We're in the middle of a sermon series examining some of the major themes in the general epistles. These are the letters of the New Testament, not written to any specific church, but written to all of the churches. And today we're going to consider one of the major themes of the book of 2 Peter, one of the more famous passages. In 2 Peter 1, we're going to begin in verse 3 and read through verse 11. Let's pray before we read. Our Father, we delight in you, we delight in your word, and we're grateful for it. We confess, Lord, as we come to it again, our need, not only for this word, but for the Holy Spirit. Lord, I need help to preach joyfully and clearly and with freedom. All of us need help, Lord, to hear what you have to say and to receive it in faith, to submit to it and receive it as it is the words of life. So send your spirit that this might not be a wasted time. We pray for it in Jesus' name, amen. 2 Peter chapter 1 verse 3. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, They keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. For in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is the word of God. What comes to mind when you think about the word effort? You know, the word effort, especially when it comes, when you bring the word effort into the realm of your Christian life. I think when it comes to the idea of effort in the Christian life, there's sort of one of two ditches that we often fall into. And you can illustrate them with two pictures. One would be whether you see your Christian life as primarily a movie theater or primarily a gymnasium. And you can even think that way as you come to worship this morning, or you hear primarily as the attitude that you bring when you go to the movie theater, that you're just watching what God's doing. That mostly the Christian life is simply sitting down and taking in everything that God is and God's doing. Or do you have the attitude that you have when you go to the gym that it's all about you? That what you get out of it is 100% related to the effort you put into it? I think when we put it that way, you see that both of those are wrong. Both of those are errors and we tend to, based on our personality or our time in life or our challenges we're facing, we tend to fall into one or two of those errors. We tend to think, I don't need to put any effort into the Christian life, because God is a God of grace, and it's all of grace, and sola gratia, and I know that I'm saved by grace alone, so I don't need to do anything. And then there's a whole lot of other Christians who think it's all about what I do, and my growth in grace is 100% correlative to the effort I put into it. And so for all these reasons, we need to find the middle road. We need to find that effort and grace in the Christian life do not fight each other and they rhyme very well. And so that's what second Peter has for us this morning. He's going to call you to make every effort you can so that you would grow in the Christian life. And then at the end of the day, you'll realize that it's all of God's grace anyway. And so we're not fighting God's grace by making effort in the Christian life. We're actually using God's grace the proper way. 2 Peter is, of course, written by the apostle Peter. It was probably written near the end of his life, maybe from a Roman prison. And as he writes it, he writes with a couple purposes in mind. As Peter writes this letter, he's near the end of his life, and he wants to protect the churches he had invested in so heavily. He wants to protect the churches, and he writes to them and says to them, basically, you need to watch out for false teachers. And we're going to get into false teachers next week when we look at 2 Peter and the book of Jude. So he's writing to write against mostly false teachers, especially those who deny the return of Christ. But if we look between the lines a little bit, we can understand that these false teachers were probably teaching a different view of effort in the Christian life. And again and again, as Paul and Peter write to the churches, you get the sense that people were coming to the churches and either saying, you don't need to obey God at all, being antinomian is the word we would use for it, that obeying the law doesn't matter at all, or you have to do all these things just to be saved. And so Peter and Paul are always fighting these two tendencies and we want to fight it with them. If you have the passage in front of you, before we dive into it, I just want to point something out to you. If you would glance over the passage and look for the three letter word, for, look for the word for, you'll see it at the beginning of verse five. And then again, verse eight and verse nine and verse 10 has a version of it. Therefore, And again, in verse 11, there's, in the middle of verse 10, there's another four. This is a passage that, where Ian Peter uses that little word four to keep pulling everything along. It's one big train of thought. In other words, if what you do with this passage is you memorize the list of virtues in verses five to seven, but you don't understand how the passage itself is tied together, you're automatically setting yourself up to fall into one of these ditches we've already talked about. And so what we want to do is just follow the outline that Peter takes to go through this passage. And the question that you need to put to yourself this morning is simply this, are you growing in the Christian life? Are you making every effort to add to your faith? Are you making, for some of you, let's be honest, the question isn't even the word every, the question is any. Right? Are you making any effort to grow in the Christian life because of who we are in Christ and what we have from him? So we're going to begin there in verses three to four. And before we get to what God wants us to do, he always tells us what he's done first. And this order is important. Some have called it the gospel grammar. Where God, in the Word of God, He always gives us the declarative before He gives us the imperative. Some of you junior high kids need to be getting warmed up. What's a declarative sentence? A declarative sentence is a sentence that just declares something. It says what's true. An imperative sentence says what you must do. And before God ever tells us what we must do, He always tells us what He has done. In the Word of God, the declarative always comes before the imperative. Grace always comes before effort. So let's look again at verses three and four. And here in these verses is basically like 10 sermons packed into two verses. And we're just going to, we're going to consolidate them very, very briefly to try to get a sense of what it is that we have. because of Jesus Christ. Verse three, his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. So what is it that we have? Because of Jesus Christ, because of his work on the cross, we have everything we need for life and for godliness. Some of you might disagree with that. Or you might at least be honest and say, it doesn't always feel like I have everything I need for life and for godliness, but here's the word of God. His divine power has given you everything you need, everything that pertains to life and godliness. God doesn't promise to give you everything you want, but he certainly promises to give you absolutely everything you need to do what he wants you to do. You have everything you need to do what he wants you to do, everything you need for life and for godliness. This is an important truth. Because we are all born into the world, into a world fighting the devil and fighting the world who are constantly trying to sow discontentment in our hearts. As soon as Satan came to this world and came to Adam and Eve, he planted doubt in their mind as to whether they had everything they needed for life and godliness. Maybe God didn't give you everything you need for life and godliness. Then every day you open a magazine or you get on the internet and there's another advertisement telling you that there's something you need. We live in a world that's constantly telling you, constantly appealing to that part of your heart, telling you there's always something more that you need. And God says, no, there's not. I've given you past tense. I've given you everything you need for life and for godliness. For many of us, that's a statement that we have to take on faith. Even when it doesn't feel like it, we just have to believe the word of God is true. I believe God. I have everything I need for life and godliness. And he's going to have to prove how that works out. So secondly, how do we have it? How does this promise, everything we need for life and godliness, how does it come to us? Well, the source of this is the divine power of God. Peter says that through his divine power, you have these things. Whatever you need for life and godliness, God says, I've given it to you out of my divine power. And if you have to choose a source from which to get everything you need for life and godliness, the divine power of God is a pretty good source. Could somebody get me a glass of water so I can make it all the way through? Thanks, Charlie. Okay. So how we have it, the source is the divine power, and the means of how we have it is knowing God and knowing his promises. Look again at what Peter says. We have everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature. The source of everything we need is the divine power of God. The way that it comes to us is the knowledge of God, is knowing God and knowing his promises. The more we learn God, the more we know him and know of him, the more we are accessing the divine power that brings to us everything we need for life and for godliness. And then thirdly, why do we have everything we need for life and godliness? So we've seen what we have. We have everything we need for life and godliness. We've seen where it comes from. It comes from the divine power through the knowledge of God. Why? Why do we have everything we need? Peter says in one of the more remarkable statements in the New Testament, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature. God's giving you everything you need, not just so that you can have a decent life, not just so that you can glorify him, but so that you can become partakers of the divine nature. This verse has caused a lot of problems in church history, and there are whole branches of the church that have a very radical view of what it means to be a Christian. We don't believe, and the Bible doesn't teach, that you become God or a God when you become a Christian. But you are, by faith, so close to Jesus, so tied to him, that it can be truly said that you are partaking of the divine nature. Not that you are becoming divine, but that you are partaking of it, so that when you take communion, we say that you are partaking of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. In that same way, you, by faith, are partaking, when you have everything you need for life and godliness, of the divine nature. And he goes on and says one more thing, not only have you become partakers of the divine nature, but you have escaped the corruption that is in the world through sinful desires. When you know God, when you trust him, you get everything you need so that you can be part of God. You can partake of him. and so that you can escape the world. You can escape the corruption of the world. So this is the treasure that God has given to us in the gospel. Everything we need for life and godliness through his divine power, by the knowledge of him, so that we can partake of God's divine nature and escape the world. And I want to pause there because some of you need to, that's the whole sermon for some of you. Because some of you don't yet know Jesus Christ as your savior. If you haven't yet fully submitted your life to Him, if you've not confessed Jesus as your Savior, this is what you stand to gain when you become a Christian. I want to offer it to you today and invite you to come and get it. I invite you by faith to put your trust in God, to put your trust in Jesus, to believe that He died for your sins, that He rose from the dead. When you believe that genuinely and sincerely, you get not everything you want, But you get everything you need for life and for godliness and you get to escape the corruption of the world and become a partaker of the divine nature. For the rest of you who have trusted in Jesus Christ, what are you going to do with these things? If I give you a gift of a backpack and I pack it full of goodies, and I give it to you as a gift, and all you do with that backpack is you hang it on the wall, and you put a frame around it, and you say, how nice a backpack Jared gave me. I would be offended, because a backpack is an eminently useful gift. And the truth is this morning, for each of you who are Christians, I need you to know that God does not give ornamental gifts. God does not give gifts for which the purpose is just to hang on your wall and look good. Everything God gives is usable. and He expects you to use. Everything God gives to you has a purpose. And so the question then is, are you using these gifts? Are you accessing the treasure He's given to you? Are you using the tools He's given to you? So that is our treasure. Then what is our response to our treasure? Now that we have, see what we have in Jesus, what do we do with it? Look at verse five. For this reason. That's an important phrase because if we started with verse five and it just said, make every effort to supplement your faith, we wouldn't know why. But Peter is about to tell you to do some really hard work. And before he does that, he accesses the last thing he just said, which is for this reason, for the sake of or because of everything you have in Jesus, make every effort. And that connecting phrase keeps our effort grounded in God's grace and in our new Christian identity. If we know that we have everything we need for life and godliness, and we believe that, we will not be content to not grow in faith. If I really believe that God has given me everything I need for life and Godliness, I will not be content to stay where I am today in my faith. I will be driven to grow in my faith. Once I understand and believe that I have everything I need. And so that's why Peter says, for this reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue. This type of list that Peter uses, he's not the first one to use a list of virtues. You can go back into ancient literature and you'll find all sorts of philosophers and religious teachers using similar lists. And Peter is simply using a form that was common in the ancient world. And what he's doing here is he's giving a divine treatment to sort of a worldly way of thinking. And what he's giving us here is not sort of a list of things we need to do in order. but he's using a very literary device to give us a vision for all the ways that we could be growing in the Christian life. In other words, this isn't a list like when you play a game, a video game, and you master level one and then you level up to the next level. This isn't to say, as soon as you get faith and level two is virtue and level three is knowledge, and you don't go to knowledge until you get virtue. It doesn't work like that. It works like the fruit of the spirit where it's all one thing. And it's just different facets of the same diamond of the Christian life. And also, before I get into the list, I want to look at that word supplement with you. When Peter writes and he says, for this reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue. Some of your Bibles will use the word add. supplement or add, it's an odd word in Greek, and it probably has a reference not to something you do on your own, but with an idea of cooperation. That you are cooperating as you add to your faith, you are cooperating with what God has already done. And so having said that, this list that we have in front of us, this call to make every effort to add these things to our faith, there are two parts of this list where the order is important. Two parts, and that is the very beginning and the very end. It's very important that our list begin with faith. Because if you decide, I'm going to add to myself virtue and knowledge, you're not going to get to heaven. You're not going to get Jesus. You're not going to partake in the divine nature. This is what everybody does. Everybody tries to get better somehow. But not us, we begin with faith. There's nowhere else to start. If you don't begin with true, sincere, genuine Christian faith, being born again by the power of the Spirit, and trusting fully in Jesus, there's no sense in moving on to the rest of the sermon or the rest of this list. So we have to begin with faith. For those of you who have faith, understand that you too can make the same mistake of trying to add to your faith, of trying to become a better person, rather than on the foundation of your faith, on the foundation of some other thing. I'm gonna add to my education, virtue and knowledge and brotherly affection. If we wanna grow in the Christian faith, we will go to our faith and we will draw from that and add to that. So, it's a long list. We could be here all day. I'm gonna say like two things about each one really quickly, just to give you a taste of what's available to you, just to get you excited about all the ways that God is able to help you grow in the Christian life. By the way, just as a reference, if you want to meditate on these more, our friend Matt Kingswood several years ago preached on this list at our family conference, and it was outstanding. If you can go online and find those, it would be of great use to you. So if you wanna really meditate on these this week, That would be a great series of sermons to listen to. So Peter says, add to your faith virtue. Virtue could also be the word excellence or goodness. It doesn't simply mean being better at what you do, it means being more genuinely human. More good, like Jesus was good. More of what God intended you to be, to have more virtue or excellence or goodness. Add to your virtue, he says, knowledge. That's your virtue, knowledge. The Bible is not afraid of you learning. A lot of people outside the church think that Christians are the people who have turned their minds off, right? Some of you know your friends who have accused you of that. You become a Christian and you don't think anymore. No, the Bible commands you to keep learning, to keep studying, to grow in your knowledge of God. We are expected to attain wisdom, especially the wisdom that comes from true knowledge. And this knowledge is the type of knowledge that is gained with and by obedience. He goes on to say, as you grow in knowledge, grow in self-control. Grow in self-control. All of us have passions inside of us. We have appetites and desires. And you either are going to be led and controlled by them, or you are going to control them. You need to grow in your control of your appetites and your desires. You need to control yourself. And the way we do that is to be more fully controlled by the indwelling Holy Spirit. He goes on, add to your self-control steadfastness. Steadfastness is perseverant patience. To be steadfast is to last in obedience, to obey not a little while. But a long while, one author said, Christians are not meteors, they are stars. You don't flash for just a little while and then fade away. You burn brightly for Jesus your whole life. And so we need to grow in our steadfastness. This is a church where the median age of our church is quite low. And so a lot of you have a lot more years ahead of you, we trust, unless Jesus comes back, which would be even better. But if he doesn't, you have a lot of years ahead of you, most of you. A lot of years to obey God. And that means that you have an opportunity to grow in your steadfastness. True faith endures, not by stoic resolve, but by faith in the promises of God. He goes on and says, add to your steadfastness godliness. This is actually one of the more difficult words on the list to interpret, because godliness just sort of means like In a sense, it sort of means like everything. If I say, well, he's a godly person, I simply, I typically mean that's just a person who is holy and they do what God wants them to do as often as I see them. But here, the word godliness isn't really used generally. It's used more specifically to indicate a very practical awareness of God in every aspect of life. Here, godliness is somebody who understands that God is with them all the time, is aware of that, and acts as if they were in the presence of God at all times. That's a godly person in this sense of godliness. And as you grow in godliness, Peter says, grow in your brotherly affection, grow in your brotherly affection. Nothing is more telling of your love for Jesus than your love for his people. And then the crown of Christian virtues is love. The reason that this is the last one is because it is the one that summarizes and crowns all of the other ones. If we have all these other things but we don't have love, Paul would tell us we're a clanging cymbal. And so to really grow in the Christian life is to grow in love for God and for other people. Love is the summary of the law and of all Christian ethics. Here this word love could be interpreted as sacrificially desiring the highest good for others. Sacrificially desiring the highest good for others. So, that's what you should do. This week you should make every effort to grow in your Christian faith. You should seek by all the means God has given you and by the power within you to grow in these things. But why? Why? Peter goes on and he gives us reasons. And the reason we need reasons is because this is hard work. If you're not convinced of the worthiness of growing in the Christian faith, you're going to stop as soon as you meet resistance. And you're going to meet resistance the first day you try to grow in the Christian faith, because your flesh and the devil and the world are all there ready to stop you. And so if you would work past the resistance and begin to genuinely grow in your faith, you need good reasons. So he begins in verse eight. He says, for if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Peter gives us basically two reasons to grow in the Christian life. One is because of what's possible. And two is because of what's at stake. You should grow in the Christian life because of what's possible and because of what's at stake. What is possible? If you grow in the Christian life, Peter says it negatively, if you don't grow, you're going to be ineffective and unfruitful. Therefore, the opposite of that is also true. If you grow in the Christian life, you will be effective and fruitful. If you want to do Anything good for God in this world, you have to grow in the Christian life. If you want to do anything good, you have to add to your faith as Peter is describing for us. Fruitfulness comes from growth in godliness. And the most fruitful people for the kingdom of Jesus Christ are not those who have the most degrees, or who have offices in the church, or who have titles right up front. The most fruitful people in the church are those who are the most godly. They do the most good for the name of Jesus Christ in this world. And if you want to do good for him, seek godliness. Seek holiness and righteousness. Grow in the Christian life. Stop trying to add to your resume and start trying to add to your faith. So because of what's possible, grow. in the Christian life. Secondly, because of what's at stake. Because of what's at stake. He says, for whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. If you don't grow in the Christian life, you will grow increasingly hardened to the gospel that saved you. To the point where Peter says, you've forgotten that you were ever saved at all. But holiness, personal sanctification, growth in grace, wipes away our glasses. They clean our glasses. It moves the fog away. The more we grow in grace, the more we remember all that God has done for us. In the Bible, remembering is always an active verb. It's something we do. And to remember the cross, to remember the gospel, the way you do that is not only by sitting down and meditating on it. The way you remember what Jesus has done is you use it. You use it to go and to be more holy. What's at stake? What's at stake is you forgetting the gospel. What's at stake is you falling away from the church. What's at stake is salvation itself. So because of what's possible, grow in the Christian life. Because of what's at stake, grow in the Christian life. Peter is so intent on our reasons for this that he's gonna go another round. So look at verse 10. He goes, again, what is our response to the grace of God? We saw at the beginning of the passage all that we have in Jesus. Then we heard the call, make every effort to grow in faith. He says, here's what you do with that. Here's what you do. Here's your response. And now he's going to say it again in a very summarized form in verse 10. Therefore, you be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure. This is not a different thing than what he had said in verses five to seven. This is a very summarized short form. Therefore, because of what's at stake and because of what's possible, be diligent. to make your calling and your election sure. Put forth every effort to prove that the treasure of Jesus Christ is yours. How do we know that we're saved? How do you know that you're saved? What confidence do you have? How can you have confidence that you genuinely have trusted in Jesus Christ and it wasn't just something that your parents forced you to do? How can you genuinely know that you're on your way to heaven and then you haven't pretended to put your faith in Jesus? Well, one of the ways that God gives us to attain assurance of salvation is to grow in godliness. And as we grow, we are confirming, not to each other, not to the outside world, we are confirming to ourselves, I have been called, I have been elected by God. And the more I see Christian growth in my life, the more sure I will be that I belong to him. God calls, God elects, God empowers, but it's your job to work out diligently to confirm that calling and that election and that empowerment. Christian growth proves who we are. Who we are is not simply the words we say on Sunday morning, but day in and day out, what you do and what you think. Look in the mirror and figure out, are you growing in the Christian life? Does your life give you reason to believe that you belong to God or not? It should. This is why we work hard to obey God so that we may attain more to the assurance of salvation that he's given for us. So that's what we should be doing. That's the second round of our response. And Peter goes one more round with our reason. Why should we work to make our calling and election sure? Verse 10 again. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. For in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In other words, because of what's at stake and because of what's possible, grow in Jesus Christ. So Peter says, here's why you should work hard to confirm your calling and election. Number one, to keep from falling away. The more you know, not just because you believe it in your mind, but because you see it in the mirror, the more you know that you belong to Jesus Christ, the less danger there is of you falling away from the faith. And it is a danger. So the more we work hard to obey God, the less we will be in danger of falling away. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall away. There aren't people who fall away from the church immediately. It's not like somebody is genuinely trying to obey God and trying to add to their faith and then next week they're gone. It just doesn't happen that way. How does it happen when people leave the church? It's always after years of slowly sliding away, of slowly giving up their inheritance and not adding to their faith. If you work hard to add to your faith, you will not fall away from the faith. And if you don't want to fall away, the way you do is by clinging to Jesus, by obeying him. So the first reason you should be diligent to confirm your calling is to keep from falling. The second reason is to find the entrance to the eternal kingdom. To find the entrance to the eternal kingdom, for in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And this is a challenge to those of us who preach that salvation is by grace alone. It doesn't deny that, but it rounds out the picture for us because the entrance into heaven opens for those who are obedient to Jesus Christ. The way to heaven, the path to heaven, it's paved by grace, but it is walked by those who are trying hard to obey Jesus Christ. The only people in heaven are going to be those who obeyed Jesus Christ, not in order to get there, but because they were on their way there. So hear me clearly, you are saved by grace alone. You cannot earn your way into heaven. But those who have received this treasure we read about in verses three and four are going to be people who strive to obey the Lord. who work hard, who put effort into it, genuine effort into growing their faith. We're not talking about perfect obedience, but we are talking about sincere obedience. And people who have never tried to obey Jesus Christ, they don't have a place in heaven because they're not saved. This is a line drawn in the sand and we can't simply say, I'm saved by grace and it doesn't matter what I do. No, if I'm saved by grace, then I see that my life does matter. And I've been changed and born again. I'm going to want to obey Jesus. I want to lift his name high through the way that I live my life. And so I'm going to work hard to put onto my faith all the other things that God has called me to. So this is what we should do and why we should do it. Before we end, let me give three words of just pastoral counsel about actually growing in grace and growing in faith and making every effort to do this. Number one, this will never happen alone. You will never grow in grace by yourself. That's not who we are. That's not how we were designed. When God saw Adam all by himself in the garden, it was the first time he said, that is not good. If you are living a lonely life, you will not grow in grace. If you are not engaging with other Christians, you're not gonna grow. On a positive side, what this means is you need to engage with other Christians in a way that genuinely benefits you spiritually. If you do not have anyone in your life that is challenging you and calling you to a higher holiness, find them. Ladies, if you don't have somebody to pray with on a regular basis, please talk to Michelle or Heather or Candice and get involved in the Cornerstones ministry. Find somebody to pray with on a regular basis. Brothers, if you don't have anybody, talk to Bart after service today. If you don't have anybody that you're meeting with to pray with on a regular basis, talk to Bart. We need this. This isn't just an adult thing. If you young people would understand, you would see that you have power to help each other grow in faith. This isn't going to happen with just you and your Bible all by yourselves. You need other people and you need your church family. So first of all, it's not going to happen alone. Secondly, it will never happen apart from the word of God and prayer. When we talk about effort, the first place we put that effort is by waking up 15 minutes earlier tomorrow morning to open your Bible and pray. We put effort into the Christian life. And sometimes that means we don't get as much sleep, because we need to spend time with God. If you are not opening the word of God on a regular basis, and you are not praying sincerely on a regular basis, you are not going to grow in the Christian faith. You're not going to lose your faith necessarily, but you're certainly not going to grow. You're certainly not going to add to your faith all these other great things that are available to you. And thirdly, growth in the Christian faith will never happen without priority. Growth in the Christian faith will never happen if it's low on the list of things you need to do tomorrow. And let's be honest, we are people, we talked about this a couple weeks ago, we are people of the moment. We are people who do the things that feel most immediate to us. And because I can always grow in the Christian faith tomorrow, that's a good way to put it off, and we do. But if you don't prioritize this, it just won't happen. And you'll come back next week and you realize, yeah, I meant to do that every day. I meant to do it. And my guess is most of us here are not in our heads, in a good Presbyterian way, just a little bit. We're not in our heads. We're like, yeah, yeah, I should do that. I'm going to make more effort. But it's not just a sense. It's not just a desire. You need to make a genuine decision that you're going to change parts of your life to do this. that you're going to change your schedule, that you're going to start fasting more regularly, that you're going to have an accountability partner in prayer, husbands and wives, that you are going to work to bless each other in your spiritual lives. You've got to make not just a desire, but a priority. So finally, because of what's possible and because of what's at stake, make every effort to grow in the Christian faith. There is too much at stake for you to take your Christian life lightly. There's too much at stake. Because there are people who think that they are in Jesus who are going to be in hell. because they never worked to put their faith, their so-called faith, into practice. Not only is there too much at stake, there's too much good you're missing out on. If you are not striving to grow in the Christian faith, you're missing out on the majority of the joy that God has for you. The fact that many of us hear a sermon about Christian effort, and we feel weighed down by it, is because the devil is here, and because our own hearts tell us that effort has to do with suffering. But it's those who are most holy, who are most joyful, is those who are most godly, who are most fruitful. All the wonderful things God has given to you, the more you obey him, the closer you are to him, the more joyful you're going to be. And so what I'm offering to you this morning through the word of God is not a burden. It is a delight. Grow in Christ because of what's at stake and because of what's possible. This is not a gymnasium. This is not a place where you come and it's all what you do. This is a place where we lift high the name of Jesus and we exalt the fact that salvation is by grace alone. But this needs to stop being a movie theater. This needs to stop being a place where people come just to watch what God's doing and to go home thinking that all they need to do is look at God and they're okay. It's time for some of you to make effort. To start making every effort to grow in the Christian faith because of what's at stake. and because of what's possible. Let's stand up to pray. Lord, this is a convicting sermon, who among us couldn't make more effort. So we need your help, your forgiveness. We need you to continue to give us everything that pertains to life and godliness. We need your Holy Spirit, Lord, so that we would be able to make every effort. Lord, we know that when we do and when we grow in the Christian life, that we won't get any glory. It all goes to you because you're the one who gives us the ability to make every effort. But Lord, we need to do it. Help us. Drive us. Help us to drive each other toward greater holiness, greater obedience, not in order to be saved, God, but because you have saved us. So it would help us to be that type of church. We pray for it in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's turn to Psalm 26, Selection A, in our Blue Psalm.