Being a Productive Christian

Every year we come up with a list of goals, missions and accomplishments we want to achieve in the next 12 months. Then for the rest of the year we work to accomplish those goals in the hopes of producing some new and positive results in our lives.

But what about being a productive Christian? What about setting goals for your walk with God?

Simon Peter gives us a eight-step formula in 2 Peter 1:5-7.


The steps are

1. Faith
2. Goodness
3. Knowledge
4. Self Control
5. Persistence
6. Godliness
7. Mutual Affection
8. Love

Following this formula, Peter says it will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your walk with God.

So I'm breaking down this formula step by step starting with faith.

It all starts with faith. But often times goodness and knowledge are the steps we sometimes tend put first. We believe if we can just do good deeds, or if we can learn everything about God, religion and the Bible, then that's enough.

Not true.

Without faith, the Bible says it's impossible to please God. Talk about being unproductive. You're really wasting your time if you don't start with faith.

So What is Faith?

It's putting confidence and trust in something we can't see. Sounds hard, but we do it everyday when we sit on a chair. We have faith it will hold us up using a science that we don't see and, for some, don't understand.

I do it when I shop on Amazon. I wire money to a seller trusting that a vendor I've never met and an assembly process I can't see will be honest and to send me what I paid for.

Just because we can't see it, doesn't mean it's not there or that it isn't working. We can't see air or gravity, but it's evident from our everyday lives that they're there.

The same is true with God.

You have to (literally) step out in faith to experience gravity in your life.

 The same is true with God.

Faith in Who?

Faith in God, yes. But more specifically, faith in God through His son, Jesus Christ.

The Bible says Christ is "the way, the truth and the life. No one come to the Father but by me" (Jesus is speaking here.)

The good news is Christ wants to be found by you. He says "Behold I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with that person and they with me"