It should be so simple. It’s all but finished right out of the box —just one final ingredient, an item amply available, and the recipe is complete. Sure, it’s an integral component and is required to bring the entire formula to life, but it’s readily accessible and safe to handle. Plus, the instructions are about as easy to implement as it is to solve one plus one. Unpack everything in your box and “just add water.” Oh that your Christian walk would be so simple.
Your Christian lifestyle does share one commonality with this useful analogy. When you read the instructions on the side of the box, there is only one ingredient missing, one integral component. Nevertheless, that is where the similarities end. It is not amply available, nor readily accessible; and it is not safe to handle, nor is it easy to implement—far from it. And the instructions are complicated and it always gets messy once the box is opened. That must be why most Christians never break the seal. However, if you are willing, this is the ingredient and these are the instructions. Just add P.R.A.C.T.I.C.E. Persistent Repetition Accelerates Character Transformation Impacting Christian Ethos. Your ethos is the characteristic spirit of your lifestyle and culture, how you operate in your community as a manifestation of your core beliefs and aspirations.
Instructions: open the box, just add practice, a complex ingredient and very risky to handle. Practice is a complicated element: to your faith add virtue, to virtue add knowledge, to knowledge add self-control, to self-control add perseverance, to perseverance add godliness, to godliness add brotherly affection, and to brotherly affection add love. Combine and mix these subcomponents of practice very carefully and in the perfect sequence, or the entire recipe will be ruined. Or, maybe it’s just safer to leave the box unopened and not mess with the one missing ingredient.
How bad can that be? Do you really want to know? Well, it’s ugly; the contents inside the box will eventually rot if you don’t use them correctly—if you don’t bring the entire formula to life; and there is simply no way to know how long it will take before it festers. So, each day you leave the box closed and don’t add the missing ingredient, you are one day closer to your Christian walk becoming infested with maggots.
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