How Do We Grow in Our Faith?

 

Have you ever just wanted to sit down with God and ask Him to assure you that your name is “written in heaven” (Lk 10:20b)? 

Or have you ever felt that you were stuck in your faith—like you weren’t growing? 

When I was in high school, I reached a point in my spiritual journey where I felt stuck. I wanted to grow in my relationship with God, but I didn’t know how. Sometimes, I wrestled with the question of whether I was saved. 

But can we be sure? And how do we grow in our faith and keep on doing it? 

In the years that have passed since then, I have found some answers to those questions. One thing God has taught me is that that evidence of spiritual growth in my life will help dispel these doubts. That is not to say that spiritual growth saves me, but it gives me assurance of my salvation—assurance that God is working in my life. 

In 2 Peter 1:1-11, we find instructions for growing our faith from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity, at the heart of which is a series of six steps culminating in love: 

“…for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.” (2 Peter 1:5-7, NKJV)

Just like cultivating a garden, growing our faith takes work. But how do we add these things to our faith? 

Don’t miss these encouraging words at the beginning of this chapter: “His divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness” (emphasis added). The NIV translates “all things” as “everything we need.” Either way, the source of these things is not me or you. It is the divine power of God. 

The very next words in the passage are “through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue.” The source of power is a Person; the power is accessed by knowing that Person. 

We must not confuse this with having knowledge about Him. I often remember Jesus’ censure of the Pharisees: “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life” (Jn 5:39-40, NKJV). 

I’ve written before about the different meanings of the English word “know”—well, this is the intimate form of knowing. Not knowledge about but knowledge of God. See the difference? May my desire for knowledge about God not distract or blind me from knowing Him! 

But why should we bother cultivating these things in our lives? Let’s look at verse 8: “For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  

There! You see? Through God, we already possess everything we need for “life and godliness.” This is one of the “exceedingly great and precious promises” that Peter mentions in verse 4. It is a promise which enables us to know God, to partake of His goodness, and to escape the doom of sin. And as we grow in adding these things to our faith, we become more fruitful. It is our fruit which will demonstrate that salvation has taken place within our hearts. So let’s work on growing our faith by looking to God, not us, for everything we need.

[originally published on the website for PURSUE Magazine in May 2018]