Let's just have a word of prayer before
we start.
Dear Father, I thank Thee for the privilege
it is to come across the world to
share what Thou didst lay on my heart,
Lord.
So I thank Thee for that privilege, but
I feel so unworthy, so unable to do
it, Father.
And I ask Thee that Thou who seest
into my heart and every heart here, who
knows every life circumstance from the smallest child
to the oldest person here, that Thou in
Thy mercy will come so near to us
and speak to us, Lord, that we may
hear Thy words.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Now, if the babies cry, I'll just speak
louder, so don't worry about the babies.
Our subject for today is adding, not subtracting.
Adding, not subtracting.
Now, our scripture verses are from 2 Peter,
from verse four, whereby are given unto us
exceeding great and precious promises, that by these
ye might become partakers of the divine nature,
having escaped the corruption that is in the
world through lust.
And beside this, giving all diligence, add to
your faith virtue, and to virtue, knowledge, and
to knowledge, temperance, and to temperance, patience, and
to patience, godliness, and to godliness, brotherly kindness,
and to brotherly kindness, charity, which is another
word for love.
For if all these things be in you
and abound, they make that ye shall neither
be barren or unfruitful in the knowledge of
our Lord Jesus Christ.
But he that lacketh these things is blind,
and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten
that he was purged from his old sins.
Now, Peter holds out to born-again Christians,
and when we're speaking of born-again Christians,
we're, of course, speaking of those who have
passed from darkness to light, who are truly
saved.
He holds out to them seven steps to
keep them from backsliding, to enable them to
be victorious, and it is something they must
do.
Peter said, add to your faith virtue.
And when he says something like add, he
emphasizes that it is our responsibility.
As a baby has to grow, so we
have to grow.
And he points out the seven steps that
help us to grow as a Christian.
Let's read these words again.
And beside this, giving all diligence, add to
your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and
to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and
to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness,
and to brotherly kindness charity.
For a Christian to flourish, we have to
show life and growth.
If we don't desire to grow as a
Christian, to become more Christ-like, then we
have to question ourselves and say to ourselves,
why isn't that desire in my heart?
Is it perhaps because I've never passed from
darkness to light?
Why am I so willing to just sit
back and think that I can slide into
heaven?
Those seven steps of growth must be our
aim, our purpose, and they must be shown
in our life.
Otherwise, we will be stunted, and we will
be in a sort of situation of stagnation.
We will not be flourishing.
How sad when Christians do not care to
grow in grace each day.
They do not seek those higher heights God
sets upon their way.
Instead of striving to please God, more Christ
-like to become, they remain little babies and
stay where they've begun.
Christianity is not a stagnant religion.
It's not a point that you come to,
but it's a journey from that point.
Add is a verb.
We dare not slide, we must climb.
We have to do it as a Christian,
and it requires effort and perseverance and purposefulness
and steadfastness in our lives and in our
attitude.
God says, add.
Peter said, add to your faith.
But if we are not adding, we are
actually subtracting, and we become blots on our
testimony and to the world around us.
The Bible speaks of us as being barren,
unfruitful, blind, unable to see ahead.
Is that perhaps a picture of you?
Are you perhaps like that?
Or have you been adding to your faith?
Now, we have to realize that faith is
the bottom line.
There are seven things that are steps from
that bottom line.
You can't add unless you have something to
add to.
Isn't that correct?
Now, Nicodemus must be born again, the Lord
Jesus said.
The woman of the well, he said, if
you drink this water, you shall never thirst
again.
For Zacchaeus, he said, come down from the
tree.
There has to be a point that is
added to.
Nicodemus, with all his religion, missed the starting
point.
The woman at the well, she was drinking
the wrong water, like we can.
Zacchaeus had to see himself as a sinner
and come down, admit that he was a
sinner, that he had stolen.
And then when he repented, what did God
say?
Today, salvation has come to this house.
So that was the starting point where they
could add on to.
What is faith?
Faith, as I see it, is complete trust
in God.
Now, I want to use an illustration.
I read in an old book about a
girl.
She had a limited mental capacity, and she
was in this house, and the house was
burning, and she'd rescued a little girl out
of the house, and suddenly, she was standing
on the windowsill, and the back part of
the house, it's in this book, collapsed behind
her.
And she was standing on the windowsill, and
the flames were rising against her, and the
horrified people in front of her said, in
minutes, that whole portion where she's standing is
going to collapse from under her.
And they started screaming, jump.
But you know, she did the most natural
thing.
She clung to the windowsill, as if it
was her only place or level of safety.
And they were saying, jump, jump, you're going
to die.
You know, please, jump.
Your life is at stake.
But suddenly, in all the cries, there was
one lady who had taken a special interest
in this girl, and she cried out.
She said, dear, jump, my arms will catch
you.
And suddenly, as she heard that voice, she
left the windowsill, and she leapt, and that
lady cushioned her fall.
And they said in the book, from that
day forth, her mental, it seemed as if
that fall, that impact made her alive mentally,
and she developed to be a pleasure to
all around us.
But you see, she had to take the
jump of faith.
And in the same way, we are under
the condemnation of sin.
It's as if the flames of hell, or
as it were, just creeping nearer and nearer
to us.
We stand on the threshold of life, and
who says jump?
The Lord Jesus, just like the cross stands
like this, the Lord Jesus says, jump.
Loose yourself from everything, your own self-righteousness.
All those things you think are going to
keep you safe up there, jump into my
arms.
And I am the only one who can
save you, just like that woman was the
only one that she could jump to, could
cushion her fall.
So the Lord Jesus is the only one
that can save us.
But you know, sadly, there are other voices
that lure us.
And Satan says to us, jump, jump.
I can give you pleasure, I can give
you excitement, I can give you fame, I
can give you the approval of my followers.
But you know, in that picture, it's to
me as if Satan will say, jump.
And when you jump, you'll stand aside, and
you'll fall into the very flames of hell
itself when you do jump.
There's a world that says to us, jump,
come, come to me.
I can give you a reality, satisfaction.
You know, I was reading with horror in
a newspaper many years ago about a man
that wanted to end it all.
He wanted to take his life.
He thought if he took his life, he
would end his misery.
But actually, he would have been in further
misery because he would have entered hell itself.
And in fact, he did end.
But as this man was standing on a
building in Cape Town and said, I'm going
to end my life, there was a crowd
of people underneath.
And do you know what those people said?
Instead of crying, stop, stop, stop, they cried,
jump, with the excitement of the moment.
And you know, there's so many people, we
think they're friends, but they're not friends if
they tell us to jump and head in
the wrong direction.
They want us to jump and be part
of them, but we're heading for hell itself.
The horror of the voices that call.
So the question we have to ask ourselves
is, do we know that we can build
on faith because faith is there?
Can we start adding?
Can we start growing?
Can we start being a real testimony because
we have escaped the wrath like the flames
that are around them?
Or are we perhaps just clinging to our
own self-righteousness?
I'm so good, I'm so much better than
other people.
After all, look at what those people are
doing and I'm not doing those things.
And therefore, we cling to our self-righteousness.
You know, it reminds me of the floods
in the Gamtis Valley many years ago when
I was in grade eight, many, many, many
years ago.
The river came down in flood as it's
done many times and my mom and him
were standing on the banks and suddenly they
looked across this expanse of swirling water and
they saw in the poplar trees these little
black dots.
And they wondered what these black dots were.
And then with horror, they were helpless.
They couldn't get there.
They realized those black dots are actually people
clinging to the tree.
And then suddenly they heard a patter, patter,
patter, patter, patter, and it was a little
helicopter.
And this man, because of the urgency of
realizing these people's fingers were numb with cold,
they'd been hanging on in the night, they
couldn't hold on much longer, he just made
a rope and attached it to the helicopter,
very simplistic, and he'd hung it down with
a loop and he flew over these people
in these trees as they were clinging with
their numb fingers.
But you know, he went to individuals one
by one.
But as the rope came close to them,
they had the choice to leave this tree
with their numb fingers and just grab the
rope.
They couldn't grab the rope and hang on
to the tree at the same time.
It was their only hope of safety.
And there were those who refused to take
the rope, they were too scared, and there
were those who grabbed it.
And they hung on.
And Maimonides said as they watched these people
swinging not high above the water, they thought,
will the rope hold?
It looked so fragile to hold them.
But they said, oh, the cheer, when the
rope got the person to the shore eventually.
And you know, there were those who didn't
hang on.
They didn't hang on.
They hung on, but their fingers were so
numb that when they got halfway across, they
fell into the water and they were lost.
And it reminds me a bit of Demas,
who didn't hang on, did he?
He turned his back on Christ.
So we grasp with the rope of faith
and we cling and we keep holding.
But we have to unclasp, and I'm going
to call that tree the tree of our
self-righteousness.
We've got to unclasp the things we think
will get us to safety.
Church attendance, Bible reading, all those things are
good.
They're part of growth on the other side,
but they will not take us to safety.
And we have to keep clinging in faith.
Does my faith dwindle, falter, if I can't
see ahead, clouds blurring the horizon, hidden what
God hath said?
Or do I lean on his word, as
Abram long ago, knowing what God hath promised
will be, for he said so?
We mustn't only grab the rope, we must
keep clinging.
Our faith must grow despite storms God sends
upon our way.
If we cling to what God said, we
gain in strength each day.
But if we rather despair, not keep our
gaze on God, we will fall and stumble,
lose heart, weary each footstep trod.
You know, just as Abram's faith was tested,
when God, it says in Isaac, shall your
seed be blessed and everything, and God says,
go and offer Isaac.
And as he tested different ones and test
us today with our faith and things happen
the opposite to what we think, God wants
us to cling in trust.
Not only the trust of trusting him for
salvation, but to keep trusting him every step
of the way.
Like Job, Job's wife, her faith crumbled.
But Job, he might have despaired and he
might have murmured, but never ever did his
faith falter.
Now, virtue is the next, the first step.
Virtue, add to your faith, virtue.
Virtue is the outworking of the work of
grace God has done in our hearts.
It's no use to claim salvation if that
salvation is not evident in our lives by
what we do, what we don't do, how
we react.
James said, in James 2, 17, faith without
works is dead.
Real faith will work out in your life.
If faith is not seen by virtue shown,
it is either non-existent or we're hiding
it under a cover or a bushel.
Virtue is goodness on the inside shining out.
And you know, I love the write-up
in Proverbs about the virtuous woman.
She was very busy, but you know, her
virtue was shown in the very ordinary things
she did.
And that you and I do, food, linen,
sewing, business, all those mundane tasks, God labeled
her as a virtuous woman.
Are we eager and bustling, even in these
very practical things, to just live out virtue
for the Lord, live out our faith for
the Lord?
Or is there nothing of that in our
lives?
You know, I don't know if you people
did that.
When we were children, we took a bean
seed and then we put it under wet
cotton wool in between two layers of cotton
wool.
And then the exciting moment was when we
saw a little green shoot come out of
those beans.
Do you also do that with children to
teach them how things grow?
But if no green shoot came out of
the bean seed, then we knew that was
a dud seed.
It wasn't real.
And so if faith does not work out
in our lives, then we've got to question
ourselves and say, is my faith genuine?
Have I really passed from death unto life?
Or must I question?
Now there was a little girl I read
in a book, and she read in a
journal these words, tasks done with a good
attitude become a pleasure.
So in other words, what I'm trying to
say is we don't only have to do
the right thing, but we've got to do
it with the right attitude.
Now this little girl was so excited because
her friend was coming to visit her for
the day.
And she dressed up in a cashmere dress,
it's Victorian times, with a big bow at
the back and she was ready.
And she heard a call from downstairs, come
along, and she said, coming, and she was
so eager.
But when she got down and looked over
the banisters, her mom said, would you give
up your friend for the day?
The servant that does all the work, he's
got a headache, and I want you to
take her place for the day.
And she was just about to say, no,
I'll never, how can you expect me to
give up the whole day and everything, when
suddenly it came back to her.
What were the words I read?
Tasks done with a good attitude became a
pleasure.
And she determined that she would try to
please God in this way.
And so the book follows her through all
the tasks that she did, and she had
to discipline herself to do it with a
good attitude, and it became a pleasure.
So virtue is not only doing what is
right, but doing it with joy and the
right attitude.
You know, you get some people, they do,
all right, I'll do it, I'll do exactly
what you say, but they sort of moan
all the time.
No, that isn't true virtue.
The little girl had added to her faith
the proper version of virtue.
Although I claim to be God's child, nobody
thinks it's true.
For I have not allowed virtue my nature
to renew.
Did Peter not say we must add virtue
to faith that we could grow and be
examples, all that God's child should be.
Then after virtue, we add wisdom and knowledge.
That's the next adding.
Now Proverbs 24, verse three says, through wisdom
is a house builded, and by understanding is
it established, and by knowledge shall the chambers
be filled with all precious and pleasant riches.
Now we need wisdom as women.
Whether we be children or adults or older
people, we need wisdom to make our home
environment, the room we stay in, the place
we are in, to make it comfortable, to
make it a welcome haven for not children,
for friends, and to make it comfortable for
our parents.
Wives should seek knowledge how to treat their
husbands, how to give a listening ear at
all times, to see the needs on every
level, and jealously guard that place as the
husband's best friend.
Because if you do not take in that
place, somebody else is going to usurp you
in that place.
It is very important to have sympathy with
his plans, his hopes, his dreams.
But perhaps your husband is antagonistic.
If you have a husband, he's cruel, he's
selfish, he doesn't uphold you before the children.
Now you need to seek wisdom to keep
your side of the slate clean so that
when the family remembers the situations, they remember
your reaction, and your reaction later in life
might be a pointer to Christ himself.
You have to also cover with a mantle
of love the idiosyncrasies of your husband, the
funny things that your children might do or
ask of you, because you want to please
God in every relationship that you have got.
Perhaps you've got an unsaved husband.
You seek to win him to God, studying
how best to please him on normal levels
that one day he may seek the God
that you are trying to please.
You also need wisdom how to avoid pitfalls.
You know, I was with people, it was
just so, you know, they had children, there
was a whole lot of children around us,
and I could just see where these kids
are heading for a real fight.
And this person just distracted them.
You know, wisdom, to know how to distract
before it becomes a big issue, how to
be forgiving, even as children, to your parents
when they do wrong, to defuse difficult situations,
and to handle difficult personalities.
And then you learn by experience.
They said Moses was the meekest man on
earth, but I think he wouldn't have been
so meek if he didn't have such a
difficult people to deal with.
And sometimes we think, why did I land
up with this lot, you might say.
But if you allow God to teach you
how to handle with wisdom, whatever your situation
is, whether it be at work, you will
learn from it, and you will gain wisdom.
Sometimes we have to talk down.
Sometimes we have to talk up and get
more knowledge to be able to talk.
We have to bear with the fragile and
the aged, that they can sense their worth.
We have to appreciate their years of experience.
There's so much wisdom, it is unending.
We will never learn enough.
And we need to add to our faith
and virtue, knowledge.
And of course, the foremost source of knowledge
is the scripture, isn't it?
But you know what, you can gain that
knowledge and use it wrongly.
I was in a meeting, and there were
two uncompromising people at the meeting.
And the one just bombarded and was cruel
with the correct knowledge that he was imparting.
But the other one spoke the same things,
but with such love that people went crawling
and hiding from his words.
We have to know and learn the wisdom
of how to interact with people.
We gain wisdom through studying scripture, and we
gain wisdom on how to show ourselves approved
unto God, but we have to how to
deal with souls in love, and yet to
be true to the scriptures at the same
time.
We need that wisdom.
And God says, add to your faith, virtue,
and to virtue, knowledge.
There are Christians who, there are the Christians
who have been saved.
We know it's true.
But wisdom, sadly lacking in what they say
and do.
Not wise, how sad the verdict on such
a stagnant heart.
Not reaching their potential planned for them from
the start.
Now the next step is temperance.
Now what is temperance?
Temperance is self-control, and we need it
in most areas of our lives, but especially
with our speech.
Proverbs 16, 32, he that is slow to
anger is better than the mighty, and he
that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh
a city.
James 3, if any man offend not in
word, the same is a perfect man, and
able to bridle the whole body.
Behold, we put bits in the horses' mouths
that they may obey us, and we turn
about the whole body.
Behold also the ships, which though they be
so great, and are driven by fierce winds,
yet are they turned about with a very
small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth.
Even so the tongue is a little member,
and boasteth great things.
Behold, our greater matter a little fire kindleth,
and the tongue is a fire, a world
of iniquity.
So is the tongue among our members that
it defileth the whole body, and setteth on
fire the course of nature, and is set
on fire of hell.
What a warning.
We need temperance and self-control when it
comes to our tongue.
I think we need to take note that
it says the bit and the helm.
It's such a small little thing that turns
the tongue in the right direction.
And I think to me, for me personally,
that speaks of the Holy Spirit.
We know when God says in our heart,
don't do that, just avoid that, just keep
quiet.
He is, there's the little bit that is
trying to steer us in the right direction.
But if there was a horse and he
didn't want to listen to the way the
person was directing him, and he pushed against
the bit, what would happen to his mouth?
That bit would hurt him.
And so when we resist the Holy Spirit's
leading, or the remembrance of scripture that he
reminds us of, and we resist it, we
are going to be hurt.
And we're going to be heading not where
we should be, and where God wants us.
We may speak with anger, whining, moaning, murmuring.
And it blots our testimony and harms God's
testimony.
And we can also explode in anger.
Now, in the Golden Ten Minutes, I read
about a little girl who had a terrible
temper.
Now, I sympathize with her, because when I
was a little girl, I had quite a
temper.
And when I was about eight, nine, I
had to really put that on the altar
and say, Lord, I submit to Thee, and
I'm going to do everything in my power
not to get cross, you know?
But anyway, this little girl had a temper,
and her father was reading in the newspaper
about a boiler that burst at Dorchester.
And many lives were lost, and the building
was damaged.
And the visiting uncle came, and he was
sitting at the table, and he said, well,
that could probably have been avoided.
In most cases, that can be avoided.
And she said, how, to the uncle.
And he said, you know, when a boiler
explodes, when a boiler explodes, it's usually because
there aren't enough safety valves.
A boiler needs a safety valve that it
doesn't end exploding itself.
And he said, turned to the little girl,
and he said, do you know, I was
once a human boilerette.
I exploded at everything until I discovered the
safety valve that helped me in the situation.
So she said, how did it work?
So she said, you know, when I was
saved, I committed everything to God, but because
I was so used to exploding, he said,
this boiler, it was in such a habit
that when the next situation happened like this,
I was ready to explode again.
But he said, my safety valve was to
call on God immediately before I exploded and
ask him to help me.
So what does he do?
When we call on God, I've been in
situations like that, and I think, how can
they do that?
And I just wanted to react and say,
oh Lord, please just help me to deal
with this situation.
And then, you know, when we do that,
when we use that safety valve, then we
see things from God's perspective.
And we see there's a bigger picture around
the situation.
And we stop that angry rejoinder, which is
so detrimental to our testimony.
All of us can cry for help.
We can all use that safety valve.
Everyone is facing different situations.
And God can help each one of us
in our situation if we lean on him.
Psalm 141, verse three, set a watch, oh
Lord, before my mouth.
Keep the doors of my lips.
We need temperance and self-control in all
areas, whether it's eating, whether it's our behavior,
everything needs to be tempered with temperance.
Can that be said of you as a
Christian?
It's hard to control your temper when you
know you are right.
It's far easier to end up in a
huge verbal fight.
It's hard to be the least when others
force you to do the things that they
neglected and dump it onto you.
It's hard to listen quietly to one who
thinks her words are full of wisdom when
they are boring and absurd.
It's hard to hold in anger when people
hurt and jab, when every word they utter
enters like a deep stab.
But self-control is vital to keep your
witness bright at home, at work, on all
fields, essential to stay bright.
The next essential step to be added as
a Christian and to guard against backsliding is
patience.
Now when we think of patience, we immediately
think of patience towards other people.
And of course, we do need to have
patience towards other people.
But there's another vitally important aspect of patience
that we need to exercise and add to
faith in our lives.
And that is patience towards God when we
do not understand what he brings upon our
path.
What he's doing and why he is doing
these things.
Think of the patience that Joseph had to
have when he experienced all those trials and
disaster before God fulfilled his promise.
And sometimes we hang on to promises for
God to answer.
And so many things happen to the contrary,
but we have to cling and stay trusting
and exercise patience.
Romans 12 to rejoicing in hope, patient in
tribulation, continuing instant in prayer.
Hebrews 10, 35, 36, cast not away your
confidence, which has great recompense of reward, for
you have need of patience.
That after you have done the will of
God, you might receive the promise.
My granny, 40 years praying, eventually God answered.
James 1, 4, but let patience have a
perfect work that he may be perfect and
entire, wanting nothing.
Are you allowing patience to have her perfect
work in your heart?
Now, we're given a lesson in nature.
We all know about a little pupa in
a cocoon and how the pupa breaks the
cocoon and then it comes out of the
cocoon and it's a beautiful butterfly.
But when it's struggling to get out of
that cocoon, it really looks as if it's
having a hard time.
But God allows it to struggle, to break
the cocoon and to get out, because that
period of struggling is actually the strengthening of
the moth.
And once the moth is out, it can
fly high because it gains strength even in
that process.
Now, there was a little boy or a
girl and they were watching the cocoon and
they thought, oh, that little moth is so
struggling.
I'm going to help it.
And so they took a scissors and they
cut it open.
But when the moth came out, it wasn't
strong.
It couldn't, it limped as it flew.
It just wasn't the same as what it
would have been if it went through that
period of trial.
We also have to have patience as God
puts trials upon us and trust him that
it will help us and strengthen us so
that we can rise above the situation that
he places upon us.
My dad quoted this quote, Troy, that he
had read.
He said, I have enough faith that God
will answer my prayers and patience enough to
await his timing.
I'm going to read that again.
I've enough faith that God will answer my
prayers and patience enough to await his timing.
I sometimes find it hard to have patience
with prayers I have.
It's all very well to say we have
faith when everything falls into place.
But when disappointment and trouble abound, it's patience
we need in the race.
Patience to trust God and rest in his
will.
Patience that in our heart peace will instill.
Patience just waits that we can't understand because
we're holding tight onto God's hand.
Now, another aspect of patience that is essential
and to add to our faith is patience
with others around us.
Although God has infinite patience with us, I
find in the Christian world, we often don't
have the same patience shown to us with
those around us.
Ephesians 4.32 says, and be ye kind
to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even
as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you.
Now, when a little baby is born, I'm
sure you've all heard the story from one
book or another, the one little brother or
sister was looking at the baby and said,
he's not finished at all.
Where are his teeth?
Where is his hair?
And as a baby, Google, the baby can't
speak.
He's not proper at all.
He's not the finished product.
You know, as a weak little baby needs
patience to learn to focus in the first
month and then to react and all those
things, how to crawl, to stand, it's all
those steps.
We need patience.
Imagine if you said to the baby, listen
here, you've come in our house and you
better just hurry up.
We can't wait.
We need to have patience for Glenn to
speak properly.
You're in certain words, but there's a lot
of guessing going on with these sentences.
We need patience.
But you know, we are so impatient with
this newborn spiritual babies.
We expect them to run when they're not
even at the crawling stage.
We expect them to speak like theologians when
they are not at the time to speak
like that.
Just as God had patience with us, we
need to have patience with the little babies
in the faith.
When little babies cannot walk, we smile and
say one day they'll be running us out
of breath.
Just wait and see, we say.
When little babies cannot talk and merely smile
and pout, we smile and say they'll soon
converse and even scream and shout.
We know that it takes time to learn
to grow into a man.
Their baby steps and stuttering words, we excuse,
understand.
And yet we are impatient when converts are
quite new and don't do all the very
things we think that they should do.
We do not show them patience, remembering that
we were once too a mere baby, growing
steadily.
Have you added patience to your faith?
Now we come to godliness.
And godliness is a further step on the
road from virtue.
It's more and more Christ-like.
Kenneth Bedwell, his father was asked, what is
godliness?
And he said godliness is just becoming more
like Jesus.
1 Timothy 6, 11 and 12, but thou,
O man of God, flee these things and
follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.
Follow after.
The world expects us to be godly.
They are disappointed if we are not godly.
When David fell, what did God say?
The enemies of God will blaspheme, they'll stumble
over what he did.
When we have failures, when we are ungodly,
the world says Christianity does not work.
It is not worth seeking.
Think of the price Christ paid on the
cross.
That price that he paid for every one
of us should make us want to be
godly.
We should not want to discredit his work
on the cross.
Gratitude should make us strive to be as
godly as we can.
Won't it be sad one day when we
stand before God and there'll be people that
pointed at us and say your ungodly life
made me, put me off Christianity.
You claim to be a Christian, but your
life was so un-Christ-like.
Now Evangeline Booth, Mrs. Booth's daughter, had a
little pet monkey, and she contrived to make
a little Salvation Army uniform for this monkey.
And she put the monkey on and she
was so excited and her mother suddenly, she
showed her mother this monkey in the Salvation
Army uniform.
And her mother said, take it off immediately.
I would like you to take it off.
So she took it off and she came
back after and she said, but mommy, there's
nothing wrong with putting that, I thought it
was so clever.
And the mother said, no, I don't want
that uniform on that monkey because that monkey
can't live the life.
If we claim to be Christians, we need
to be godly and we need to live
the life.
Are we parading as Christians?
We claim we have faith, but godliness, the
outworking of faith does not correspond in our
life.
We're careless in our habits.
Worldliness is dominant in our lives.
We're not diligent to add to our faith,
not only virtue, but godliness.
There's no excuse.
2 Corinthians 9, 8, and God is able
to make all grace abound toward you, that
you always having all sufficiency in all things
may abound to every good work.
We can't blame God if we're not godly.
It is us that have not added to
our faith godliness.
The world is watching them, us.
Do we draw them to Christ?
What do they see?
Our children, our parents, our brothers, our sisters.
Do they say we are godly in what
we do?
Let us strive to add to our faith
godliness.
God can form us into his image.
I feel ashamed when I think back of
what was seen in me.
Sadly, others will not reply that I have
been godly.
Instead of seeking to please God in every
single way, I did just as I pleased.
Therefore, people provoked each day.
Oh Lord, I must confess that I have
fallen into sin.
I fear that those who know me now
will be harder to win.
Cleanse me, dear Lord.
I wish to grow more godly every day,
to be a light, not stumbling block to
others on my way.
And then we come to brotherly kindness.
We have to have kind thoughts about fellow
Christians.
We have to make allowances for their weakness
because as we said, they may not be
at the same stage that we are on
the road.
They may be still learning to stand up
and not run.
Christ was a compassionate high priest.
He remembered that we were dust.
He had compassion on us in our infirmities
and let us have the same compassion on
our brothers.
Are we quick to judge?
Now, the one minister was so irritated when
he gave his sermon because there was a
little old lady that sat in his congregation.
And when he started giving the sermon, she
sat with her back towards him and all
she was looking at was the door.
And so she missed the first 15 minutes
of his sermon while stragglers came into the
congregation.
So he said it was just, and he
just saw her back.
And when the end of the sermon came
and he made his appeal and people came,
there were those who shuffled home under conviction
and wanted to get home fast enough, but
she would run to the back of the
church and she'd be standing there and greet
everybody that came out.
So he said to her, but why do
you come to church at all?
I mean, you're not listening to the first
part of my sermon and you can't wait
to get out of the church at the
end to stand at the back and just
greet the people.
Why did you come?
So she says, oh, did you not realize?
It was my mission.
I smiles them in and I smiles them
out.
So there while he was judging her, it
was her life mission that she was trying
to fulfill.
And then Peter reaches the peak of the
adding on, the sum we have to do
as Christians.
And what is the peak?
It was charity, love, the crowning virtue.
Ephesians 3.17, that he being rooted and
grounded in love.
Corinthians 13, we all know that portion where
he describes, it draws a picture, a painting
of what love is.
How does love, if we've added love to
faith, how does it show itself to the
world?
And of course, charity is a word for
love.
It says, charity suffereth long and is kind.
Charity envieth not.
Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.
Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her
own.
Is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil.
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the
truth.
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all
things, endureth all things.
Charity never faileth.
Love is the crowning addition that makes the
sum complete.
To love others and to love God.
When the Lord Jesus was tricked and they
said, we want you to sum up the
commandments, what did he say?
Love God with your whole heart and love
your neighbor as yourself.
Love is the crowning virtue.
And if we love somebody, if you love
somebody, you'll keep talking about that person.
Is that not correct?
If you hear somebody's in love, you'll find
that person is just on their lips.
And so in the same way, our love
for God should just bubble over.
That others will say, well, obviously they love
God because they can't stop speaking about him.
And I mentioned at girls camp, the one
chief, somebody confronted him and said, why are
you always talking about God?
I mean, why can't you just talk about
normal things?
Why are you so full of God?
And then he put a little dry circle
of twigs like this and he put a
worm in the middle and then he lit
those twigs.
And suddenly the little worm was going left,
right, left, right to get out of the
circle.
And suddenly he realized there's no escape.
And then what did he look?
The worm pulled itself up and looked up.
It was as if the worm cried help
and this chief lifted the worm out to
safety.
And he said, that is what Christ did
for me.
If Christ has done that for you, if
he has, you have passed from death unto
life, oh, you should just be bubbling over
with love and gratitude for what God has
done for you.
1 John 4, 16, he that dwelleth in
love, in God, he that dwelleth in love
dwelleth in God and God in him.
Have we added love?
Has love, his love, influenced the way we
speak, the things we do, what we avoid
because of our love for him?
Is our driving passion love?
Is that what people think of us?
When they think of us, do they say,
she really loves God?
Because I can see it.
It has to be seen.
Or is our passion things of the world
and things around, they say, I didn't know
she loved God at all.
Not the way she speaks, not the way
she does or what she does.
Love lets me walk the extra mile and
turn the other cheek.
Love lets me temper what I say into
an answer meek.
Love lets me seek in word and deed
to rather be the least, in all things
seeking God's well done until all toil is
ceased.
At the end of addition, love crowns the
final sum, for love holds all the virtues
and makes them into one.
In closing, we have to ask ourselves, have
we grasped that rope of faith?
Are we still clinging to our self-righteousness
and other things?
Are we still clinging like those people to
the tree because in that flood, one after
another of those trees fell down with the
people that weren't willing to leave the tree
and to grab the rope.
Can we add in our life, because faith
is the bottom line, is faith your foundation?
Is there a moment that you can testify
as that girl who leapt from the burning
building knew that she had leapt to safety?
Then we have to ask ourselves, have we
grown since that day?
Is it perhaps that God in this afternoon
has put his finger on an area in
our life that we have not grown, that
we have not diligently endeavored, as Paul said,
to press towards the mark.
It's possible that I may be blind, stumbling
on my way, because addition was not thought
essential for each day.
Although I grasped the rope of faith was
saved by God's own grace, addition did not
follow, thus stumbling in the race.
For after faith comes virtue, essential for each
one to live out her salvation.
In all that's said and done, work out
your own salvation, my sheep will follow me.
Obedience is the keystone right to eternity.
Then comes a word called temperance, to keep
yourself in hand, keeping your temper constant, doing
as God hath planned.
And then the next essential, patience upon your
way, to bear with other's failings, to trust
God has full sway.
The next stage in addition is godliness, for
you will become more like Jesus in everything
you do.
Of course, kindness is part of the great
addition call, to reach out to your brother,
to lift those who may fall.
When you have reached the goalpost, adding upon
your way, charity will be the virtue that
crowns all else that day.
What is the secret answer in your heart
with the question that God has confronted you
with?
Are you resolved to add?
Do not be stagnant, do not rest on
your laurels, we'll never slide into heaven.
But didn't Paul says, this one thing I
do, I press towards the mark, for me
to live is Christ, there's action.
Christianity is climbing, he will make my feet
like hind's feet, to leap upon the high
places, there's action, we have to add, Peter
says.
How sad when Christians do not care to
grow in grace each day, they do not
seek those higher heights, God sets upon their
way, instead of striving to please God, more
Christlike to become, they remain little babies, and
stay where they've begun.
May that not be true of us, amen.