Supplement your Faith

I show you my shoe only to act as a comparison to the dictionary I wanted to buy at the Gainesville library book sale. I wanted the Oxford English Dictionary, seen on the right in 2 volumes. Oh, and it is the Compact Edition of the OED. I cannot imagine what the expanded edition might weigh. Not sure I would have even been able to lift both books, so I left them behind for some other nerdy soul with a forklift to purchase it. Someday, my OED will come along.

In 2 Peter 1.5-7, Peter provides a list of qualities that we should have to supplement our faith to keep us from falling into the corruption of this world. Lists are easy to by-pass in the Bible. We tend to think we've heard it, we know it, move on. But sometimes we need to stop and focus on the information and really think about what each of these qualities means to us today. I don't want to just know what the verses say, I want to be able to incorporate each of these qualities in my life.

Virtue- goodness or excellence, prudence, fortitude, temperance, justice, faith, hope, charity, chastity

Knowledge- understanding, familiarity gained by experience, range of information

Self-control- control of one's own feeling and behavior

Steadfastness- firm and unchanging, keeping firm

Godliness- loving and obeying God, deeply religious

Brotherly affection- kindly feeling, love

Love- have strong affection or deep, tender feeling for, worship, very fond of, find pleasure in

Suffice it to say, I have work to do in these areas. My faith will be a lot stronger if I take Peter's advice to supplement it with these important elements. I may do well in my self-control but how am I doing in my brotherly affection? Am I showing kindly feelings to others, or does my independent lifestyle cause me to be too cold sometimes, instead of showing warmth to people?

And while I read excessively to gain knowledge about many things, that is only part of the whole. Am I gaining knowledge through different experiences? Am I staying firm and unchanging in this wavering, crippled world?

I know the answers to these questions in my own heart and these verses opened up some new things that need to be opened. Peter is telling us that without these qualities we are fruitless. We may have faith but what are we doing with it? Can we bear fruit if we are not nourishing our faith? Peter says no. He says if we practice these qualities we will not fall, because we will be established in the truth in everything we do.

Bookish nerd that I obviously am, you should not be surprised that I turned to my dictionary to look up each word in order to better understand what they mean specifically. I find it to be helpful to apply the qualities to my life when I fully comprehend the meaning of a word. Hopefully, this is helpful to you, too.