Take Your Supplements

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Summary

Pastor Safrit walks through 2 Peter 1:5-11, emphasizing the importance of supplementing one's faith with virtues such as knowledge, self-control, and love. He highlights that these qualities are essential for spiritual growth and effectiveness in the Christian life, particularly in the face of challenges. The practical application encourages listeners, especially graduates, to intentionally add these traits to their lives to flourish in their faith and positively impact those around them.

Welcome and Housekeeping
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Thank you, men.
Thank you for that song and singing out. If you will, open your Bibles to 2 Peter 1 is where we'll be at today.
And a little context to the message this morning. It is specifically to our graduates, but it's for everyone as well. And if you have a child that wants to be dismissed, they can be dismissed this time. I forgot to say that.
But I've been praying about what the Lord to go for this message today. We just finished our sermon series on the last seven sayings of Jesus.
And the Lord just continued to put this passage of scripture on my heart. I actually preached this message last year at my former church. That's why the website at the bottom of your notes says that.
It's my fault. I make mistakes, believe it or not. And so that's on there, but you can change that.
But as I was preparing for this message this past week on Wednesday night for our small groups, for our youth that me and my wife are teaching right now, we actually talked about this verse that was in our curriculum.
And so it was just another affirmation from the Lord that this is where we should be at.
And so I want to give you just a little bit of history before we read scripture. The history of the book of Peter and these two books of Peter were of his writing was the church was under immense amount of persecution. The church was being basically annihilated.
The goal of Nero at this time of writing was his goal was to eradicate the church of Jesus Christ. That was his whole purpose of goal.
And so Peter, as he writes this, is writing that with this mindset. If you've got your Bible there, we won't stand for sake of standing. But in the very first verses here, 1 Peter chapter 1, it says, Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. When he would have wrote those words down, he was literally saying,
my name, I'm ready to die. Because anyone who identified as a Christian at this time, Nero's goal was to kill them.
And so he's writing this and he's saying this and he's saying, listen, I've obtained the faith and I'm standing as righteousness as God and I'm telling you to be in knowledge of Jesus Christ. And so he's writing his death wish out.
I want you to imagine this in our culture today. If someone were to stand up and say, in your school or in your place of work, if you identify as a Christian, you will no longer work here and your chances of surviving will be slim to none.
And you were to write a letter or an email or a text message and you were to attach everyone at the school or everyone at work and you were to say, James Saifert is who I am. I'm a follower of Jesus. And hit send.
This is what Peter was doing. He was writing this letter to the church and he was saying, I know we're in immense amount of persecution, but there's a greater reward here for us. In our text of scripture today,
chapter 1, verses 5 through 11, he begins to get this point where he says this, For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and with virtue knowledge and with knowledge self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness with
godliness and godliness with brother affection and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are in you and are increasing, they will keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he's blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fail.
For in this way, you will be richly provided for an interest into an eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you for this day.
Thank you for what you've done for us. I thank you for leading me back to this passage to remind me again this week and these last couple of weeks of where we need to add some things to our life or maybe we've been lacking some things in our life.
So I pray, Lord, that you would be with our graduates as they go out here in a couple of weeks and begin their journey of their next chapter and you would continue to be with them as a church
whole, that we would take these thoughts and we would apply them to our life. Lord, we love you. In your name we pray. Amen.
He makes a statement here at the very beginning of verse 5. For this reason, make every effort to supplement your faith.
Taking our supplements is what I have entitled The Message and I want to define the term supplements a little bit.
Supplements are things that were added to something else in order to complete it or enhance it.
It's our working definition this morning. So the question is, how many of us in here take vitamins in the morning? Okay, a lot of hands go up. How many of us here take maybe medicine to regulate our blood pressure or even a heart medication?
Even more hands went up. Okay, so we're taking things. We're supplementing our body because the doctor says, hey, this area of your life, you've maybe got some iron deficiency or your blood pressure is not right.
My wife takes blood pressure every morning and so my job is to make sure her pill container is lined up and it's got everything in it because if she doesn't take her blood pressure medicine,
she comes on with a headache and that headache turns into a bad attitude and I'm normally the recipient of that bad attitude.
And so I want to make sure her supplements are there for her to be in a good attitude, right? And so we have these supplements. We have these things that we're adding to our life because we're lacking it. And we are allowing this to help ourselves physically.
And so Paul is saying here, listen, there's some things that we need to supplement to our faith. We need to add to our faith. And he says that in verse 12, he says this, therefore, I intend always to remind you of these qualities
so that you will know them and are established in your truth.
And if you look down at verse 15, as I was studying through this full passage, I'm not going to preach this verse, but it says this, and I will make every effort so that after my departure, you may be able to recall these things. Peter is saying here,
one day I'm going to die. One day I'm not going to be here.
And I'm hoping that by me reminding you now and that other people that come after me will continue to remind you that you are going to need these things in our life. And I'm standing here today, 2,000 years later, and I'm reaffirming what Peter is saying.
Peter, I'm reminding myself and I'm reminding others that we need these things in our life. Verse 10, it says, if you practice these qualities, you'll never fail.
I was studying as I was reminding myself of this thought here of the death of John Denver. Anybody know who John Denver is? Okay. Famous song.
Anybody want to call out that famous song? Country Roads, right? In 1997, John Denver, who an avid flyer, loved planes. He loved flying. He got into the cockpit of a smaller, almost-sistant type of plane.
And he did his pre-check, and they said everything was, they thought he did everything right. And while they were beginning to determine what happened to that plane,
it said that there was something that was wrong with the plane. He was in the process of switching.
There was two gas tanks behind his seat, and there was a little lever that switched from gas tank one to gas tank two. They said in his moment of that plane going down, he was switching that tank. And most people thought, well, maybe he just didn't get that tank switched over.
And that was the reason of the reason why he didn't. He didn't switch it over fast enough, and he lost gas, and he lost the ability to fly. But upon further research, they said that in his pre-check, he failed to ever fill the second tank.
And even if he would have switched from tank one to tank two, he would have still died that day. And I began to think, how often do we fail to do some of those basic checks in our life?
How often do we have salvation in tank one, but we have this secondary tank that Paul says you need to supplement your salvation with, and yet we fail to fill that tank up.
And trials and tribulations come in our life, and we overlook those qualities that we need, and therefore we fail in life because we don't have these supplemental traits that Peter said are so important for us to have.
The Christian Life Begins
The Christian life begins with being born again by Jesus Christ, trusting in him and understanding that he came into this world and died for us and took his sins upon us on that cross as we looked at for
the last seven weeks where he said, those statements of Father forgive them and there's been redemption to us, it begins there. But it doesn't just end there.
There is a whole lifelong journey afterwards where we begin to supplement, and we add these faith growths into our life. And Peter lays out seven small little qualities.
I've got a book on my bookshelf. It's Little Things That Make a Big Difference. And it's like 600 pages long, and I've not read the whole thing. I'm like, how can a book called Little Things That Make a Big Difference be so long? Right?
It's one of those like bathroom reader books, like Reader Digest almost.
And so, but it's this little thing of, the little things in life that over time we overlook that make a huge difference in our life. But ultimately, it's from the little things that big things grow.
If you're a farmer in here, you understand you don't plant the size of what you're going to produce. You plant a smaller version of that.
You plant a small seed, a small mustard seed, and it grows into a massive tree that birds are able to inhabit and create life inside of that.
And so, it's the little things in our life that oftentimes get overlooked that we need to say, what can I add to my life this morning? And so, we'll begin the first thought here of the first one that Peter lays out for us.
The first thing we should add to our life after salvation is virtue.
And I'm going to give a statement after that, and then maybe a warning as well that you may want to write down.
The first one is virtue. It's virtue. Having courage to decide what is right. Having courage to decide what is right.
And oftentimes, virtue is something that we lack because courage to do right or courage to do the right thing can often hinder us in our life.
And one of the things that can hinder us, the warning here, is our passions will oftentimes hinder us in what we need to do in life. My son's in baseball practice right now, and he's learning to play, and he's now in coach pitch.
He's out of coach pitch, and he's into this where the kids begin to pitch. And he's tried to get his hand in a little bit of pitching. He's not the greatest.
He's a better hitter and everything else. And oftentimes, we'll be out there pitching, and we'll be practicing, and he'll have his net, and he'll throw some really good strikes.
And then he'll get to the game time, and the coach will put him in. And his passion overworks him a little bit, and he begins to throw a little erratic, right?
And you may have been there where all of a sudden the passion to do right is there, but the effort behind it is not necessarily there. And virtue is a commitment to have the courage to take the stand for what is right, having resolve.
My mind went to the book of Daniel, Daniel 1, verse 8. And it says this, Daniel resolved that he would not defy himself with the king's food and with the wine that he drank. He resolved himself to do what was right.
And this is what virtue is. It is having the courage to do what is right. And oftentimes in our life, oftentimes as we go through this journey of life, we go through moments in time where our virtue is compromised.
Our virtue is put to the test, you could say. And Peter is saying here, as you go through life, remember to add virtue.
It's difficult, but remember to add it. And this only happens when we rely on God's power and his purpose for our life. The second thing he says is not only virtue, but knowledge. He says, gain the correct insight to know what is right.
Desire is not good enough. We've got to have knowledge that goes along with us. And oftentimes pride can stop us from admitting our ignorance. Pride gets in the way.
Pride gets in the way of these small little things. Since I'm picking on Brody, I'm going to continue to pick on him. He'll probably be mad at me when I go home a little bit later. But I'll throw him in the pool and we'll be fine. We live in our house.
We built our house about four years ago now. And Brody got in this phase maybe two to three years ago where he wanted to label everything. He didn't want his baby brother getting these. He didn't want his sister taking his stuff.
And so he was labeling things. And this desire to do right, to do what was right, led him to a Sharpie in the kitchen counter drawer.
And he grabbed that Sharpie and he said, you know, I want to label. I'm just trying to imagine a six-year-old mind. I want to label the things that are mine. So he went into his room with that Sharpie, remember. And he wrote on the windowsill, the mantle there, Brody's room.
Because he didn't want anybody to know that wasn't his room. Right? It was the desire to do right, but not the knowledge behind it that, hey, what I'm doing is actually not the right thing.
And this is oftentimes why we need knowledge because it gives us the correct understanding to know what is right, to know what is true.
The Bible says it like this in today's culture. Even though this was written 4,000 years ago, Judges chapter 21 verse 25. It says, everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Proverbs 12, 15. The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.
And Proverbs 21, 2 says, every way of a man is right in his own eyes.
And oftentimes as we go through life, this is the thought of why we need knowledge, why we need godly knowledge. Because our own knowledge leads us astray because we're doing what's right in our eyes. But there's a man in 2 Chronicles by the name of Asa.
And we don't know a lot about Asa. We know that he was an advocate of David.
And we know that he wrote poems and songs to David and encouraged David. And in 2 Chronicles chapter 14 verse 2, it says this, And Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God.
Because Asa was a man after God's heart. And Asa had this desire to do what was right. Not in his eyes. Not in what he wanted to do. But was right in God's eyes.
And church this morning, graduates this morning, we must be in the mindset that we're going to do what is right in God's eyes. Not in our eyes.
You see, we get the words of God from Hebrews 5 says like this, For those who have the powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. We must be in constant practice of God's word.
We must be in constant practice of what God has given us every single day of our life.
One of the verses I go to often, I read this in a commentary years ago. And I may have shared this with our church before. But 2 Timothy 3.16 says this.
It's very common. Most of you can probably quote it. All scripture is breathed out by God. Profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and training in righteousness.
And we've heard that verse for our whole life. We've heard that we need these things in our life. But I read this and I thought it was so practical because this guy broke it down like this. All scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching for what is right.
It's breathed out for reproof for what is wrong. Right?
The scripture is there to enlighten what is wrong in my life. For correction, this is how to get right. And then for training in righteousness, how to stay right.
Adding Knowledge and Self-Control
Ultimately, when we take God's word and we examine God's word in our life, it teaches us these things. Because it adds the knowledge of God, his word, to our life.
But not only do we need to add virtue and knowledge, we must add the third one here, which is self-control. Self-control is practicing self-discipline to choose what is right.
Right? This is giving ourselves the ability to choose the right thing versus the wrong thing. And oftentimes, pleasures of life can easily come in and compromise our self-control.
I'll quit picking on Brody. We'll sing about Hudson right now. Right? Hudson, he's three years old. Right?
There's not a lot of self-control in a three-year-old. Have you ever seen my three-year-old run around here and go out on the playground and it's just like, he's got so much energy built up inside of him, he doesn't know how to get rid of it.
So he just, it's like an explosion of energy. Right?
Right? He's just running around. He's going crazy. We're at the house and he's jumping off of the chair onto the floor. And he jumped off yesterday while Alan was out shopping. He jumped off the chair and I said, Hudson, you probably don't need to do that. He goes, it didn't hurt me, Dad.
So what did he do? He went and got on another chair and jumped off it. It didn't hurt me, Dad. It's like he's invincible. He's like, I'm Superman. I'm just going to jump because self-control is not even in his range of thought or emotion or anything. But yet Paul, it was Peter.
I say Paul a lot. But Peter was saying here, we must have self-control.
There's a huge gap oftentimes from our knowledge and our actions. And self-control is the bridge that bridges the gap between knowledge and self-control.
Between the knowledge of what we know and our actions of what we do, the self-control steps in and helps us. 1 Corinthians 9 says it like this. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives a prize?
So run that you may obtain it. You ready? In verse 25, every athlete exercises self-control in all things.
They do not receive a perishable wreath, but an imperishable. We just honored Owen up here and he listed all the 17 different sports that he played. Right? And it's like, man, how in the world did he have time to put all those sports into his life? But it's simply self-control.
He had the ability to time manage his life so that he can have this sport and this sport and these things going on and still make good grades. Because self-control comes in and helps us in our physical life.
So spiritual self-control comes in and helps us in our spiritual life.
Self-control then leads on. There's a progression here of steadfastness. And these two are connected. Self-control instead fastness.
This is learning to be calm when things are going on in our life and to keep doing the right thing. You see, pleasures of life cause us to compromise and the pressures of life come in and lead us to impatience. Anybody in here impatient like myself? Yeah, I'm impatient.
Christmas time comes. Birthday comes. What's in the present under the tree? I'm pretty good about that. My wife, not so much. She wants to know and she checks the bank account. And she, I've got stories I can tell you about times where she's figured out what I've got her. Okay?
But steadfastness is the ability to endure when circumstances are difficult.
We've got difficult circumstances. We've got things that are going on in our life that we look and we say, how in the world am I going to get through this?
And ultimately, as we begin to examine that, we say, there's only one person that can give me the strength that I need and it's God. One of my all-time favorite verses.
I've got a lot of them. You'll learn that about me. I've got a lot of favorite verses. But one that I go to often is Deuteronomy chapter 33 verse 25. I'm going to write that down. Deuteronomy 33 verse 25. And this is what it says. It says, See,
when Moses was writing this and Moses was writing what was going on. Keep that verse up, guys. As Moses was writing what was going on in his life and what's going on in the world around, he did not write, As your marriage, so shall your strength be.
He didn't write, As your family is, so shall your strength be.
He didn't even write, So as your career or job, this is where your strength is going to be at.
No, he said, As your days are, so shall your strength be.
You see, as we think through this, I don't know what's going to go on in my life. I don't know what's going to go on in your life. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. I don't know what's going to happen five years from now.
But what I do know, the Bible tells me, is that I know who holds tomorrow. And he holds tomorrow.
So as Jesus Christ holds our days, so shall our strength be. And as we begin to trust the Lord more, as we begin to give our strength to God and say, God, I don't know what today's going to hold, but I'm going to give it to you. That's where our strength is at.
That's what steadfastness is. It's trusting in the Lord in every area of our life so that when pressures come, when the pressures of life come on us, we're able to say, God, I don't know what I'm going to do.
Choosing Godliness and Steadfastness
I'm just going to continue to trust in you today. That's steadfastness. And then he says here, the fifth one, add godliness. Choose godly character to be right. Choose godly character to be right.
You see, oftentimes in our life, the warning here is, possessions can take our eyes off of God. Godliness is simple godlikeness, which is a desire to be conformed to the character of God. I wrote it down like this. Practical awareness of God in every area of your life.
Having a practical awareness of God in every area of your life.
It's when you're riding down the road, and as we were driving yesterday to Lincolnton for the wedding, and a car in front of us, I mean, it wasn't happening, but you could tell it had just happened where a
car had swerved and hit the median, and there was smoke, and there was a police officer that had just arrived, and it's understanding God protected me in those moments.
It's understanding that if I would have left a little bit earlier, maybe that would have been me. And it's giving thanks and giving understanding to God that he is the one in every area of our life.
Because it very well could have been me, and it very well could have been my family that something had happened to.
I'm thinking of just a minute ago, as Latricia was talking to my wife, about how there's this missionary family, a husband and wife, and their home was raided, I believe it was in Haiti, and they were killed. Husband and wife, a newlywed, they're a very young family, maybe 25, 26.
And it's understanding that that could happen to my family tomorrow. But it's understanding the practical awareness that God is there even in those moments. A good person study that you can go through here is the life of Joseph.
I'm not going to read all the verses. I've got them all listed here if you want to know some of these verses later.
But Joseph was cast out of his family and went into Potiphar's house, and Potiphar's wife came to him, and as he was there, she said, I want you to come and lay with me. And he said this statement. He said, How can I do such a great wickedness and sin against God?
Because he understood the value of godliness. As he continued on through his life of hardship and being thrown into prison and all these different things, we see the very end of Joseph's life in Genesis 50, verses 19 and 20, and it says that, Joseph said unto them, Do not fear, for I am in a place of God.
For you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
You see, he had a practical awareness of God in his life no matter what was going on because godliness brings us to a place where God is in every aspect of our life.
Philippians 3, a very common passage of Scripture, I'll put these on the screen, Philippians 3, verses 4 through 8, Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also,
if anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, Paul is saying here, I have more.
I am circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to the zeal, a persecutor of the church, and as to righteousness under the law, I am blameless.
But then verse 7, But whatever gain I had counted, I now count as lost for the sake of Christ.
Indeed, I count everything as lost because of the surpassing worth and knowledge of Jesus Christ. For his sake, I have suffered and lost all things, and I count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.
You see, it doesn't matter the situations and the things in our life. It only matters on how close we're getting to God, and where is our godliness at in our life. You see, the first five one of these attributes are all inward focused.
I can't call Scotty up here and say, Scotty, I'm going to impart godliness upon you. He's got to decide for himself that he wants to be a godly person. I can't bring my son up here and say, Hudson, here we go, self-control, have it.
He's going to look at me and say, I jump off the stairs? That's pretty good, right? I can do that.
I can't bring you up here and say, I need you to have these things. It's a personal commitment that we must have on the inside.
But then he says, now there's a couple of things that are external. Only you know if you're self-controlled.
Only you know if you have knowledge and virtue and steadfastness between you and God. But now he gets to this point of, now that you have these things, now let's begin to add some external things. Because it all begins on the heart.
Everything that God does in our life begins in the heart and then becomes an outward expression of what's inside. And he begins to say, now we have brotherly affection. And this is the simple thought of taking time for people to care right. The warning here is, blessing people is hard to do.
You see, it's an attitude of the heart when it comes to blessing people.
It's an attitude of what we are doing, 1 Thessalonians 4, 9 says,
now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. He was saying to the church at Thessalonica, you were taught by the ones that were taught by God himself to show love.
You don't need someone to come in. You don't need someone to come in and show you or tell you. You know what love is.
You see, if showing brotherly love and brotherly affection, if this were easy, I guarantee you Peter would not have written it down.
If everyone at the church was doing this, he wouldn't have said, well, let's add this one as well. He was writing it because this was missing. Remember what a supplement it is? It's something that we're adding to our faith.
It's enhancing it, so therefore it's not there. And he's saying brotherly affection must be there in our life.
And if everyone were doing it, it would be easy and everyone would do it. But brotherly affection is hard. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes time out of your day to do this. And Peter's saying here,
as he's sort of repeating what Paul said in Ephesians chapter four, he says, don't grieve the spirit by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption in verse 31, but let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you,
along with malice. And then he says in verse 32, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as Christ forgave you.
You see, brotherly affection is extremely hard at times. As we looked at this morning in our Sunday school lesson, as we were looking at Philemon and how Philemon and Onesimus were,
Onesimus was a runaway slave and Paul is writing to Onesimus, I'm sorry, to Philemon, he's saying, listen, forgive him.
Welcome him back. He's become a believer. Show him love. Show him brotherly affection. But it was hard for Philemon to do that. It was hard for him to give forgiveness. Which leads us to this next one, brotherly affection and love. Love is being compassionate toward everyone in order to love right.
You see, the hard thing here is the public, the people that are around us is extremely hard to reach. And Jesus said so often, they will know you by your love.
When I began to cook around my mom, I was told last week, last week was the first message I preached while I've been here that I haven't mentioned food. So I've got to make sure I work in food in some way, shape, or form in my message so I don't let anybody down.
It's a joke. You can laugh. It's okay. When I, my mom, she was a, she was a, she still is a baker and a cooker. My grandma was a, an extremely good baker. She made Dale Earnhardt's wedding cake.
She made Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s wedding cake when he got married. She had the privilege of making my wedding cake and drove it out to Arkansas. And my grandma would always tell me, James, because I, she's cooking.
I'm going to be there next to her. I want to lick the spoon. Right? The good stuff.
She would always tell me, James, when you cook, you got to make sure you have a binding agent. Got to make sure you have an egg, applesauce, whatever you use to bind these things together.
You can't just throw a bunch of dry ingredients in there and hope it comes out. You got to have something liquid, something wet, something binding that's going to bring these all things together.
The Role of Love in Faith
And that's Paul, as Peter's writing this, he says, love is the binding ingredient.
Love is the supplement that is an action that puts us into the hands and the feet of Jesus. This is what brings it all together.
It takes the godliness and the self-control and the inward heart, but the love that we show toward other people is what brings it all together. Jesus said it to his disciples.
There's going to be a lot of things that happen. There's going to be a lot of things that are going to go wrong. You're going to be persecuted. You're going to be hurt. But it's only through love that people are going to say, those people are followers of Jesus.
Colossians says it like this as we look through the book of Colossians just a couple of months ago. And above all these things, put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
1 Peter 4, 8, as we continue to just look back a couple of pages, above all, keeping love one to another earnestly.
There's an old contemporary song. I say an old contemporary song. It came out back in the early 2000s. It's called Mighty to Save. Everyone needs compassion. A love that's never failing.
Let mercy fall on me. Everyone needs forgiveness, the kindness of a Savior, the hope of the nations. This morning, church, Christ is mighty to save and everyone needs compassion.
But are we showing the love that we need to show in order for the world to say, I want what that person has?
You see, I can be as loving and as generous and I can give every person in here a hug every single time I see you, but if I'm the only one showing love and no one else is,
the world just sees a crazy guy up here with red hair that sweats and has glasses that slide all the time and say, you know, that guy's crazy.
He may be a fanatic, but everybody else isn't showing love, so why should I?
You see, this is a command for all of us to go out and to love those that are around us. But as Peter is writing this and he says, take these supplements, add these to your faith,
he then gets to the point that we all love, right, the application. What happens if I take my blood pressure medicine, right, my blood pressure comes down?
If I take my cholesterol medicine, my cholesterol comes down. If I take these different things in my life, what is going to happen? So what happens when we add these supplements into our life? Well, one simple verse in 2 Peter 1 chapter verse 8,
he says this, for if these qualities are in you and are increasing is the first one. If they're in you, you will be flourishing.
You will begin to flourish. You will begin to grow up in Christ and others are going to see that, right? We just finished my son's fifth grade,
right? He's going into middle school next year and so my wife put together a little ad in the back of the yearbook where she put his kindergarten picture and his fifth grade picture and his baby picture, right? He grew.
He matured. He grew up in his faith. He's flourishing in a physical sense and as much as we're like, ah, that's my firstborn, like he's growing up,
we should say that about ourself as we begin to look spiritually in the mirror and say, am I the same as I was when I was a born again new baby in Christ or have I grown up into
my faith and have I begun to flourish in my faith and am I beginning to be a mature Christian in my faith or am I still where I was at when I got saved?
Growing and Maturing in Christ
You see, someone who is adding these things to their life, they're going to change. They're going to grow. They're going to mature in their faith. The Christian life is not about standing still but it's about moving forward and moving onward for Christ. It's going to be hard. It's going to be difficult
but change is never fun. Change is never good but all of a sudden it begins to flourish. It begins to grow us in our walk with Christ.
He continues on by saying these qualities are in you and they're increasing and they'll keep you from being ineffective. You see, these are qualities that are going to allow you to be fulfilling. They're going to allow you to be fulfilled in your life.
As you begin to go around your life as you begin to look at your, you can imagine with me for a moment as I just did a wedding yesterday.
I've got a wedding on my mind. You know, 13 years ago, me and my wife, we said I'd do in that stage in front of 300 or 400 people and we got to fulfill our marriage. Right?
It's something that you waited for, you planned for. For us, we planned for like eight or nine, seven months, whatever it was and then that day came and it's like fulfillment. All this work, all these things that we've got to, we're now fulfilling these promises.
And Paul was saying, Peter is saying here, when we add these supplements to our life, you will go from being ineffective to being effective.
You will go from being unfulfilled in your Christian journey to now in a fulfilled life where you are thriving for Jesus, you love Jesus. It doesn't matter the situations that come because you have Jesus on your side and you have his strength that is empowering you.
And then he continues on, he says, not only will it be increasing and ineffective, but it will be no longer unfruitful.
It will keep you from being unfruitful and this is the thought of you are now going to be fruitful in Christ through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. You have now added this fruit to your life. I was telling a young couple yesterday,
or maybe two days ago, they have one daughter and I said, I said, Justin, I said, the Bible says be fruitful and multiply.
And by having one, I've never seen a fruitful multiplying tree that just had one apple sitting on it. A healthy, fruitful tree has multiple apples on it, right? And I said, you can't just have one. Have more. Have three, four, five. Have many kids. I said, it's been fruitful.
It's having multiple things in our life.
And this is the thought of being fruitful for Christ. It's growing and having this fruit in our life that's overflowing, that's blessing other people. Jesus is giving his abide in me passage in John chapter 14.
And I don't know if this is on the screen or not, but it says this. And Terry can come and start making his way to the invitation. Abide in me and I in you. As a branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine.
Then Jesus, that teacher of teachers says this, neither can you unless you abide in me.
See, the only way we'll grow, the only way we'll begin to have these things in our life is if we're abiding in Christ and Christ is our source of strength. A fruit is refreshing.
I was thinking through some of my things and a couple of years ago my wife came across this strawberries and cream frappuccino thing from Starbucks.
Starbucks. Right? When I go to Starbucks I get hot coffee. I don't like cold coffee. I like hot coffee. I like my coffee hot and my tea cold. Okay? And she said, you got to go get this for me. It's just like a burst of refreshment.
I said, okay, whatever. I'll go buy her strawberries and cream frappuccino thing.
I barely even can get it out when I get there. And so, she got it and so, they gave it to me this big old cup and sit there in the console and driving it to her and I thought, you know, I'm not one of these fruity guys. I like coffee, whatever.
But I'm going to try a sip of it. Tried a little sip of it. I don't know what was in it. I don't know if it was crack cocaine. I don't know if it was heroin.
I don't think it made much of it back to her. Because after I began to enjoy it, man, it was refreshing. It was good. It refreshed my soul. It's making me want it now, I think. I don't know.
But all of a sudden, we begin to take that one moment in our life. Fruit is often a time of refreshing.
How often are we in our Christian journey refreshing other people? Are we a refreshing fruit? I'll put it like this. When people come in contact with you, do they leave saying, I just ran into Eeyore. The world's coming to an end. Doomsday's happening.
Or when they walk away, they say, I'm more excited now than I was when I met the guy. I'm ready to go out and conquer the world because they've refreshed me. They've encouraged me. Is that how we are in our life?
You see, the goal of the Christian life is Christ to be flowing in us and out of us and overflowing from us so that we can refresh the world around us. If it's not flowing in us,
that's the moment where we need to know we need to come to know Jesus. But then it's got to be flowing so much in us that it overflows. We can't help others if it's not overflowing out of us.
Peter said it like this as we read those last couple verses. If you lack these qualities,
you will become so nearsighted that you will become blind having forgotten that you were cleansed from your former sins. You'll begin to forget about your own salvation because you've not added the supplements to your salvation. And then he says in verse 10, Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling.
For if you practice these qualities, you will never fail.
He's not saying that you're going to never have moments in your life where you give up. He's saying you're going to have so much Christ in you that it doesn't matter what goes on around you because you have Christ in you. That failure is not an option.
You see, growing in these qualities has an eternal result for the kingdom.
The Bible says in verse 11, For in this way you will be richly provided an entrance into an eternal kingdom with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
You'll go from an earthly kingdom of depravity, an earthly kingdom of sin, an earthly kingdom of depression and whatever it may be in your life into an eternal kingdom of Jesus Christ where he says, Come on in.
And the gains of heaven will be more than to compensate you for the losses of earth.
Choosing to Take Spiritual Supplements
We've lost a lot. We've done a lot. But the gains of heaven will far surpass any loss that we've ever experienced here on earth. And so church this morning, graduates this morning, choose to take your supplements.
Choose to say, You know what? This week I'm going to add one of them. I'm going to work on adding virtue this week. Next week I'll work on knowledge. Don't try to say, Hey, there's seven days in the week and every day I'm going to try to accomplish one. You'll probably get overwhelmed.
That's like my version of going things. Okay, I'm the fast guy. Let's take all seven of them and cram it in one day. But let's just say you just take one a week and you just say, God, help me be affectionate today towards others. This whole week.
Give me ways and opportunities to be affectionate.
Give me ways and opportunity to have self-control today. But let's choose to take these supplements so that we can grow into God's vision for our life. Because if we choose not to, verse 10 says, that you will lack these qualities and be nearsighted and blind. God, it's not my prayer for you. It's not my goal for you.
My goal as your pastor is to give you the tools that you need to go out and to affect the world around us. And so begin to ask yourself, what are these areas in my life that I need to add today? Lord, we love you.
We thank you for what you've done. I know we've went a little long today, but God, I pray that you would have your will and way in the invitation. Help us as we begin to access our life and say, God, what are the areas in my life I need to work on?
What are the areas in my life I need to add these supplements to? Maybe you've got three or four of them down. Maybe we're, God, we've got a lot of them, but maybe there's that one that we've just sort of forgotten about that we needed that prodding today. God, help us today
to trust in you. We love you. In your name we pray. Amen.
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