‘Add’ means you've got to build on something that's been established. He's already stated earlier on that we have faith in our hearts, because we've trusted Christ - the foundation of our walk with the Lord. We received Jesus. He becomes our saviour. We have saving faith. We've become introduced to His kingdom, so we have a foundation of relationship with Christ. He's talking and writing to people who he assumes already have faith. He says: “add to your faith”, so he's assuming that faith is already there - our saving faith. We can't do anything to add to what Christ has done.
Ephesians 2:8 – “By grace are you saved through faith, not works...”
Our faith is a gift to us. It's our response to what Jesus did. But now he's saying: God doesn't want you to stop there, He wants you to add to your faith, or build on the foundation. The foundation of your life is a revelation of Jesus Christ - the spirit of Christ comes into us, and we become joined to Him. Now we need to grow. He says: don't stop there, build on the foundation, you must add to your faith.
The Bible describes our life like a building; like a body that must grow up, and go from childhood, through to young man, through to fatherhood; or it's like a building - that we've got a foundation laid, and now you've got to build on the building. We can't just stop at the fact that we're saved, and we belong to God. We're on a journey to maturity; and the Bible makes it clear that without maturity, we can't enter all that God has for us.
Galatians 4:1 – “…as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate…”.
When the heir is just a child, he's no different to a servant. He can't have his inheritance. You've got to grow up - and we see that naturally. If you want to receive an inheritance, you have got to be old enough to handle it. Without maturity, we can't enter God's inheritance; so we must embrace, not just that Jesus wants to save us, but also to embrace that God's purpose is to mature us, and grow us until we become like Christ - and we understand that Jesus is the express image of what God is like.
In Hebrews 1:6, we understand He's the “firstborn of many”, so those scriptures tell us God's plan is not just to have Jesus in glory, but to have many, many sons and daughters exactly like Him, in their character and their nature. That's not accidental. We must commit to God's process of transformation, and building character, and Jesus is the model.
This is what we would call our ‘heart journey’. It doesn't talk about the heart there, that's talked about other places. The heart journey is our personal journey. It's something everyone must take, and it's a journey of freedom, and a journey of formation. Freedom, because we've got wounds, we've got attachments, addictions, and old reactions that we make. We've got immaturity, areas of bondages - and they all show up in our relationships. If they weren't shown before, they will show when you get married! They will show up again when you have children! They show up through life. The wounds of our heart need to be healed; the bondages in our heart need to be broken; so our journey with the Lord is a journey firstly, of letting God bring progressive freedom in our life; and secondly, it's one of formation - the formation of the heart, and character, of Christ in our lives.
Matthew 11:29 – “Take My yoke from Me, and learn from Me, for I am gentle (or, I'm meek and lowly in heart, meek and humble in heart)”.
Jesus wants us to learn the value of the heart qualities of' ‘meekness’, and ‘humility’. The quality of meekness means: my strength is under control, under management; my passions, my energy, my life is yielded and surrendered to God, so I don't react to life's adversities. I'm not imposing my power and forcing my will and way. Humility means that I adopt a ‘servant attitude. When we take on the qualities, and grow the qualities, of meekness and humility, then we become more and more like Christ. When we humble ourselves, God lifts us up; when we're meek, God causes us to inherit. In other words, we receive things that we never worked for. We have influence with people.