Build Yourself Up

But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.

Jude 20–21

In these two little verses at the end of Jude's book, he gives the believer four ways we can protect ourselves from false teaching. I want to focus on the first, which is building ourselves up in the Christian faith.

One of the very best ways for you to protect yourself from false teaching is for you to fill yourself up with good teaching. One of the best ways to ensure you don’t settle for a cheap knockoff is for you to increase in your knowledge of the real deal.

Are you growing in your Christian faith? Are you increasing in knowledge? Are you building yourself up?

Think about the kinds of buildings you would find at the heart of major city. Most of them would have many floors, many levels. The Christian life is like that. There are many levels to Christian maturity. But far too many Christians got saved and started to grow in their faith... then just quit building themselves up. Our churches are full of abandoned building projects. Christians that are no longer under construction in any real sense of the word. They aren’t growing in their faith. They aren’t increasing in their knowledge of God's Word. They are simply taking up space.

Jude speaks against that. He says you need to keep moving forward in your faith. You have to build yourself up. You need to keep growing, increasing in knowledge, and drawing nearer to the Lord. No matter how young or old you are, never stop building yourself up in your most holy faith.