knowledge, self-control, perserverence, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love. These are fruits of the Spirit that we must develop if we want to be like Christ. In fact developing these wonderful qualities are the path to knowing Christ Himself because in verse 8 he says that possesing these qualities in increasing measure will keep us from being ineffective and unproductive in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Oftentimes, it is so that we wish that God would take our trials away and change them but the challenge that Francis had was that God would change US, not necessarily our circumstances.

In BSM we are interpreting James 1:2-4 and what we learned in class is that God actually uses trials in order to develop our perserverence and from that to make our faith complete and lacking in nothing. This coincides perfectly with what Francis was saying and I pray that God would give me joy in the trials that I have to face, namely autism. I don't want to be rid of the weaknesses of my autism anymore because God glorifies Himself in the midst of weakness as the thorn in the flesh proves. His grace is sufficient for me. And now imagine that if I can actually make godly friends, get married, and minister WITH all of my current weaknessess that I have (and this includes my deficient social skills and attention span) then God would get so much more praise from my life then if He had healed my weaknesses and then did all of these things.

I will admit that I have not fully developed these character quaiities and I do not believe that anyone ever can here on earth. I will be honest I have gossiped over the last few days and I realize that I was wrong in doing so. And I pray that God will forgive me and restore to me the joy of my salvation. Wow God is just doing great things through me and I want to be a part of what He is doing in my life. May I ask God that my autism would be seen as a gift and not a weakness because God has molded me in a very special way: the image of His son, like He planned for from His eternal realm. Like Solomon wrote at the end of his life in Ecclesiastes that the true meaning of life can only be found in God, may we all realize that real life comes from a relationship with Jesus Christ and through that with the Father. That is the very definition of eternal life that Jesus defined in John 17:3 and died to give us.

Signing off with optimism of God's work in the future
Kevin Chu