Let's look at 2 Peter chapter number 1, and I've got a little echo here, I think. Maybe it's just me. But 2 Peter chapter number 1, verse number 8, let's look at verse number 8. We'll come back to some other verses here in just a moment. Second Peter chapter number one, verse number eight, we're going to read down through verse number 15. And it says for these, 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. And if you've got a pen, uh, you might take out, I've done this already, probably somebody else already preached this message. Uh, and so we'll get it a second time, but circle the word, these things. And, uh, and those words and then in verse number nine it says, but he that lacketh these things, you can circle that again, is blind and cannot see afar off and hath forgotten that which was purged from his old sins. Wherefore, the rather brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure, for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall. For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Verse number 12, wherefore, I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them and be established in the present truth. Yea, and I think it meet. as long as I am in this tabernacle to stir you up by putting you in remembrance, knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ has showed me." And then in verse number 15, moreover, I will endeavor that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance. And I want you to look at that verse again I wrote this down here, if these things be in you and abound, and abound the Bible says, that means overflowing, they make you that ye shall neither be barren, which means idle, alright, nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let me ask you, are you idle? Are you unfruitful? Just ask yourself that question. Do you feel like you're going through a time in your life to where maybe you're just not as fruitful as you ought to be? And then the other verse we read, he that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see afar off and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Have you forgotten where God has brought you from? If you've gone back to the day when you got saved, and you remember where you used to be, and where God brought you out of, and where you are today, you know, we can't forget about that. We've got to go back, and the Bible says that if we lack these things, and we'll get to these things here in a minute, we're blind, and we can't see. Hey, we forget about what happened in the past, and we need to be careful about that. And then the Bible says, if you do these things, ye shall never fall. Never fall. I don't know about you, but I don't want to fall. I don't want to become idle. I don't want to become unfruitful. I don't want to fall out of God's will. And I don't think any of us want that, but the Bible is very clear. It says here, if you do these things, you shall never fall. I mean, never fall. And so we need to do these things. What are these things? And have you ever fallen away, Christian? Have you ever got backslidden on God? And you maybe wonder why that may take place, and maybe you don't have these things. Are you walking in darkness? I remember when I first came here, I remember a pastor had preached a message of walking in darkness. And I remember him just saying how, you know, sometimes you don't see what God is doing in your life and you may not see that next step. And he said, you just keep walking. You just keep walking. But are you walking in darkness? Have you lost your hope? Have you lost your faith? Have you given up on God? Have you given up on the church? Have something happened maybe in the church where you and another church member just didn't quite see eye to eye? And have you given up on the church? Have you given up on your pastor? I don't know if you've ever been through a time to where you just don't understand what is happening in your life. It seems like maybe your life is just falling apart and you're ready just to throw in the towel. You're just like, what in the world's going on? Have you gotten to that point to where you've kind of gotten idle in your Christian life and and hey listen we got to be careful that we don't allow ourselves to go down a road of bitterness and and discontentment and and problems in our life that that maybe affect us and and we become casual in our Christian life and and as we become casual we become a casualty and we don't want that to happen. Have you quit? Maybe on the inside you have quit and you come to church every Sunday morning, maybe you teach that Sunday school class, maybe you teach your junior church class, maybe you're a greeter out in the parking lot, or maybe whatever duty that you do in the church, maybe you still go soul winning on a regular basis, you still read your Bible, you still spend time in prayer, but have you really quit on the inside? I mean, we get to a place sometimes in our Christian life to where we just kinda go through the motions, and we gotta be careful about that. We need to make sure that we have these things in our life, and perhaps we're lacking some of these things. What are these things? I'm glad you asked. Let's look at it. Chapter number one is, again, let's look at verse number three. It says, according as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto the life and godliness through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to his glory and virtue. Verse number four, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. And verse number five, here's the list right here, eight things. And besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to your virtue, knowledge, and to knowledge, temperance, and to temperance, patience, and to patience, godliness, and to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, charity. And those eight things right there, those are these things that God's talking about here. Do we have these things? Let's just quickly look at these here. I really don't think we'll be very long. I just wanna briefly look at each one of these things here. The first one is faith. And faith is foundational in the Christian life. Hey, without faith, we can't even get saved. Faith is just something that we can't really, we can't see it, we can't see the end results, but faith is just believing that God is who he is and he's gonna do what he says he's gonna do. We have to have faith. I mean, everything in the Christian life, that's the foundation of the Christian life. You can't get saved without having faith, and faith is the foundation. Hebrews 2 and verse 4 says, the just shall live by his faith. Matthew chapter number 9 and verse 22, says that thy faith hath made thee whole. And that's found many times throughout scripture, that phrase, thy faith hath made thee whole. Luke 7.50 says thy faith hath saved thee. Romans 117, another phrase that's found many times in the Bible, the just shall live by faith. Romans 3.28, a man is justified by faith. Romans 5.2, we have access by faith. Romans 11.20, thou standest by faith. 2 Corinthians 5.7, for we walk by faith, not by sight. And then I wrote down Hebrews 11.6, without faith, it is impossible to please God. Hey, faith is the foundation of the Christian life. Without it, we can't exist in this life. We will never have a home in heaven without faith. Hey, we'll never be a success in this Christian life without faith. Everything in the Christian life is revolved around faith. We've got to believe. We've got to have faith that God can do anything. We must trust God by faith in all things. You know, it seems so easy to get saved once you understand the simplicity of salvation. It's just faith. It's just trusting God. You know, and we go through the Christian life and after we get saved and we get to that place to where we come to ourselves and we realize that we're not good enough to get to heaven on our own and we trust Jesus Christ because we realize that in all of our efforts we fail. And we try, and we try, and we try, and then we fail. And we finally turn to Christ, and by faith we trust Him, a God that we've never even seen. I mean, we read a book that teaches about God in heaven and Jesus Christ dying on the cross, and we never even saw that take place. But by faith, we trust that God says He is who He is, and that He really did send His Son down to die on a cross. and to take the sin of the whole world, including your sin and my sin, so that we could have a hope of eternal life up in heaven. And by faith, we believe that. And we got saved when we asked Christ into our heart and we trusted Him by faith, and then we become a Christian by faith, and then we think that that's the end of our faith. That's the foundation of the Christian life. We have got to trust God in every area of our lives, not just salvation, but every area of our lives with this thing of faith. We have to trust Him with salvation. We have to trust Him in our relationships. We cannot have a successful relationship in this world without faith. We gotta trust God by faith to help us with that. Our finances, we cannot operate our finances and be good stewards of our finances without faith. You know what's so important, and I try to explain this to my Sunday school class on a frequent basis, on this thing of giving. And I am not ashamed at all to teach and preach on giving. Because I've seen how God has blessed my life and my family because we have learned this thing of giving. Listen, if you wanna strengthen your faith in Jesus Christ, learn this area of giving. Man, it'll challenge you, it'll force you to trust God. And I'm just saying, God is good. God is able to save us, he's able to take care of anything that comes in our lives. Whether it's financial, poverty, whether it's relationship problems, whatever it may be, if he is capable of saving me as a sinner, he can do anything. And I need to believe that by faith. That's the foundation of the Christian life. A serving Him. Well, we might think that we're not capable of doing whatever God may call us to do. Hey, if God calls us to do something, He always equips. Always. And we gotta believe Him by faith. Because without faith, we can't do anything. serving Him, living for Him, dealing with problems. Problems will come, and by faith we have to trust God to help us through every single problem, every single trial that comes into our life. Hey, we can get through this world by faith, but it takes faith, and that's the foundational thing. Then the Bible teaches to add to our faith virtue. The second thing is virtue, and virtue is just strength. I wrote down a few things here. Courage, moral goodness. I've written down before character, but let's focus on the strength, courage. Matthew Henry, the commentary says this here, the righteous must be bold as a lion, Proverbs 28 1. A cowardly Christian who is afraid to possess the doctrines or practice the duties of the gospel, I believe it's talking about soul winning, I think that's what he had on mind, must expect that Christ will be ashamed of him another day. Hey, God wants us to get the gospel out. God wants us not to be ashamed of the gospel. Are you ashamed of him in public? You know, sometimes we may be in the workplace and maybe we'll go to lunchtime and, you know, we want to look around and see who's watching, whether we're going to bow our head and just have a simple prayer. Now, we believe in God. We confess that we're Christians. We're not, but we're sometimes ashamed just to do the basic Christian things. And I'm not saying just because you pray at lunchtime makes you a godly person, but I think we're ashamed sometimes to profess that we're Christians. I mean, many times while I was in the Navy, I remember when I'd take a stand for what was right. I started a Bible study one time, and it's amazing how many Christians come out of the woodwork. You'd be surprised. I get to go into a lot of the homes through our area doing window sales and things like that. I am always amazed at the number of those people that are Christians. I'm just amazed. And you'd be surprised, really, if you would just stand up for Christ, you'd be surprised the number of people in your workspace that probably claim to be Christians. You know what they're waiting for? They're waiting for somebody to be bold enough to stand strong and say, you know what, I'm a Christian. I'm going to stand where I believe. And they would probably stand up for Christ with you because you stand. And we need to have courage. We need Christians who are not afraid to stand for right and for the cause of Christ. It takes boldness to preach the gospel. It takes boldness to stand for right. It takes courage to have integrity in a world that knows no difference between right and wrong. We've got to be courageous. We've got to stand for right. That's going to take boldness. That's going to take courage. And it's important. And then we add to our virtue knowledge. Knowledge. The believer must add knowledge to his virtue or prudence to his courage. Matthew Henry commentary again. I've got a lot from this here. Christian prudence regards the persons we have to do with and the place and company we are in. In other words, be careful who you hang out with, the places you go, and who you allow to influence you. That's so important that we understand that. We've gotta be careful about that. We need to be prudent about that. Matthew Henry commentary again. Every believer must labor after the knowledge and wisdom that are profitable to direct both as to the proper method and order wherein all Christian duties are to be performed and as to the way and manner of performing them. Hey, it's important how and when we perform those duties. You know, you take the simple thing of just soul winning. You know, I think there's a proper way of going soul winning. I mean, we need to get out there and go soul winning. But boy, I've been soul winning to people before, and I don't think any of us do this here, but I've been soul winning to people before where they knock on the door, and man, they've got the boldness of the Lord to go knock on that door, and somebody says, no, we're not interested, and they close the door, and their face, well, then die and go to hell. Really? I mean, really? Is that really being Christ-like? You know, we need to have a little bit of prudence here. We don't need to be arrogant when we're soul winning. That's not the love of Christ. Yes, we need to go and be a soul winner and we need to get the gospel out, but let's be prudent on how we do that. You know, it may be, you know, you don't go to the hospital. Brother Chris goes to the hospital many times and somebody is maybe on their deathbed and you don't come in here and you just, you know, you gotta be careful probably how you share the gospel with somebody. It takes prudence. But we don't need to be arrogant, we need to be prudent. Matthew Henry says this here, prudence differs from wisdom in this, that prudence implies more caution and reserve than wisdom, or is exercised more in foreseeing and avoiding evil than in devising and executing that which is good. It is sometimes mere caution or circumspection. Hey, we need to be cautious sometimes. We need to have discernment in things. We need to have prudence in what we do and what we say. In other words, wisdom helps us make right decisions. Prudence helps us not make the wrong decisions. You know, sometimes we can do good things at the wrong time or in the wrong way. We gotta be careful about that. And it just takes prudence. I think this here too, staying two steps away from sin. Don't put yourself in a situation that, if you're wise enough, you will not put yourself in a situation that you can't handle. Stay away from it. That takes prudence sometimes. Prudence is not putting yourself in a situation of failing. You know, if you have a drinking problem, don't walk down the aisle where the liquor's at. Right? Don't drive by the bar, you know? I think we're just being prudent with that when we're taking those into consideration. Some things may not be sinful in and of themselves, but maybe it's not what God called us to do. We need to be prudent. You know, I was teaching in my Sunday school class this morning. We're going through a series on the home and marriage, and it's Dr. Paul Chappell's series on are we there yet? And it's helping many of our family. It's teaching on busyness. Oh, man. I always hate it when I got to teach lessons like that, that hit home. Every one of them hits home every time. And the Lord always has. And this has been the craziest, busiest week of my life. It's always that way. Whenever I'm teaching on whatever subject I'm teaching on, the Lord has to Give me illustrations, I guess. I don't know. It just always seems to be that way. You guys understand that. But sometimes we get so busy doing good things, but it's not the right thing. We have to be prudent with that. I get people to ask me all the time, Brother Hoxie, can you fix this? Yes, I can. Am I? No. You know, everybody thinks I can fix anything. And maybe I can, I don't know. But I can't, I can't always say yes. That's hard for me to do. I'll just say that. I do. I want to help everybody. I really do. And I love to be able to help everybody that possibly can. But you know what? Maybe that's not what God called me to do. It takes prudence. We have to be careful with that. It may not be sinful, but is that what God called you to do? We have to use good judgment, common sense. Be cautious, discernment. See the big picture and understand that. Again, is that what God has called us to do? You can help people as much as you want to, but is that what God wants you to do? Be prudent. Then fourthly, add temperance. This is moderation, being restrained. Cameron preached on it this morning, patience. And Cindy doesn't have patience. And that was what he said. And so she got it after the service that she has no patience, you know. But calmness, sedatedness, moderation, hey, we've got to be in control. We've got to exercise self-control. You know, we can't just fly off the handle, right? We gotta have self-control. Matthew Henry said it this way, he says, we must be sober and moderate in our love to and use of the good things of this life. And if we have a right understanding and knowledge of outward comforts, we shall see that their worth and usefulness are vast inferior to those of spiritual mercies. In other words, there's nothing wrong with having things, right? Or doing things that are enjoying, joyful in life, but you have got to have control of those things. Those things can't have control of us. You know, I liked, growing up, we did a lot of snowmobiling. Does anybody here like snowmobiling? Good, a lot of you do. And there's nothing wrong with snowmobiling. How many like to go fishing? All right, same people, right? And there's nothing wrong with fishing. That's right. Hey, we like to, there's nothing wrong with all of these things, but when those things control us, that's when it becomes a problem. And we need to have control of them. Jet skis. You know, this time of the year. Sports. How many of you love sports? Raise your hand, right? Video games. Oh, man. Video games. Where's our teenagers at? And the problem is it's not just our teenagers. Yeah, I know. Video games, some of them are controlling us. Cell phones! What do we ever do without cell phones? Man, I have to answer the phone every time it rings. Now, I know everybody hates me because I never answer my phone. Most of the time it's because I don't hear it, but sometimes it's just because I'm not going to answer it. I don't let my cell phone control my life. that much. We do though, so we need to be in control. So again, it's okay to enjoy life, just exercise self-control. And then number five, patience. which is the suffering of afflictions, pain, toil, calamity, provocation or other evil, with a calm, unruffled temper. Hey, listen, we shouldn't let things bother us. We shouldn't let our feathers get ruffled when something happens to us that we don't agree with and that we don't like. You know, whatever God puts into our life, there's a reason that he put it there. We shouldn't let it stir us up too much. We just can't get ruffled about it. We need to be patient Endurance without murmuring or fretfulness. It's a calm temper which bears evil without murmuring or discontent It's the act or quality of waiting long for justice or expected good without discontent Patience is the quality of bearing offenses and injuries without anger or revenge You know this life that goes by pretty quick And we don't have time to be at odds with each other. Let's be patient with each other Let's just learn to be patient with each other. You know, once you get it in your mind that nobody's against you, I don't know why we feel like sometimes that maybe somebody looks at us funny or they say something to us and we think, you know what? They don't like me. You know what? We are all on the same team. We ought not be at odds with anybody. And I know we're gonna make mistakes. But you know, I am so grateful that God loved me enough that he overlooks my mistakes. Let's be patient with each other. It's important that we have that quality and that thing in our lives. The Bible says in Romans 5, 3, tribulation worketh patience. Trials will come. You know, I think sometimes, it's another series, or part of our series we talk, you're gonna go through trouble in your marriage. Anybody ever experience trials in your marriage? Come on, all right, Brother Dalvey, he's a little, no, I'm just kidding. And we've all experienced trials in our marriage, right? We've all experienced trials in our life. And tribulation is gonna come. The Bible says, beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial, which is to try you as though some strange thing happened unto you. We think it's, we're surprised that a trial comes into our life. You know, God uses trials in our life to develop us. Hey, if you're going through a trial right now, can I say that God's working in your life? This is not the time to bail on Him. This is not the time to quit on God. This is the time that God can use that trial to make you a stronger Christian. And we need to allow tribulation to work patience in our life. James 1, verses 2 through 3 says, My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations, knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. And we can have joy in the trials. Trials and tribulations mean that God is working in your life. Be patient. God will get you through this tough season. You know, someday you'll look back and you'll thank God that you went through it. I'm just saying, if you've ever been through a trial, you'll look back and you'll thank God that he got you through it because you saw God do something miraculous in your life. And we can testify of that. If you've ever been down that road, you can testify of that. Number six, sixth thing here is godliness. This is the very thing which is produced by patience. For that, works experience. Tribulation works with patience. We just read that. And patience experience in verse four, and experience hope. And God wants to do a work in our lives and as He puts us through tribulation, as He puts us through trials, as He tests our patience, as He strengthens us, we become godly and we take on this characteristic trait of godliness. This is the belief in God and reverence for His character and laws. Matthew Henry says this here, when Christians bear afflictions patiently They get an experimental knowledge of the loving kindness of their Heavenly Father, which He will not take from His children, even when He visits their iniquity with the rod and their transgression with stripes, and hereby they are brought to the childlike fear and reverential love wherein true godliness consists. We're going to have to go through some corrections sometime. We're going to have to go through some training. We're going to have to go through trials. We're going to have to go through problems. But God will use all of those things that come into our lives to make us a godly Christian. So let's not fight it. We just need to trust God through it all. And by the way, there's just some things that we have to learn firsthand. You'll remember when you go through some of those trials, you'll be able to look back on those and you will learn the lesson that God wanted you to learn because you went through that yourself. Let God have his way that way. And then next thing, add brotherly kindness. Matthew Henry says this, this is a tender affection to all our fellow Christian who are children of the same father, servants of the same master, members of the same family, travelers to the same country, and heirs of the same inheritance, and therefore are to be loved with a pure heart fervently. with a love of complacency as those who are peculiarly near and dear to us in whom we take a particular delight." Hey, we ought to be kind to each other. There is never a time that we ought to be unkind to anyone, anybody, especially in our ranks. We're all on the same team. We're a mighty army fighting the battle together. I'm trying to help our couples to understand that when conflict comes into the marriage, it's not against each other. Well, that's key. Hey, we're fighting the battle together. When conflict comes into our marriage and it's going to happen, hey, we're fighting the devil together on that thing. We've got to stay together with it. It's so important that we do that. We're not enemies with each other. We have got to be one. Hey, we're not enemies with each other here. There's sometimes different ministries, sometimes we may clash in whatever, in cross paths or whatever, we don't see eye to eye on certain ways. Hey, we're not enemies, we're all fighting the same battle. We're in this thing together and we've got to be kind to each other. We've got to be on board with each other. It's so important that we are in oneness and unity. We need to be kind. There's never any reason to be unkind. This is an act of benevolence which promotes the happiness or welfare of others. We've got to serve each other, be kind to each other. You know, I think we ought to look for and meet the needs of others. You know, probably the best way you can show an act of kindness to somebody is if you see a need and you just meet that need. Has anybody ever done that for you? Have you ever done that for anybody else? I tell you what, that does something for you. It just does something for you. And by the way, it bonds you together. There's something about it. It just bonds you together in unity. So be kind. There ought to be a bond here at Grandview Baptist Church like no other. We've got to bear one another's burdens. We need to rejoice together. Again, we're on the same team. So let's be kind. And then lastly, you like that word, don't you? Amen. Number eight, charity. Charity, so we add charity. Genuine heart of unconditional love for others. Unconditional love. Unconditional love means that we love without conditions. I went to college to learn that. We love unconditionally. That means when somebody says something I don't like, I still love them. That means when somebody gets in the flesh and they do something I don't agree with, I still love them. It's unconditional. That means when my spouse says something to me that I don't like, I still love them. It's unconditional love. And 1 Corinthians 13, 1 through 13, you know this passage, but let's look at it. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. 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. But whether there be prophecies, they shall fail. Whether there be tongues, they shall cease. Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly, But then face to face, now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity. Hey, the greatest thing that we can do for our brother, for our sister, is just have a genuine love for them. Somebody walks through these doors here, we gotta love them. You know, we've got a lot of people that come here that are hurt. And they'll say things that are hurtful because of a hurt that's inside of them. You know what they need? They need an unconditional godly love that says, you know what, you're okay here. And we have that here. Let's never lose that. We have a oneness here that not every church has. Hey, let's go out of our way to be the kind of Christian that God wants us to be. Hey, listen, if we do these things, the Bible says we won't fall. If we do these things, the Bible says, first thing, 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. And if you do these things, ye shall never fall. These things are not that difficult. They're really not. I mean, it's just eight simple truths here that we can do with God's power and God's help. And if we do, we can be prosperous. We can be successful as a Christian. We can be, uh, we, we can make it. We don't have to throw in the towel. We don't have to give up on God. We can do it and we must, we've got to do it. We've got to do these things and work on these things on a daily basis. Faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity or love.