Walk Boldly With Jesus

How Can I Be More Fruitful & Effective?

Episode Summary

2 Peter 1:5-7 “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement 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." Today's episode talks about each of these qualities and what they mean. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Episode Notes

How Can I Be More Fruitful & Effective

2 Peter 1:5-7 “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement 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.

I choses this verse today because it is the verse that follows yesterday’s verse.  This is a continuation or a part 2 from yesterday.  We are still in 2nd letter of Peter and he is talking about what qualities keep us from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We talked about the verses right before this yesterday and one of the things we talked about is how we are granted the divine power through our knowledge of God.  Today we talk about what qualities keep us from being ineffective and unfruitful.  Who wants to be ineffective and unfruitful?  I know I don’t.  I love verses like this because although I know I don’t have to do anything for God to love me and I know I don’t have to earn my place in heaven I still like to learn how I can grow closer to the Lord.  I love to learn various ways I can become more like Jesus.  I like to learn how I can become more effective and more fruitful.  If I am loving this then I am sure I am not the only one.  This is why when I read verses like this, I get so excited to share them.  I love helping to figure out how the can grow in holiness too!

Let’s take a look at what this verse says.  The verse begins by saying, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement 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.”  Peter is giving us a list of qualities that will help us to grow.  Right at the start he says, “make every effort.” Peter is not telling us we have to do this, he is not telling us to stress out about this, he is not telling us we have to be perfect at this, he is telling us to try hard to do it.  He is telling us to do our best, to make every effort, to do these things.  

The next few lines I will quote directly from yesterday’s article as I feel Daryl Dash gives a good explanation as to what Peter meant by supplementing our faith.  “Peter says we’re to supplement our faith. What he means is this: If we really are depending on God’s power to give us everything we need, then this must work itself out in some very practical ways. We must rely on God’s resources if we’re going to grow. And when we rely on these resources, we’ll take some steps to grow.”  So, how do we grow?  Peter lists some of these steps in this verse. He asks us to supplement the first thing with the second thing in this list.  

First, he says to supplement our faith, which is trusting God, which is where it all begins; with Virtue which is moral excellence, which means that we change from the inside out. Yes, we need to have faith in God, we need to trust God and we also need to have virtue.  We need to strive for moral excellence.  We need to not just say we trust God and then sit back and watch as He does all the work.  We need to do our part too.  We can begin with supplementing our faith with developing more virtue.  Second he says, supplement virtue, again, this morale excellence, with knowledge, which is growth in our knowledge of God. Now that we are growing in virtue we also need to grow in our knowledge of God.  These two can actually go hand and hand.  As you grow in virtue you will want to grow in your knowledge of God and as you grow in your knowledge of God you will grow in virtue.  

Third Peter says, supplement knowledge with self control, which is the ability to restrain ourselves from sinful desires. If I had to pick one that would probably be the hardest for me, I think I would pick this one.  I love to grow in my knowledge of God, where I would find it hard is supplementing that with self control.  I struggle with self control a lot.  I am wondering if it is because I am trying to do it with my own power instead of with the divine power we were given?  That is probably exactly the problem.  I think most times when we can’t figure out what the problem is, it is most likely us trying to do things in our own strength or on our own time or in our own way.  God is asking to grow in our knowledge of Him and at the same time, grow in our self control.  Why is this so hard for us?  Why do we struggle so much with doing what is wrong instead of what is right?  

The fourth thing on Peter’s list is to supplement self control with steadfastness, which is to stay faithful not just for a short time, but over the long haul.  This is another hard one.  We are a pretty fickle people.  We like something or someone one day and then the wind shifts and we no longer like that thing or that person.  I can see how these two can go hand and hand though.  If you are steadfast with your commitments, if you show up and do them day in and day out, whether you want to or not, you will grow in your self control.  At the same time, you will struggle with being steadfast if you don’t have any self control.  The rely on each other and they help each other grow.  When you grow in one you will grow in the other.

Next the verse says to supplement steadfastness with godliness, which is living a godly life. Remember when I said that self control would be the hardest for me, well, I think I may have to take that back as they seem to keep getting harder the further down the list we go.  Living a godly life is definitely not easy.  Although I guess it is easier if you are being steadfast and you are growing in your self discipline.  I think it is interesting that these are all so interconnected.  I just looked up “what does it mean to live a godly life?” as I wasn’t really sure and I found what I think is a great way to explain it.  This quote is from Pastor Colon Smith and I will place a link to his article “What’s the Secret to Living a Godly Life” in the show notes in case you are wondering what the secret is.  Here is the quote I really liked, “Godliness, a God-centered life, is not a set of disciplines or a system. It is a person. The mystery of a godly life lies in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ who appeared in a body and was vindicated by the Spirit.  Jesus Christ is godliness in the flesh. He has lived the God-centered life, and our hope of living a godly life is in him. Jesus Christ is the object of our faith and Jesus Christ is the source of our life.” Isn’t that beautiful?  If we want to grow in our godliness we need to look to Jesus, not just as our example of how to live, but as our source of strength to live that way.  

Peter goes on to say we should supplement godliness with brotherly love, which is the affection of a family that comes with long familiarity and deep bonds. One definition went on to say, yes you will fight, you will bicker, but if someone tries to bully your family member the brotherly love will show a very powerful side to it.  I can see how this could come after godliness as I am pretty sure Peter is not just talking about our families here.  I think he is wanting us to treat everyone we meet with this brotherly love.  If this is the case it makes sense why it would come after godliness.  First we need to look to Jesus and ask Him to help us live the way He lived, and this means loving our neighbors in this familiar way.  We definitely need His help to do this as not everyone seems lovable to us.  We definitely don’t want to rush to the defense of everyone we meet.  We don’t even want to talk to some people we meet and yet those are probably the ones that need our love the most.

Lastly, Peter goes on to say we should supplement our brotherly love with love, which is the virtue that sums up all other virtues.  Love is defined in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a. "Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant  or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends.” I can see why this would come after brotherly love, that is hard enough and then we supplement it with love.  We use the word love a lot in our culture.  We don’t usually differentiate what type of love either.  We say we love pizza, we love ice cream, we love our family and we love God.  There is just one word that has many different meanings, or maybe not different meanings but different levels.  I think we would all agree that we don’t love pizza as much as we love God, although with my husband it may be close as he loves pizza.  If we can start by loving our neighbors with a brotherly love then maybe with the help of Jesus we can start to love others with the kind of love that it talks about in 1 Corinthians.  

Imagine what a different world it would be if were patient and kind to all we met?  What if we were not envious or boastful?  What is we were not arrogant or rude?  Imagine how great it would be to not insist we were right all the time, to not be irritable or restful?  Imagine if we didn’t rejoice in the wrongdoing of others but we rejoiced in the truth?  Imagine if we were able to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things and endure all things?  Can you even imagine how different our lives would be.  Just asking those questions has got me wondering how I can do that?  What do I need to do to be that person that embodies “love”?  What came to mind when I started to wonder how I could do this is to just start with one of these qualities and focus on it.  Then when I was doing better with that one, I could move on to the next one.  For instance, I could just focus on being more patient and kind for a whole month.  Then I could focus on not being envious or boastful and so on.  I think I will divide these up into 12 months and then focus on one each month.  If you would like to join me, I will give this some more thought on how we can do this and I will include my thoughts in my newsletter.    My thought is we could just assign each one to a month of the year and remind ourselves each day that is what you are focusing on for that month.  I am excited to see the difference in a year from now if we intentionally focus on loving others better.  I hope you will join me and I hope you will check in with me and let me know how it is going? If you would like more info on this it will be in my newsletter.  If you are not already receiving my newsletter their will be a link for it in the show notes or you can go to walkboldlywithjesus.com and click on the link for the audio training about how to invite Jesus into your every day activities and that will add you to my newsletter list.  

I know this episode is on the longer side and I apologize for that.  However, I hope it is giving you lots of great ideas of how to be more effective and fruitful in getting to know the Lord. I had intended to go over the next two verses today as well, but I have kept you long enough.  I promise to cover the next two verses on Thursday.  Stay tuned…

Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today.  Lord, we are so grateful you gave us such wonderful fathers of the church to teach us.  We thank you for St. Peter and all his wisdom.  Lord, we ask you to help us grow in all of these virtues.  We ask that you show us the way and give us the strength, wisdom and knowledge.  We ask that you give us a hunger to live the life you want us to live, not the one we want to live.  Lord you are amazing and we love you so much.  Lord, for all of those who want to join me in my quest to love others better, to live out the definition of love that you gave us in 1 Corinthians, I pray that you give us the ability to be steadfast with our efforts and to grow in our self control.  We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus.  Tomorrow’s witness is my new friend Megan. Megan has an amazing witness as to how God worked up stream in ways she had no idea He was working.  It’s awesome how God does that, He arranges all things for our good.  It is nice when we read that in scripture and yet it is even more real when we see how He does that in our own lives.  You will not want to miss her witness tomorrow.  I can’t wait to share it with you.  Remember Jesus loves you and so do I!  Have a blessed day!

Article: Created To Grow by Daryl Dash

Article: What’s The Secret to Living a Godly Life?