Support Your Faith

2 Peter 1:1-11

It reads like something that Paul might have written, but we find it in 2 Peter. “For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:5-8). Faith needs support. Even though it is given to us by God faith is most effective when we strive to live with goodness and knowledge and self-control, etc., all of which rests on the foundation of love.

In this way I suppose faith is similar to life. Life first comes to us as a gift but over time it needs support. Life requires that we be fed, taught, encouraged, enabled, and loved. Initially others do these things for us, but most of us eventually must take responsibility ourselves for sustaining life if we are to reach our fullest potential. Faith has potential, too. It may languish, or it may flourish. 2 Peter calls those who neglect their faith “nearsighted and blind” (v. 9), an interesting combination of terms that seems to heighten the danger. But those who “confirm (their) call and election” (v. 10) will not stumble spiritually the way those who are spiritually blind or nearsighted are apt to do.

Faith needs support. Those who nurture their faith will find their walk with God to be more fulfilling.

Prayer: Lord, help us to grow in faith even as we progress in life, that we may be fully alive to you in all we do. In Jesus’ name. Amen.