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I’m the world’s worst gardener. I have a hard time working out what plants are weeds and what are not. With this in mind, i’m pretty proud of a pot plant that we’ve got in our living room. It’s amazing that it hasn’t died years ago from neglect, but it seems to keep going, and every so often I’ll notice that it’s not looking too healthy, and will pick off the dead leaves and water it, maybe even put a bit of compost into the soil, and a few days later it seems to have a new lease of life.

As a Christian, it’s just the same; we need to grow to be healthy, you’re never stuck in the same place in your relationship with God, you make the choice of how much effort you put into maintaining that relationship. He will never leave or forsake you, but you can choose how much priority and passion you are going put into your faith.

Jesus’ Disciple Peter knew a lot about making mistakes, during his time with Jesus he blew it over an over again, but after years of being a Christian he wrote this:

“Do all you can to add to your life these things: to your faith add goodness; to your goodness add knowledge; to your knowledge add self-control; to your self-control add patience; to your patience add devotion to God; to your devotion add kindness toward your brothers and sisters in Christ, and to this kindness add love. If all these things are in you and growing, you will never fail to be useful to God. You will produce the kind of fruit that should come from your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ…“

but Peter also said that

“…those who don’t grow in these blessings are blind. They cannot see clearly what they have. They have forgotten that they were cleansed from their past sins.” (2 Peter 1:5-15)

We have a choice every day to invest in our most precious relationship with God, or go back to acting as if we are still blind to how wonderful following Jesus is.

In the NIV translation of the passage above, Peter tells us to “make every effort to add to your faith”, I pray today that you would make every effort to grow in your relationship with God, and as you do that your faith would be growing in the right direction, that you would see your potential in Christ, and would love being used by God for his purposes and kingdom.