The Path of Faith

By Barb Fisher

2 Peter 1:4-8
…by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. But also 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. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (NKJV)

There is a path that our faith travels. Kind of like power traveling on a circuit line. It is a path that leads to an unexpected destination. Oftentimes the outworking of faith leaves us perplexed about why some prayers are answered, while others are not. For all of us, faith begins and ends with Jesus. He is the Author and the Finisher of our faith. But what about all the steps in between? The Word tells us that we walk by faith. Every move we make in this life is by faith. And, yes, Jesus stands at the beginning and end of each stage of the journey. Not only does He stand at the beginning and the end, He walks with us along the path.  Attaining increased faith need not be illusive or mysterious.

In Verse 4 of the Scripture, Peter says that we are meant to be partakers of God’s nature through His exceedingly great promises. Because we have within our reach the possibility to live each moment by the God nature in us, Peter then tells us about the path that our faith is to follow. With diligence, we are to add to our faith, virtue. Meaning that, with diligence, we bring our feelings, thoughts, and actions into alignment with our faith. That takes diligence! We are to be persistent about and give careful attention to every feeling, thought, and action that does not line up with our faith. Then we add to that virtue, knowledge. As our feelings, thoughts, and actions become fixed on the Object of our faith, we begin to experience personally Who we have planted our faith in… God and His Living Word. But that is not the end of faith’s journey, for to that knowledge, we add self-control. Self-control allows us to master our feelings, thoughts, and actions instead of them mastering us. We must add self-control to knowledge for more often than not, it will appear as if everything is going in the opposite direction of our faith. To self-control is added perseverance. Perseverance is God enabling us to patiently endure under the challenges (that will come) to our faith. The ancestors of our faith, listed in the Hall of Faith of Hebrews 11, never received the promise. They had perseverance! Added to perseverance is godliness. Godliness is having a devout reverence and honor for the Source of our faith, who is Jesus. The inner journey of faith is a Holy work, a sacred work, as Psalm 77 reveals: the ways of God are holy. Our experiences on the path of faith is a Holy work of God, and  advances us into an increase reverence and fear of the Lord. (This is worth our meditation.) Godliness will lead us to brotherly kindness which is a true affection and love for our brothers and sisters in Christ. Our fellow believers become those we dearly love and trust. Those who we share our daily walk of faith with are those we love the most, want to hang out with the most, and the ones we can trust with our very hearts. Love for our brethren is true, meaning no walls, no pretenses, and no hidden agendas accompanying our affections.  Finally, there is love, whereby is the power of our faith, for faith works by love. Without this final addition, our faith will have no power. At any point along the path, the power of our faith can diminish, unless we reach the end of faith…Jesus. Our priority, at this point, has become to live through Christ; to have chosen God’s will above our own.

There you have it, my friend. The culmination of our faith is not an answer to prayer. Back to our text Scripture, Peter says that we will not be useless or unfruitful in answered prayer? No, in the knowledge of Jesus. Our faith-filled ancestors of Hebrews 11 attainted THE PROMISE, not promises. The Promise is Jesus, the Promised One. They attained the end of their faith, without ever having seen the manifestation of their faith – Jesus! Not every prayer we pray is answered as we pray or as we think, but that does not mean our faith is non-existent, little or stagnant. The outworking of our faith is not answered prayer or unanswered prayer, but complete surrender whereby we take on a brighter appearance of the One in whose image we have been created. It is at that point that we partake of His Divine nature by His exceedingly great and precious promises. Walking on His faith-path takes us into the deep places of His heart, where we obtain the Promise.