Growing Up in Christ (2 Peter 1:5–8)

For this very 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.
– 2 Peter 1:5–8

Oh, these are the kind of verses in the Bible where, when you read them, you just stop and pray exactly what you just read. Which is what I want to lead us to do. There’s so much we could talk about with each one of these things. But this is God calling us, in his Word, to supplement our faith with these things. And he lists them out and says, if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they’ll keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of Jesus.

2 Peter 1:5–8 hows the path to growing in Christlike character.

Nobody wants to be ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of Jesus. Don’t you want your knowledge of Jesus to bear fruit in your life and others’ lives—to be effective in your life and others’ lives? Then pray for these qualities to be increasing in you. So that’s what I want to lead us to do. We’re just going to pray straight from 2 Peter 1:5–8, over our lives.

So God, we pray that these qualities would be increasing in each of us today. We pray that they would increase in us on this day and tomorrow and the next day and the next day. We pray that they would ever be increasing.

God, we pray for faith. We pray for virtue, for knowledge, for self-control. God, we pray for steadfastness. We pray for godliness. We pray for brotherly affection. And we pray for love.

2 Peter 1:5–8 calls us to pursue godliness with intentional effort.

Yes, God, please cause all of these qualities that are laid out here in your Word to be more and more clear in our lives. And not just our lives, God, in others’ lives.

We think about your command to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything you’ve commanded us. God, we pray that you’d help us to lead others to faith, to lead others to virtue, to lead others to knowledge, to encourage others when it comes to self-control and steadfastness and godliness and brotherly affection and love. God, we pray that that would be the fruit of our lives. And not just in us, but through us in others’ lives.

And God, we pray as we think about this language about being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of Jesus. We pray for people who don’t even know about Jesus, who don’t know the truth about Jesus, the love of Jesus.

A Prayer for the Dohr People

God, we pray for the Dohr people of India today—for these Marathi-speaking people: men, women, and children—for 150,000 of them who don’t have the knowledge of your love for them. God, please cause the knowledge of who you are, Jesus, and how much you love them—how you’ve died on the cross for their sins, risen from the dead so they could have life—oh God, please bring them to the knowledge of Jesus. And please use our lives toward that end.

God, we pray all this straight from your Word. May all these qualities increase in us today. And may we be effective and fruitful in the knowledge of Jesus.

We pray in his name. Amen.