Jim Van Gelderen: Welcome to Thee Generation Podcast. This is Jim Van Gelderen, and here we are at the end of 2020. I know some of you are thinking, “Man, I can’t wait for this year to get over.”

It’s been a tough one. I think for all of us, 2020 has been unprecedented and unusual. All those words are true.

It’s been a very troubling year at times, a trying year at times, and yet a blessed year at times. I’ve had so many things happen this year that have been answers to prayer. I hope even though you look back at a very unusual year, you’re able to say, “Wow, God’s done some great things.”

I’ve seen some great meetings. I’ve seen 25 kids saved in the middle of COVID, and we’ve been doing the work. It’s been a thrill to see God working right in the midst of all this going on.

I don’t know what 2021 will hold. It might be a more challenging year than this one has been. So I just want to give you something here as we’re just about to start a new year.

I remember back when I was a kid and watched Saturday morning cartoons. I know it’s funny for most of you out there listening; you don’t know what Saturday morning cartoons were. When I was growing up, from about seven in the morning to twelve, they had cartoons on all the networks, and we’d watch a bunch of them.

We had favorite ones, et cetera. They weren’t the most intellectually stimulating at times. I look back and realize many of their plotlines were pretty simple, but nonetheless, there was one called Sealab 2020.

It was about a city that was underneath the water in the year 2020. Well, I guess that didn’t happen, at least as far as I know.

But 2020 is about ready to end, and it’s hard for me to believe that I’ve lived as long as I have. I want to challenge you about something here as we go into a new year. This last Sunday of 2020, I preached a couple of messages out of 2 Peter chapter 1.

If you go on to the Falls Baptist website or YouTube channel, you can see the messages if you’re interested in listening to the whole thing. There’s a very interesting phrase in verse number 10: “If ye do these things, ye shall never fall.”

Remember that the author of 2 Peter—this may shock you—is Peter. Peter is kind of known for hyperbole. He would overstate things like, “Lord, everyone may deny You, but I’m not going to.”

Of course, he was the first one to do it. So you might think, “Wow, that’s a little overstatement, isn’t it? Peter, if you do these things, you’ll never fall.”

But obviously in 2 Peter, he’s being inspired by the Holy Spirit, so it is true.

I don’t have time to go through “if ye do these things,” but I’ll give you the key to doing these things. You know what it is? Faith.

Back in verse number 5, Peter says, “And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue,” and the list goes on. Really, the whole idea of the passage is living a life of faith. If you’re living a life of faith, there will always be action steps.

Remember when Jesus told Peter, “Come”? Peter was in a boat in the middle of the raging sea, and Jesus was standing on the water. Peter said, “Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee on the water.”

Jesus said, “Come.” Jesus asked Peter to do something absolutely impossible. Those of you who have heard my message Zero to One Hundred, we use this extensively in talking about it.

Peter was struck with a faith step. He was going to have to step out and get on the water, something he’d never done and something he knew he could not do.

Although he used body movements and muscles and got out of that boat, you and I know he was not trusting his own abilities or his own strength to walk on water. He needed a miracle. He needed to trust God to enable him to do what he could not do unless God enabled him to do it.

The interesting part of this passage of Scripture is that it is challenging people to believe God: add virtue and knowledge, add temperance, add patience. The idea of adding is not a progression; it’s not building. It’s the idea of a recipe, a bunch of ingredients that you throw one by one into a pot and stir it up.

It’s the idea of an orchestra that has all kinds of different instruments, and the conductor is getting them all in chorus together. That’s the word we get out of the Greek word translated “add” there. It’s just getting them all together.

The idea is orchestrating these things together.

So the idea is simply this, friends: in 2021, God is going to lead many of you to faith steps probably every day of your life.

Sometimes it’s just opening your Bible and saying, “God, would You teach me? I need You to illumine Your Word. I need something from God.”

Sometimes it’s just handing a tract to somebody and saying, “God, would You use this tract?”—speaking a word of witness. God, every day of our lives, is going to ask us.

Sometimes it’s just through His Word; sometimes it’s His Spirit touching our hearts to do things. It’s the “come” moments. It’s the “get out of the boat” moments.

The thing I want you to notice in verse number 5 is that it says, “And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith.” What in the world does that mean? The word diligence is a very interesting word.

It has the idea of haste, earnestness, and zeal. It’s like being all about it.

In other words, friends, when God shows you something in His Word—a step of obedience—or God speaks to your heart, “Give that tract to somebody,” or “Stop. Get this out of your life,” or “Stop looking at that,” or “Don’t go there anymore,” whatever it is, the idea of giving all diligence is that at the moment God tells you, it is immediate.

No hesitation, no delay. It’s going forward.

It also has the idea of being lavish—in other words, just being all in. It has the idea of being wholehearted, not halfhearted; full obedience, not partial obedience. Again, it has the idea of no delay.

When I was growing up, there was a little commercial that your parents probably would recognize. At the very end it said, “When E. F. Hutton speaks, people listen.” E. F. Hutton was some kind of accounting firm or something.

I kind of tease sometimes and say, “E. F. Hutton had nothing on my dad.” When my dad spoke, people listened, and I was one of them. My dad taught me to listen to him.

Don’t get me wrong, my dad was not abusive. He was a wonderful father. I loved him dearly, but he taught me that when he spoke, I listened, and when he spoke, I immediately obeyed.

I appreciate my dad teaching me that.

That’s what God’s saying here: “Giving all diligence, add to your faith.” In 2021, and really the rest of your life, one of the keys to your Christian life working is this: “If ye do these things, ye shall never fall.” If you’re living by faith and doing what God tells you to do with diligence—with no delay, with haste, earnestness, and zeal, all in and lavishly obeying Him—God is simply saying that when that happens, if you live that way by faith, you’re not going to fall.

You’re going to live in victory.

One of the keys of the Christian life is that faith doesn’t delay in obedience. Faith is not partial obedience. Faith is not halfhearted; it’s wholehearted in obedience.

Let me encourage you. Maybe you’re wondering why your Christian life isn’t working. I want you to think: When’s the last time God spoke to you?

Maybe He said, “Walk that aisle.” Did you? Maybe God said, “Stop watching that television program.”

Did you stop watching it? Maybe God is saying, “Surfing YouTube is not good. You’re coming across stuff you shouldn’t be looking at.”

Have you stopped? Maybe you’ve gone to a friend—or probably not a friend, maybe a parent or somebody who can help you—and said, “I’m making a decision.”

The real issue of 2 Peter is faith—the kind of faith that changes your life, the kind of faith that really exhibits powerful obedience that changes your life because you’re depending on Jesus. That is a faith in which you give all diligence. You’re earnest, you’re zealous, and you are absolutely dedicated to immediately obeying.

Some of you have God dealing with you. God speaks to you in a message, and you don’t immediately obey. You’re halfhearted about it, and it doesn’t work, does it?

The decision is not powerful. It’s not that which changes your life.

So friends, when God speaks to your heart in 2021, would you immediately obey? Would you obey with no reserve? Would you be lavish about it—wholehearted, all in?

You know what will happen? God will not only enable you to do it; there will be something that happens in your heart that’s supernatural.

So many more things we could say, but I just want to challenge you with “giving all diligence, add to your faith,” and I hope you’ll do that. God bless you. What we’ve talked about is really in the byline of Thee Generation: total surrender to God’s will in your life and total dependence on His grace to live.