Missing Ingredients – 2 Peter 1:5
“…giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 1:5-8
My mom makes the best coffee cake in the world. The trouble when my brother and I were young was she had to ensure the chocolate chips made it into her cake before our little hands and mouths got them. She managed to make countless cakes over the years as everyone loved them and she was diligent in following the recipe. I’m so far from being a cook that I won’t fix anything that takes more than 3 minutes in the microwave, but I know enough about cooking to realize one missing ingredient can mess everything up. How could I not get a laugh, then, at what happened when I read 2 Peter 1 for the umpteenth time?
The apostle Peter lists a bunch of “ingredients” necessary for producing the fruit of knowing the Lord, carefully describing how one ingredient needs to be added to another. As soon as I saw the word “patience,” I decided with a laugh I’d skip over that one. But despite my humor, there’s nothing funny about “skipping over” an ingredient in the recipe of knowing the Lord and producing the fruits of a Christ-centered life. Back when I “tried” cooking, I mixed random ingredients with no recipe. What a mess! God’s Word isn’t a haphazard recipe for us to be committed followers of Christ. Each and every “ingredient” is vital for following the Lord.
Follow God’s recipe. And don’t miss any ingredients.