Having a Sharp Cheddar Kind of Faith

“Grace and peace to you many times over as you deepen in your experience with God and Jesus, our Master. Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received! We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you—your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust. So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others.” (2 Peter 1:2-7, MSG)

First of all, if those verses didn’t make you excited to cultivate a relationship with Jesus, I’mma need you to go back and read that again.

Okay, now that you’ve re-read those juicy promises from the Lord, I want you to take a second to close your eyes and remember the moment you decided to ask Jesus into your heart. Fully immerse yourself in that memory of the Holy Spirit tugging you into a love you didn’t fully understand, but wholeheartedly wanted to know. What did it look like, sound like, feel like? Was anyone else there with you, leading you in a prayer, or were you totally by yourself?

That moment that you’re remembering is the first beautiful and brave choice that begins a relationship like no other. The circumstances may be different, but no matter what, everyone enters through the same threshold: the blood of Jesus. What’s unfathomable is that the precious gift of salvation and the freedom we have access to through that gift is literally just the tip of the iceberg.

Think of it like this: Salvation is just the first step in a long, liberating, and undeserved path of blessing upon blessing. It’s a wonderful and mind-boggling thing that we even get to take that first step, much less that we get to continue walking in it. And while turning your back on the world is a scary process that doesn’t come without struggle, it gives us the opportunity to refine ourselves and fall in love with the God who created us.

“Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God” (2 Peter 1:3, MSG).

With our love of God comes the desire to please and glorify Him. How do we glorify a God that is already higher than anyone or anything? The truth is, there is nothing we really could do in our own strength. On our own, we don’t have the knowledge or resources to lift His name up. Yet still, He gives us the opportunity through a personal and passionate pursuit of His spirit. We get to know him, but not as God, the faraway and intimidating spiritual being. Instead, we get the chance to know God, the wild and intimate lover of our souls.

So why does 2 Peter 1:3 make me do a little happy dance in my chair? It shows that if salvation is the invitation to relationship, and the relationship creates a desire to please God, God doesn’t disregard that desire as a cute gesture that is unattainable in our own weakness. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. God sees our desire to please Him and funds it by giving us the power and the tools we need to carry out the desire; tools that are automatically available to us at the moment of salvation.

So not only do we get to know who Jesus is and glorify His name, but we get to take that basic, day one faith that led us to invite Him into our hearts, and literally make it our own. Our key verses say that not only do we get to evolve our faith from basic to tailor-made, but the Spirit allows us to build upon it and cultivate traits that don’t just add to our faith but complement it. We have the opportunity to nurture attributes such as passionate patience, alert discipline, good character, spiritual understanding, reverent wonder, and generous love. All traits that both qualify and supplement our original faith, but also develop and edify each other.

So why on earth would you wait?!

Whether you’ve known Christ for five minutes or five decades, you immediately and automatically have access to begin pursuing Him and bettering yourself to bring Him glory. That means with every day, every year, every breath you breathe after you’ve accepted Jesus into your heart has the endless potential to give God the kind of glory that only gets better with age. Congrats, fam! You are a fine wine fine, a delicious cheddar to the Lord!

Still feeling like you’re not quite there yet? There’s an easy fix for that! Press into Jesus. Pray, read the Bible, worship alone, and spend time with Him. There is no better way to develop a relationship than to dedicate and devote time to getting to know them. The only prerequisite to all these amazing promises is asking Jesus into your heart.

If you haven’t done that, my question would be: Why wait? If you’re feeling the Holy Spirit tugging you into a relationship with the Creator of the universe, the Savior of the world, and the best friend you could ever hope for, then reach out to us! Wherever in this world you are, I’d love to pray that prayer with you and help you take that first step into the miraculous adventure that is loving Jesus.

If you’ve already made that choice, then my call to action is: Don’t waste a minute more! With promises like this, there’s no reason you can’t start walking in the Lord’s freedom today. You don’t have to get older. You don’t have to get wiser. You don’t need more experience. God doesn’t require a resumé of good works or spiritual milestones to take you to another level. Start being that man or woman of God that you always desired to be right now. Ask God to deepen your experience with Him so that you can supplement your faith with both spiritual and personal gifts. Ask Him to fire you up and give you a fresh desire to please Him. He’ll come through with the power. Trust me, He’s always wanted to give it to you.