By Rev. Dr. Brent Russett – Asbury Free Methodist
2 Peter 1:3-7 -December 28, 2025
The new year starts this coming Thursday. Many people will make New Year’s resolutions to get in shape, to read more books or to learn a hobby. Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution? I have! How did it go for you? Probably about as well as it went for me.
Studies show that 64% of people give up on their New Year’s resolutions by the end of the first month. By the end of February, roughly 80% have failed. The overall success rate is between 8 and 10%. That is not a very good success rate.
So, it would be counterproductive for me to say, let’s make a New Year’s resolution to become closer to God, to grow in grace, to grow in godly character. Yet, if you are a truly a Christian – by that I mean that you have given your life to the Lord, you know that he has forgiven your sin, you know that he has placed his Holy Spirit inside you, you know that you have a personal relationship with God, because of what Jesus has done for you – If you are truly a Christian then you will know that there is something deep inside you, at the core of who you are, that wants to become closer to God, that wants to grow in grace and in godly character. (If you don’t want that – then you have to question whether or not you are truly a follower of Jesus)
This time of year seems to be a time when we reassess our lives. Many of you will set new budgets. Many of you will think about how to shore up your perceived deficits. But for those of us who have this core drive to know Jesus better – it is really easy to make a New Year’s resolution.
Instead of a New Year’s resolution, I am asking you to consider choosing a theme for this year. It may be kindness, or hope, or peace, or joy. It may be a verse that God is calling you to lean into and live out. What is it that you want to cooperate with God on producing in your life?
Part of my role as your pastor is to be your spiritual coach. So, this morning, I want to coach you on how to grow in godliness or in character or in your spiritual life – however you want to phrase it.
The Bible uses a whole lot of different ways to describe the same thing. It uses the term Fruit of the Spirit. If the Holy Spirit is in you, then is like a tree that produces spiritual fruit.
Galatians 5:22–23a (NIV)
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control.
Sometimes the Bible will describe growing in spiritual life as putting on spiritual clothing.
Colossians 3:12–14 (NIV)
12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Sometimes the Bible will talk about our growth in grace as righteousness and holiness.
Ephesians 4:22–24 (NIV)
22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
There are other places where it is described as spiritual maturity. Sometimes I will talk about it as being immersed in the kingdom of God. Sometimes it is just called growing in Love.
Whether you are describing growing in your Christian life as the fruit of the Spirit or putting on spiritual clothing or as righteousness and holiness, there are a few things that you will notice.
- God has a part – the biggest part.
- Only God can change your heart. Only God can produce the fruit, the character traits, the heart that you desire.
- You have a part – You will notice how the bible says “clothe yourselves with compassion…” “Put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
- God will not do his part without your cooperation.
God causes you to grow, but your growth is dependent on your cooperation with him.
Before I get to how to approach this kind of spiritual growth in the New Year, let me remind you of what it is not.
Spiritual Growth (growth in godliness) is not:
- Intellectual growth.
- Some people think that if they know more scripture or read more books, then they are growing spiritually. Those things are good, but they are means to an end of spiritual growth – they are not spiritual growth in and of themselves.
- Emotionalism
- Some people think that if they have big emotions in worship, or in repentance, that this is a sign of spiritual growth. The prophets of Baal were emotional – but they did not have a godly spirituality.
- Sometimes you will be moved emotionally by the beauty of God, or the truth of God, or even by the Spirit of God – that is a beautiful thing. When your heart has been touched by God, celebrate that. But don’t make the mistake that just because you are moved emotionally, that you are growing spiritually.
- Using Spiritual Gifts
- Paul says if I prophecy but don’t have love – that is not particularly spiritual. I am generous and give what I have to the poor, but don’t love – then my spiritual life is just noise.
When you are growing in your spiritual life your faith will grow so that you can trust him, even when you can’t see or feel him. When you are growing in your spiritual life, you will notice that your connection to God is stronger and your heart turns to him faster than it did. When you are growing spiritually it shows up in how you treat those around you. When you are growing spiritually you will learn to resist the world and the flesh and the devil. When you are growing spiritually, you will hear the voice of God more easily.
It would take me a long time to list all the signs of a growing faith – But if you look back next year at this time, you will have a good sense of whether or not you have grown.
I know that you know that God wants you to grow. But we don’t grow in every area of our lives all the time. God normally works on one or two things at a time. That is why Peter uses this progression.
2 Peter 1:5–7 (NIV)
5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.
If you look at your life, you will probably see places where God is calling you to grow. I know many of us want to do everything right now. I want to fix my self-control, I want to love better, I want to show kindness, I want to persevere well, and I want to become godly.
But trying to grow in all areas at the same time is like trying to learn to play the piano and saxophone, learn AI, become a competitive gamer, and train for the Iron Man. All the while, you are going about your daily life. You may be able to do all of those things, but if you try to learn them all at the same time, you probably won’t do well in any of them.
And even if you focus on one characteristic, let’s say you want to grow in kindness. You may do an act of kindness, but that doesn’t mean you have become kind. It takes a while for it to seep into who you are.
You don’t learn to write by going from nothing to writing a novel. You learn to write by consistently writing. You don’t learn to run a marathon by entering a marathon race without practice. You have to progressively start with shorter distances and work your way up.
You can’t work on everything at the same time.
The other thing I am assuming you know is that spiritual growth is intentional. The seeds for a wonderful garden have been planted in your heart by the Holy Spirit – but if you never attend to your garden, there won’t be much of a harvest – or much of a garden for that matter. You have the seeds to a wonderful relationship with God, but like a marriage, if you don’t intentionally attend to your relationship, it will soon become distant.
Your call is to cooperate with God in your spiritual growth. He plants the seed and grows the plant; you need to attend to the garden. So, how do we cooperate with God?
There are at least three ways that God causes us to grow.
1. The Daily Stuff of Life.
If you lose your peace under stress, then God will use those irritants to develop patience. All the daily irritations of life are things that God can and will use to help you to grow spiritually if you cooperate with him. Things like, long lineups in the grocery store, traffic jams when you’re late, Or waiting for others when they’re late are things that God will use to grow you spiritually.
God will use the difficult people that you run into as you go through life to help you grow spiritually. Whether it’s misunderstandings, or genuinely difficult people, or personality clashes – God will use these things to help you grow spiritually.
Some of you carry heavy responsibilities. You feel the weight of those responsibilities. God even uses things like that to grow you spiritually.
But in all these things, God requires your cooperation. If you are one who is prone to road rage, you are going to continue to rage until you cooperate with God on that issue. I don’t know how many times there has been this daily stuff that weighed on me, that I forgot to bring to God. God, is there anything you want to teach me in this? God, what do you want me to do to handle this? Instead, like a stoic, I put my head down and tried to get through the issues. But I have learned that spiritual growth happens intentionally. It happens when we give the stuff of our daily lives to him, where we look for him to teach us, where these things become matters of prayer.
You will be surprised by what God causes and calls you to grow in when you start talking to him about these things.
2. Suffering and trials of your life.
The second way God causes us to grow is through the suffering and the trials in our lives. James tells us not to rejoice in the trials, but to rejoice in the outcomes God will produce in our lives because of the trials.
James 1:2–4 (NIV)
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
There is something that only perseverance can produce. If you are in one of those places where you are facing “trials of many kinds,” ask God what he wants to do in your life with this.
This is different than asking the question why? God, why is this happening to me? It is not wrong to ask that question, but God never promises an answer. The better question is “what.” God, what do you want to do in me through this difficult time? Lord, I am persevering because I don’t have any other choice. What do you want to develop in me? How do you want to grow my spiritual life? How can I cooperate with you in this?
3. Initiating the process ourselves.
1 Timothy 4:7 says, “Train yourself to be godly.” 2 Peter 1:5 says, “Make every effort.” So that is what I want to spend the rest of our time on.
1. Choose a Godly Character Trait or Theme for the year
At this time of year, we may want to think about choosing a godly character trait. There are several ways by which you can identify the character trait you should work on:
- By observing disturbing or ongoing patterns in your own life. Is there something that you know you need to correct?
- By listening to what your spouse or your friend says. Ask them what they think you need to work on.
- By listening in prayer to see what the Holy Spirit brings to your mind.
What is it that you want God to do in you this year? Do you want Him to produce more joy? Do you want to become kinder? Do you want to become more consistent? Do you want to become patient? Do you want to have more peace? Pick a godly character trait.
2. Regularly Pray about what you want to see God produce in your life.
When you have picked a trait, then here is what you are going to do:
- You are going to start praying regularly for that trait.
- God, I want to see more joy in my life.
- God, how do you want to produce joy in my life?
- God, is there anything you want to say to me about joy?
Look how Paul prays for the Philippians
Philippians 1:9–11 (NIV)
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
Do you see how he is praying for their character? Do you see how he’s praying for their growth and grace? If you want to grow in a particular character in your life this year, then you start by daily, regularly praying about that trait.
3. Dwell on the Scripture about that Character Trait.
If you want God to help you be joyful, then look up and study scriptures on joy. If you want God to help you to be kind, look up scriptures on kindness. If you want God to help you to be self-disciplined, look up scriptures on self-discipline. If you want God to help you to be more loving, then look up scriptures on love.
This is part of what it means to make every effort. This is part of what it means to tend your garden. This is what it means to renew your mind. You are getting to know what God has to say about your particular trait that you believe he wants to produce in your life.
4. Identify a time when you failed to display this trait.
When you have that memory in mind, take it to Jesus. Ask him about what was behind what happened. Bring what you feel to Jesus. Ask Jesus about where he was in the middle of this memory. Ask him what you need to do to avoid repeating the failure. Ask him what you need to do to overcome in the future.
As you look at that, you may find that you need to forgive someone. Maybe somebody has wronged you. More often than not, we need to forgive ourselves.
As you deal with forgiveness in your own heart, you may find God producing that godly trait in your heart.
Here’s what you need to know: Because God’s Spirit is in you, it is going to be natural for you to live out godly traits like joy or kindness or love.
But oftentimes those things get crowded out by some of the weeds in our heart. More often than not, seeing those things come alive in our life will be about getting rid of the things that steal our peace or steal our joy rather than doing the things to make joy grow. But God can show you that.
5. Receive Inner Healing
This will not apply to everyone, but some of you are going to need God to do some significant healing in the core of who you are. You are going to need Him to walk with you into some of those dark places in your heart. This is probably a step where you will need a friend to walk with you. Maybe a counsellor, maybe someone like me, maybe a friend who knows how to walk with you before God. But it is amazing what God can do when you allow Him to move you back in your memories to some of the core things that are producing the weeds that are choking out your kindness or generosity or faithfulness.
6. Ask someone to pray for your character trait.
Whether or not you need inner healing, it is wonderful to have a friend pray with you about what you are asking God to do in terms of your spiritual growth. If you are one of those people who are asked to pray, then be faithful in that. Occasionally ask about how that is going and occasionally ask if there are different things that you can pray about. There is something about knowing that we are prayed for that both releases the power of God and encourages our own souls.
7. Keep in step with the Spirit
The last thing I want to urge you to do is keep in step with the Spirit. If you are praying for the ability to love others or love someone better, then what God teaches you in January may be different than what he wants to teach you in March. But as you keep in step with the Spirit and as you keep on listening to the Spirit, you’re going to see the Spirit of God teach you.
Should Jesus tarry, and should you live to see 2027, you are going to be a year older than you are now. You will have to face the daily grinds of life. You may even have to deal with some suffering. You are going to be a year older anyway. Why don’t you move towards becoming the person that you want to be? Why don’t you move towards the person God is calling you to be? It is an intentional movement, it is an important movement, and it is one that God tells you that he will give you his grace to accomplish.
Pray