Adding To Your Collection
We are a society of collectors. Are you someone who collects stuff? Antiques. Artwork. Quilts. Stamps. Coins. Post cards. Wine. Cars. My mother collected pelicans. Pelicans of all shapes, sizes, colors. At the time of her death, she had over 1000 in her collection, all cataloged by date and place of purchase. As a kid, I collected baseball cards. I still have that collection. It has been boxed up for years. I should go through it sometime and see whose rookie card I might have that is worth a few bucks. I once had a rather large ballcap collection. Caps lined one wall of our basement while others filled box after box. The majority of those caps were never worn. They just took up space and collected dust. That collection is long gone. As often as we have moved helps to eliminate the needless stuff. These days I just have ballcaps that I actually wear.
My wife and I now live on a golf course and we, or more precisely, I, collect golf balls. Golf balls that land in the pond. Golf balls that find their way into our yard. And golf balls that we find as we walk. I put them in a basket on the back patio and when the basket gets full, I dump them into a larger container in the basement. Why, you ask? Simply because I can. My wife and I do not even golf.
If you collect anything, you probably periodically add to that collection. You add to it in order to someday complete the set. Maybe you add to it in order to add value. Or, is it possible that, like our golf balls, you just collect for the sake of collecting? Whatever you collect and whatever the reason you collect, over time that collection gets larger. You and I, we add to our collections.
If you are a Jesus-follower, one of the instructions we find in the Bible is that we are to add to our faith. It is by grace that we are saved through faith (Ephesians 2:8-10). Our faith is to be progressive not stagnant. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we are to continually grow, a growth that makes us look more and more like Jesus with each and every step. We are to add things to our faith that help us do that. We are to have a “faith collection.”
In 2 Peter, we are given eight virtues in this collection, beginning with faith and ending with love. This seven verse section begins like this – “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires” (2 Peter 1:3-4).
The next three verses give us the things we are to add to our faith. Here is what we read – “For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love” (vv.5-7).
The final two verses of this section tell us that the knowledge of God is the beginning and the goal of the Christian life, and if we possess an ever-increasing measure of these eight virtues, adding one of top of another, we will have spiritual vitality, keeping us from being ineffective and unproductive (like the false teachers found in 2 Peter ch. 2). Click here to read those two verses.
Add to implies a starting point. If you already have a faith in Jesus, add to it. If you have not yet turned your life over to Jesus, do so today, surrender your heart and life to Him, give Him rule and reign over your life, and begin adding to your “collection.”
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