Add to Your Faith - Kevin Brechbill

So I have a question. The title of my message is "Add to Your Faith." What comes to your mind when you think of adding to your faith? Is that something that you think about as a Christian, to add to your faith?

Anyone brave enough to comment? Virtue. Virtue? Okay. Yeah, I think of the passage—is it in 1 Peter or 2 Peter, whichever one? Where he gives a long list of things to add. Okay, you're thinking down the same line I'm thinking.

All right, so I'm going to—you can turn with me to 2 Peter if you would like. And I just want to—I've just really been really impressed upon this idea, and impressed with this idea of adding to our faith. And just recently, in sharing different messages about church growth, and people asking about how to establish a church, and how to grow a church, and we're thinking about expanding our church in the future. And I think about this: are we adding to our faith? What are we adding? And is that something that's in our minds that we're to be adding to our faith? I think our modern Christianity, we have this thing that we have faith, so that's sufficient.

But we need to be adding to that. And what does that look like? So I'm just going to share some things of what I see that Peter teaches us that I think is just—it's way more powerful than we realize.

Was it Brian this morning who said—what did you say? "Listening to others is more underrated than it should be." Well, I think this is one of these subjects that we need to put more emphasis on it, and more concentration to it than I think—than I do at least. So I'd like to inspire you to do more of it. So 2 Peter, I'll just give you a really quick background on it.

It's written to the churches in Asia, and more than likely it was written probably from the same location as 1 Peter. And it was probably written during the time of Nero, and tradition has it that Peter probably more than likely was executed sometime after this letter.

And if we go to 2 Peter 1:14, it says, "Because I know that the removal of my bodily tent will come soon, as indeed our Lord Jesus, the Messiah, has shown me, and I will make every effort to see that you will always remember these things after I'm gone." So this is kind of like he's telling them that he wrote this letter, and the Messiah has shown him that he's probably going to die sometime after this.

So some of you may have—I think it was like when Strength of Strength, Sound Faith, Followers of the Way, like all four YouTube things. Pablo Yoder, many of you have heard about, we prayed for Pablo Yoder, and Zach and Clark went down and asked him about his life. And in a sense, Pablo Yoder gave a farewell speech at the end of his life. And I didn't look this morning, but as of Saturday, it was up to over 3,000 people had listened to it. So who knows what it's at now. But people want to know the farewell speech of your life. If you have that opportunity that Pablo had, Peter is in a similar situation. This is his farewell speech, if you will.

And I think we should be like everyone else wants to hear, what does Pablo have to say? What does Peter have to say in his farewell speech? That's one of the—or a reason why I think it's important. I mean, this is the spokesman of the apostles that had lived a very godly life. And so this is this same apostle at the end of his life. And it's just one reason why I think it's really, really critical that we hear, we need to hear, we need to listen. What is he saying to us in his farewell speech? As I said before, I want to think about adding to your faith, or building on your faith is another word.

Some of the translation talks about supplement, supplementing your faith. I don't like that word as good. It feels like I'm just taking a vitamin.

I want something more like we're adding, we're building to it. And I think it's a better word than supplement. And to me, I feel more motivated to follow something that's adding and building versus just supplementing. But anyway, that's just maybe my perspective there.

So I'm going to read 2 Peter 3 through 15. It's 13 verses. And I'm just going to talk about them this morning. I don't know if you call this a message or not. It's a conversation message, as you might say.

We're just going to talk about this. So starting with 2 Peter verse 3, "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he had granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement or add or build your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love."

Listen to these next couple of verses, "For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ." Just a powerful verse there. "For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sin.

Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities, you will never fail." Three verses there that incredible statements coming out of that, following those things that were to add or were to build to our faith. "For in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Therefore, I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me, and I will make every effort so that after my departure, you may be able at any time to recall these things." That was his departing speech. Okay?

There's two other chapters, but this is one of the first things that he wants the churches in Asia Minor to remember. And if you look at the context around it, they were being bombarded by being accused that the apostles weren't who they were, that Christ wasn't who they were, the Christians weren't who they were. And there was a lot of accusations and false prophets and just a lot of onslaught of accusations coming. And this is Peter's response to the churches so that they are established.

So let's circle back around. Adding to your faith. This is toward the end of the book, and it talks about this. This is the purpose of what Peter wants us to understand. So he says, "To add and build," and in verse 17 it says, "You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the air of lawless people and lose your own stability." And different translations, one has lose your position of security and lose your steadfastness. So the call that Peter's after is that he wants each church to be stable, to be secure, and to be steadfast. And this whole concept of adding to our faith is very vital in churches being stable and being steadfast and having endurance and not being influenced by false prophets and by lawless people and by error.

It's a lot happening in here. Let's circle back around and start just looking at this verse, verse 3 again. So in verse 3, he opens with this invitation that his divine power he's granted to us. So God wants us to become like or participate with in his divine nature. Okay? That's the call. That's a high expectation. That's a high calling. But he's saying his divine power he's granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. So what are these things that pertain to life and godliness that we can actually participate or be like his divine nature? I mean, that's an awesome idea that we can be like his divine nature. So let's look at some of these things.

I think in order to pursue this, we have to have an intense commitment to become like and to add to. I don't think this is something that just happens. We have to be very intentional, be very specific about it. And I think we have to pursue this idea of becoming like him, adding to our faith, developing our character in order to be a witness or to be like him in nature.

The next verse let's look at says, "By which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of divine nature." There that whole idea is that we can become partakers, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. So if you want to escape the corruption that's in the world and escape sinful desire, we're to pursue this idea of adding to our faith. Now here's where our response comes in at. It says, "For this reason." So he gave us the avenue before, and what we're to become. And then he says, "Make every effort to supplement, add, build to your faith."

I think that's an interesting concept. That to me is inspiring. So we're to make every effort to add with virtue to our faith. We're to add with knowledge to our faith. I think that's the idea. It's a building concept. And I looked at this and I wondered, I was like, "Why did he put it in this sequence? Is there a reason for this sequence?" In my mind, it makes sense.

And as I build on this, the result or where it leads to, I always find interesting. It leads to brotherly love. It leads to love to others. It leads to being a witness. And I wonder sometimes, do we get this backward? We try to be a witness. We try to be an example, but we haven't built or added to our faith these things. And we wonder why are we weak in whatever you think you're weak in. So the next verse says, "We're to add knowledge, okay? And then with self-control." And with self-control, so I guess my thought is, how do you go about adding virtue and knowledge and self-control and steadfastness? How do you go about doing that?

How do I go about doing that? Is that just a list of things that Peter tells us and then we don't focus in on it? Do you have ways of adding that to your faith? Have you developed tools to do that? Do we see the value of it? So the next one after self-control is with steadfastness. Steadfastness is like endurance or the idea of just being stable. It's interesting. We live in a world that, I don't know, people seem to be very unstable. They don't seem to have very much endurance. They seem to blow hot and blow out quickly.

But being a Christian is something that's totally that's much more than that. We learn to be steadfast and have endurance. And then the next one is, "We're to add to our faith godliness." Now, I find this word interesting that godliness is in the middle. After we add virtue and knowledge and self-control and steadfastness, and then we come to godliness. It's like, "Only now are you godly."

I don't know. I find that so intriguing.

It's like there's a work that we're to do. We're to add to our faith to experience the nature of God. Okay? It's a development process. We don't just, I don't know, wake up godly tomorrow morning. There's a process that we have to be developing with us. And then this is the next one that I just find extremely intriguing is, after godliness, it's brotherly affection.

So many times I think we try to learn what brotherly love is, and we aren't focusing on these things before this. And we haven't become this person. We haven't developed ourselves. We haven't added to our faith. And I think it's why when we get into a fellowship, and that's why I recently have just had different people contact me about church life. And one of their questions is, "How are you guys getting along? Or how do you guys get along?" That's a really complicated question to answer.

But a lot of people are struggling to have brotherly affection. It is one of our, I don't know, our worst enemies in our churches. It's a struggle. And my thought is, if we want to have a church that's stable, we want to have a church that's steadfast, are you and I focusing in on these things of development? Are we adding to our faith? I think one of the needs in our Christian circles, and I'm going to say Anabaptist circles, is we need to focus in on adding to our faith because they get to brotherly affection and they get all crooked about everything, but they're not responding right. They don't have the tools to know how to respond correctly because I don't think they've developed themselves.

I don't think they've added to their faith. Virtue and knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness. It's just some thoughts I've been having like, "How does this work?" And I think this is one of the tools that, I don't know, I think we should make it one of our central understandings in our brotherhood that are we personally doing this? And then I think it works out as a collective response as well.

And the last one then is brotherly affection with love. You should do it with love.

Now, in case you've missed the value of that, I want to go on to the next verses. So it says in verse 8, it says, "If these qualities, all that we just discussed, are yours and you're increasing in them, you're growing in them," this is an interesting thought here. They keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful.

Now, I was just at a church recently. It's a new church started. And they want to really reach out to the community. They want to be effective. And I told them, I took them to this passage, and I encouraged them, "Are you adding to your faith? If you want to be effective, you have to become this. Okay? This is what you have to represent so that you're not ineffective and you're not unfruitful." If we're being ineffective and we're being unfruitful, I think these are the things we need to go back to and build in our lives, add to our faith. So the question is, do you have these qualities? In verse 9, it says, "For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he's blind."

Now, that's a strong statement. If you lack these qualities, you're so nearsighted you can't even see?

The value of adding to your faith, these character qualities is just huge. And it says that you're blind because you've forgotten that you're cleansed from your former sins. I always find that interesting. That's said different times in scripture. When someone doesn't obey God, they forget this.

If you forget your former sins, you become arrogant and conceited and self-righteous. It creates all these weird things that you do wrong. But if you don't forget that, it keeps you in humility to know that you need to add to your faith all these qualities.

Next verse, it says, "Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities, you will never fall." Listen to that strong statement. Never fall? How do we even get close to that?

And this is all based on these qualities. It's three or four verses here that just build on this concept. If you practice, if you follow, if you respond to these qualities, very, very powerful. Next three verses here, it says, "For in this way, there will be richly provided for you in an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord, Savior, Jesus Christ." In this way, adding to your faith that you become the person that God wants you to become, you'll develop yourself. You'll have brotherly love, brotherly affection, and all these other qualities. This is the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Incredible. This is Peter's farewell speech. "Therefore, I intend always to remind you of these qualities." That's Peter saying this. He said, "I intend to always remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. I think it right as long as I am in this body to stir you up by way of reminder." And then I'd just like to close with this verse here.

It's in verse 2, Peter 3:14. It's toward the end of the book. It says, "Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish and at peace." So if you're adding to your faith, you personally and I think collectively, we can be found without spot and blemish and at peace. That's what we all want, right? We want to be found without spot and blemish and at peace.