Add To Your Faith (081025)
Notes
Transcript
Guests continue to come to SCBC
Guests continue to come to SCBC
We had 9 guests (5 different family groups) this morning.
Did you realize that they were here? Did you greet them? Did you show them around?
Do you know where to find Connection Cards?
Church family, please be “bothered” if I don’t seem to pay attention to you or our usual regular attenders - especially if we have guests.
We never get a second chance to make a first impression!
How are we doing at that? How are you doing with that?
Some times these guests want us to get involved in their lives!
“I hope you can involve my grandkids in your church, as well as their father when he returns from out of town.”
Please check your emails. Some of you received information to be able to follow-up with these guests.
SCBC Purpose
SCBC Purpose
Proclaiming the Gospel and experiencing the miracle of changed lives.
And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
SCBC Mission
SCBC Mission
But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:
It is our desire to be the church in Pineville, NC where people can:
• Find the Truth
• Grow in the Truth
• Learn to live the Truth
• Learn to share the Truth
• All in the love of God!
The question, that I have been pondering:
How do we best utilize our limited resources to most effectively and efficiently accomplish our purpose and our mission?
Questions…
Questions…
When do you prefer our mid-week service - Wednesdays or Thursdays or do you like how we do it now - Wednesdays during the school year and Thursdays during July and August?
We have plenty of new move in contacts!
What would be the best night of the week for outreach?
Ladies, would you be interested in having a a time of ladies outreach, one morning a week? Which day of the week?
Add To…
Add To…
Turn to and read 2 Peter 1:1-10.
Peter, in verses 5-7, gives us the “ingredients” for becoming a fruitful and productive Christian as we see in verse 8:
For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
One way in which all of this can be summed up is:
Christian Maturity
Christian Maturity
Turn to and read 2 Peter 1:5-7.
“Add to…” Remember that each of these items is not a “once and done” proposition. Each must constantly attended to and nurtured if we are going to experience the maturity that Peter speaks of in this passage.
“The List”
“The List”
Faith
Faith
And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith…
We must constantly strengthening our faith.
But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,
The building and strengthening of our faith comes through God’s Word.
So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Question: What have you been reading/studying in God’s Word recently?
Virtue
Virtue
And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue…
Greek dictionaries define the word for virtue as:
Excellence of Character
Excellence of Character
One Bible scholar stated it this way, in reference to this word, virtue:
Something was excellent—virtuous—only if it fulfilled its purpose.
A Christian is “worthless” if they aren’t fulfilling their purpose.
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:
Our purpose is to develop and display the excellencies of our God!
We should not “settle” for anything less than Christ-likeness.
The single-minded pursuit of Christ-likeness should be normal for us as believers.
Question: Is this our conscious, daily pursuit?
Question: What is the enemy of being single-minded?
Knowledge
Knowledge
And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;
Virtue - excellence of character that manifests itself in the single-minded pursuit of Christ-likeness will naturally lead to knowledge - knowledge of Christ.
We know that this is what Peter has in mind because of how he ends his letter:
But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.
Question: Where does this knowledge come from?
The Christian who desires to know Christ will make the reading, memorization, meditation and study of God’s Word a consistent part of their life.
Note: Isn’t it “funny” how so many “things” in the Christian life center around the Word of God?
The commitment to Christlikeness (virtue) must be continually fueled with the knowledge of Christ and His ways.
A Christ-centered life is possible only for the Word-filled believer.
Question: What are you/what am I neglecting?
the reading of God’s Word
the memorization of God’s Word
the meditation in God’s Word
the study of God’s Word
In all of this, though, we must not divorce virtue from knowledge.
Pastor Campbell, What do you mean?
Some people might say, “I have desire to grow in my knowledge of God and God’s Word; I want to know Christ more.”
But, we need to ask, “Why? Why do you have that desire? Why do you want to know Christ more?”
Unfortunately, for some, they have a desire for more knowledge simply for the sake of having more knowledge.
Knowledge puffeth up…
This is why a young person can attend a Christian school, graduate with honors, and yet qualify as a fool or even worse, a scorner.
They have viewed the facts they have learned—even about God and His Word—as particulars.
They were merely pieces of information that they needed in order to pass tests and conform to a religious environment, but they did not embrace them with have the ultimate goal of becoming like Christ.
A.W. Tozer wrote (in The Pursuit of God):
The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.
How is this type of knowledge acquired?
When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.
O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: My soul thirsteth for thee, My flesh longeth for thee In a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;
Again, A.W. Tozer (in The Pursuit of God):
The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture.
It is too slow, too common.
We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action.
A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals.
We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God.
We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar.
Are we cultivating our knowledge of God?
Are we exercising our knowledge of God?
A.W. Tozer wrote this:
Lord, teach me to listen.
The times are noisy and my ears are weary with the thousand raucous sounds which continuously assault them.
Give me the spirit of the boy Samuel when he said to Thee, "Speak, for thy servant heareth." Let me hear Thee speaking in my heart.
Let me get used to the sound of Thy Voice, that its tones may be familiar when the sounds of earth die away and the only sound will be the music of Thy speaking Voice. Amen.
