In our bible study on a Wednesday night, we've been looking at First and Second Peter. It's been rather good, and I really enjoy the casual way we are reading through and sharing with each other. Last week we hit 2 Peter, and verses 5 to 9 really jumped out at me.

In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But those who fail to develop in this way are short-sighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins.

I often think that I just need to love people. I believe in Jesus, and he's told me to love, so I'm going to do it. The trouble is, it's actually hard to love people and I, more often than not, find myself failing.

Reading through this passage in 2 Peter made me realize that actually, there is a process to getting to love people. I need to take baby steps before I'll be able to get up to the stage of loving people. I need to have goodness, knowledge, perseverance, self control, affection for those people and then finally love.

I know that it's a long road (that's what life is all about though right? A long process of getting us ready for heaven. Making us more and more like Jesus.) but I think I can have more chance of actually making it if I consider getting a handle on the small steps, rather than trying to leap to the end goal too quickly. Lord God, please give me the patience to follow the steps for your glory.