Make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they will keep you from being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. The person who lacks these things is blind and shortsighted and has forgotten the cleansing from his past sins. Therefore, brothers, make every effort to confirm your calling and election, because if you do these things you will never stumble. For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly supplied to you. Therefore I will always remind you about these things, even though you know them and are established in the truth you have. I consider it right, as long as I am in this bodily tent, to wake you up with a reminder, knowing that I will soon lay aside my tent, as our Lord Jesus Christ has also shown me. 2 Peter 1:5-14
My words…
Prayer for me
Lord, I have faith that You exist and created me and everything I see, hear, and touch. I have faith that You are alive and actively working in this world. I can sit here and praise You every day. I can go to church and write my prayers every week. Year after year. And before I know it, I have the faith equivalent of iron-poor blood. Then I read these words of Peter and realize that I need a faith supplement – doses of faith-building traits. These supplements are powerful – powerful enough to awaken a drowsy faith. Some are hard to swallow, like goodness. What if I take a double dose of self-control and skip goodness? No? I didn’t think so. I pray for Your Spirit to teach me goodness. It’s not that I choose to do bad, I just choose not to do good. And love? I am deficient in love. If I truly loved others, I would be heart-broken over their decisions to not serve You. Help me to heed Peter’s wake up call and not roll over and hit the snooze button.
Forgive me
Forgive me when I neglect to take my supplements and grow comfortable in being useless and unfruitful in the knowledge of Jesus. I am sorry that I have been blind and shortsighted, forgetting (or taking for granted) the freedom I enjoy because of the cleansing of my past sins. If I lived my life with my spiritual eyes wide open, I wouldn’t need a wake-up call at all.
Thank You
Thank You, Holy Trinity, for enduring the hardship, sacrifice, and pain to give me a perfect example of how to live. Jesus lived a life of goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, brotherly kindness, and love. His life screams, “Here! Do it this way!” You provide an eternal kingdom for Your children to dwell richly. The very least I can do is enter that kingdom with a well-supplemented faith.
