Faith to Love
“For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins. Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 1:5-11)
This week, I started reading 2 Peter…Having just finished 1 Peter, it seemed like a pretty logical next step. Anyway, the whole issue of self-control was something that really hit me in reading 1 Peter. So, this morning, as I turned to 2 Peter, I was once again reminded of our call to be self-controlled.
I included the above passage because it has some really important things for us to consider and put into practice in our daily lives. If we have faith, there are things we are to “add” to it. It kind of sounds like Peter is putting together a recipe. I love to cook, so that’s where my mind goes when he talks about adding stuff. Anyway, to our faith, we are to add “goodness”, “knowledge”, “self-control”, “perseverance”, “godliness”, “kindness”, and “love”.
So, I wonder what our lives would look like if we made a consistent conscience effort to add these things (goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, kindness, and love) to our faith? And, I think we have to add all of the ingredients. When you make cookies, if you leave out an ingredient your cookies are incomplete and will probably not taste quite right. That’s how it is with our faith…If were missing one of these ingredients…our faith might just be a bit imbalanced. You know, I’ve met a lot of Christians that have a lot of knowledge, but they totally lack kindness and love. So, it’s sort of like chocolate-chip cookies with out the chocolate-chips…a bit disappointing.
I don’t know about you, but I think I’m going to do all I can to add these things to my faith…It will be a little experiment…I wonder what the results will be?