Supplementing Your Faith

Friday mornings at hotels are always interesting. People are up early, packed and ready to go home. The breakfast room is usually full. The travelers are in good spirits because they know they’re going home. Keys are dropped off, bills are paid and bags are in hand as they walk to their cars. There’s a certain sense of excitement. The week is nearly done. Your work is almost finished and you know you’re going to rest soon.

In II Peter 1, Peter said that God had revealed to him that he would die soon. He started to get ready to go home. Before he left, he wanted to give the church some final instructions that they would remember after he was gone. What was important to him as final instructions should be important to us as believers. We should look closely at what he wanted us to get.

In verse 5-7, he tells us to supplement our faith with things like good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness and generous love. He said with these active and growing in our lives, we would mature in our experience with Jesus. He also said without them we wouldn’t be able to see what’s right in front of us spiritually. These were and are important things that we as Christians should have active in our lives.

Passionate patience stands out to me in that group. All of us want patience, but none of us want to pay to get it. I know that patience is also a fruit of the spirit according to Galatians. It’s something that God wants each of us to have in our lives. It takes time to develop and to mature into who God wants us to be. It doesn’t happen over night. We go through things, make mistakes, pick ourselves up and try again. Our patience is developed by going through things that try us.

Another thing that stands out to me is generous love. In today’s world, we are known more for what we are for or against than for our love. We let disagreements on what is right and wrong divide us from those we are called to love. I Corinthians 13 teaches what love is. We typically apply this to marriage or relationships. What if we applied those things to the ones we are called to love? Love is patient. Love is kind. It is not boastful, proud or rude.

I Peter was onto something here. All those things we supplement our faith with start and end with love. When we learn to love our neighbors like ourselves, we’ll begin to see the lost saved. When we care more about their soul than if they’re right or wrong, our light will shine. When we have patience with others the way we want others to have patience with us, we will see a harvest.

Which of these supplements do you already posses? Which ones do you need to develop? As Christians we should never stop growing or developing. Peter was encouraging us to not be satisfied with where our faith is. He was saying that we can add to it to achieve the growth that God desires in us. Just like body builder uses supplements to lean down and build muscle mass, we too should be supplementing our faith so that we will grow our faith.