“In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge,”
I love the fact that when God shows us something it is always to help in our growth. Jesus perfects our faith so we need to know Him to be able to be like Him. Now we see that along with our faith we need to have morals, but that is not it, they should be morals with excellence. Then as we develop our excellent morals we need to get knowledge, we can't think that after we accept Jesus we are done learning. We are told in Matthew to ask, seek, and knock, this is a process that will continue until we pass to our real home. After knowledge we are not done, we are told in verse 6, “and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness,” after we learn we need to have self-control. Wow, that means we should be developing a way to say "no" or "not my will" this is what sets us apart and helps us shine His light.
Self-control is important for us to understand because when we have it we surrender and when we surrender we open ourselves to grow. This growth helps us continue with patient endurance, which is tough because we are a nation that wants results right away. When we are purposeful in developing this way, each step is beneficial to the next and God who is perfect set it up so we can be successful and mature into who we need to be.
Patient endurance when developed leads to godliness, which helps us think of other better than ourselves and keeps us shining even when we don't think we have the strength. Verse 7 goes on to say, “and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.” We see that after we develop godliness we start to have brotherly affection and as that grows we can love because God is love. These things will always be things we work on because we will always have different things going on in our lives that will challenge us. When we wake up and remember what we need to do we are led by the Spirit, we are not trying to lead Him. This will take constant effort on our part, verse 8 is clear and tells us exactly what will happen when we do these things. “The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Let's be productive and useful working on reaching the lost that might not know who Jesus is as well as reminding the believers that still are growing each day. Amen