The Passionate Pursuit of Excellence

Headlines love miracle cures and moonshot promises, but the real breakthrough might be hiding in plain sight. We open with the spectacle of anti-aging hype—billion-dollar bets, bankrupt labs, and even “age-reversing” dog food—then pivot to a quieter, stronger claim from 2 Peter: a promise that a life shaped by seven specific qualities will not be unfruitful or wasted. That shift reframes the pursuit. The question isn’t how to live longer; it’s how to live well.

From there, we build on a core conviction: faith is the foundation, and God has already stocked the account with everything needed for life and godliness. Our part is to withdraw and apply it—make every effort with urgency that looks like focus, not frenzy. We unpack the first “supplement,” virtue, as excellence defined by God’s standard, not the mood of the moment. Values are subjective; virtue is objective. That clarity matters in private choices and public leadership. A mechanic’s unseen integrity, a writer’s careful report, a parent’s steady presence—these are acts of worship that turn ordinary days into durable legacy.

You’ll hear a story of an 83-year-old teacher who rode an overnight bus to grow her craft and, over decades, shaped a generation of boys into men who serve. Her life illustrates the promise: progress over perfection, direction over speed, and excellence in the mundane. If you had one month to live, what would you start, stop, or change? That question isn’t meant to provoke panic; it’s an invitation to begin building on the foundation you already have.

Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s tired of quick fixes, and leave a review with the one quality you’re adding to your faith this week. Your days are numbered, but your fruit can outlast them—start now.

Transcript

The Anti-Aging Hype Exposed

SPEAKER_00 0:26

There is a Harvard geneticist who's been in the news quite a bit. I've read about him. Believes that aging can be reversed. He's convinced he's close to finding out how. Over the past several years, he's convinced a lot of other people as well. He's raised more than$1 billion for age-reversing research. He's co-founded several companies that now sell a host of supplements to consumers. Other scientists have come forward claiming that he has exaggerated his findings, he's misrepresented his research. They just can't seem to find somebody to prove that it's true. Now, just six months ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that his investors who have little to nothing to show for their money, uh, their years of waiting, investments and research, four of the companies trying to develop age-reversing drugs have now gone bankrupt. Other companies have stalled because they can't find Exhibit A to prove it's true. Now, just recently, the board of the Academy for Health and Lifespan Research, which he co-founded, asked for his resignation. They felt he'd gone too far when he claimed that dog food one of his companies was selling was reversing the aging process in dogs. If it works, don't give it to cats. I just wanted to throw that in there. Okay. I don't think it works for dogs either. You know, billions of dollars are spent literally every year on uh age reversing, anti-aging. We call it that, a little bit more, you know, palatable programs. I looked up some of these more uh, I guess you could call them serious supplement programs. There's the hormonal blitz program, which gives people megadoses of human growth hormones and peptides. There is the tissue rejuvenation program, which is using plasma transfusions from younger donors. There's the exotic ocean minerals plan that claims the ocean creatures in the ocean have the secret to aging, among other resources. They believe that pearls, ground to powder that somehow get into your system can repair your DNA. There's the intestinal rebuilder protocol. It has clients consuming all sorts of raw organic products, including, get this, eating raw garlic every day. They might live a long time, but they won't have any friends. Obviously, obviously, there's nothing wrong with supplements. Uh, in fact, the older I get, my doctor is a little more persistent that I'm not producing enough vitamin D. And so I need to supplement my diet with a vitamin D pill. I asked him if I can supplement my diet with a Snickers bar, if that would work. And he didn't think that was funny. Um, evidently, there's no vitamin D in Snickers. I consider that tragic. They ought to fix that, by the way. I did find this as you dig, it's uh it's ironic that the oldest verified person, woman, is a woman to have lived the longest in modern times verified, is Louise Calment, who lived to be the age of 122. 122. She had no special supplement program. In fact, she stopped smoking at the age of 117. And she stopped because she couldn't see well enough to light her cigarettes. That's why she quit. She had no special diet. She ate bread and potatoes and French fries and butter. She ate a chocolate-covered Boston cream-filled donut every single day. Okay, I made that part up. When she was interviewed late in life, she was asked the question, what is your vision for the future? And she said, very brief. Well, listen, seriously, the problem with with all of this, age reversing, certainly, programming, no matter how grand it all is, and some of these supplements, I'm sure, are good for you. But the problem is for one thing, they have nothing to do with God. Your creator who designed you. Yes, we should steward as well as we can, but he's counted our heartbeats before there was one, the psalmist says. The real question isn't how can you live a long life? The real question is how can you live a meaningful life? No matter how long it is. What if I told you that the Bible has a supplement program to strengthen the saint? No matter how old you are, there is a divinely inspired supplement program that is guaranteed to make your life meaningful. In fact, it it gives this, I find it, a rather astonishing guarantee. Not a sales pitch either. It's a guarantee that you can live a fulfilling, well-lived, fruitful, effective life. Well, the Apostle Peter delivers the guarantee. So go back to 2 Peter chapter 1, and you can read this with me. And let me tell you, this doesn't have anything to do with candy or chocolate. It has to do with a lifelong development by surrendering to the hand of God. I want to read for you what I want to call seven supplements that guarantee spiritual strength. Now we'll unpack it over the next few weeks, but for now, let's just read through the shopping list. It begins at verse five. He's finished his introductory comments. Now he is into his exhortation. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. Now get this guarantee. For if these qualities, these supplements he just rattled off, are yours and are increasing, that is, this is the direction in which you're heading, they will keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. You want a life that's meaningful, fruitful, effective. Here's God's guaranteed supplement program. He guaranteed it. It's guaranteed. If you have these supplements added to your life, you will not be unfruitful or ineffective, no matter how old you are. In fact, if you want to see an even more stunning guarantee, the latter part of verse 10, he writes this if you practice these qualities, these supplements, you will never fall. Wow. You will never fall. Now the word here for fall is not the word for apostasy. He's talking to believers. He's not talking about abandoning the faith. He's talking about living a meaningless life. You could render the word fall to that of living a wretched, miserable life. So here's the supplement program that keeps you from living a wretched, self-centered, unfruitful, miserable life. Now, with that, I'd want to know what it is because I want to sign up. So let's go back to verse five and begin to understand it. Peter writes, For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith. I want you to notice he's not telling his readers to get faith or to have faith because they already have it. He's writing to believers. Faith is the foundation for their salvation. Peter's already told us back in verse one that we have been given the gift of saving faith that began our Christian life. He tells us that we have salvation, faith, saving faith through Christ, verse one. Then we have already the provisions for life and godliness through God's power. That's verse three. And then he told us that we have already the promises of God for life and eternity, verse four. One author says it's like God has deposited all the gold bullion in the bank with our name on the account that we're going to need to live our lives for Him. But we have to go and withdraw it and apply it. And that's the point he's now going to make. For this reason, because God has given you all these resources at salvation. Don't stop there. You haven't been saved to just wait for the undertaker. There's a life that you can live. You've been given the gift of faith that brought you to life. Now Peter gives you seven supplements so that you can fully live that Christian life and escape a self-centered life of misery. Let me put it this way: faith is the foundation of your Christianity. These seven supplements are the demonstration of your Christianity. So you never want to be satisfied with stopping with the foundation. You were saved by faith in Christ. Just don't stop there. If you've ever built a house, we did. We've been living in it now for more than 25 years. Well, if you've built one, you you know the process, and they finally poured the footings, and then they poured that cement slab. And you went out there and looked at it, and your first thought was it's so tiny. It looks so small. Well, nobody's ever told a builder, and we certainly didn't tell ours, you know, you know, look, um, this is perfect. You can stop. I I've I've always wanted to live on a cement pad. I've always wanted to live on the foundation. So I'm gonna bring my sleeping bags, my family and I out here, and I'll bring a little Coleman stove and get a little rocking chair. And this this is this is this is great. Now this is the starting point. It's time to build the structure. See, in Peter's inspired perspective, faith is that's that's the beginning, and that's something God has done for you, and now this supplement program is something you do for God. One author writes here that Peter's perspective on the Christian life is like the steering wheel of a car. God has provided the car, there's a powerful engine in it, it's got gasoline in the tank, uh, and he's given you the daily decision in life to turn the wheel. Peter is emphasizing the simple fact that even God isn't gonna steer a parked car. You gotta get it going. You turn it on, he's got the power already for you, and then you steer it. Now, if you if you're older in the faith, in fact, if you're younger in the faith, it might be a little confusing to you as you read the Bible, but if you're older in the faith, you've recognized that there are passages where everything seems to be God's responsibility. And then there are passages where it seems like you have all the responsibility. Well, that's this passage. And I think it's wonderful to recognize that a balanced biblical view of the Christian life is one of cooperation with God, between you and God. For instance, his word is promised that it's gonna protect us from sin. It's gonna encourage us, it's going to guide us. But God isn't gonna get you up in the morning, turn to the passage he wants you to read and stick your nose in it. You've got to do that. That's your responsibility. So this supplement program is something you must steer, as it were, your life toward. And that's why Peter's emphasizing our responsibility. Notice the next phrase in verse five. I've emphasized it. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith. Make every effort. It's one word in the original language, and it refers to a number of things. It refers to earnestness, it refers to being focused, being intentional. Developing a godly life, building that godly structure is never accidental. It's intentional. Well, look, that wall got framed. I wonder how that happened overnight. Somebody was at work. One author writes that Peter is telling us to bring, he writes, bring into your walk with Christ every ounce of determination you can muster. Not so that you can be saved. That's already assumed by Peter. Let me tell you, if this supplement program was something every Christian just automatically did, Peter wouldn't be exhorting us to do it, and he wouldn't be warning us if we don't. And we can't blame God. This is why you find one passage after another exhorting the believer in the New Testament, like the Apostle Paul did. He said, I beseech you, I am begging you. He's writing to believers, I beg you. Present your bodies, a living sacrifice to God. Give it to him every day. And don't be pressed into the mold of the world, Williams writes. Don't. But instead be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you'll discover that the will of God for your life is perfect and acceptable. Romans 12, 1 and 2. If this divinely ordered supplement program was something every Christian signed up for, Peter wouldn't be warning us that if we refused it, we would leave ineffective, we'd lead ineffective, unfruitful lives, and we would be heading for a fall. Now, with that kind of warning and that kind of wonderful guarantee, it makes me want to take the first supplement. Where do I sign up? Well, Peter also uses this word to encourage us even further because making every effort originally referred to making haste, moving fast. It's like Peter's a coach, and he's shouting out to his players, come on, get moving, do it. There's urgency built into this word. Same, same idea of Paul who wrote to the Thessalonians, look, I want you to pray for me that the word of God may speed ahead. We had plans, we we want to move forward. We don't want to piddle around. There's a sense of urgency. Let's get moving here. As I was studying this, I couldn't help but remember when we were expecting our fourth child. We knew that the date was approaching, and we had a plan. There my wife was at 2 o'clock in the morning, standing next to me in the bed. I was sound asleep. She woke me up. She was already dressed, had her bag, and she just said to me calmly, it's time to go. Well, I was anything but calm, you know, got ready, uh, I think, and headed out the door. And we headed to Rex Hospital. Now, I I wasn't driving any faster than I normally do. But let me tell you, I was driving differently. It wasn't so much about acceleration as it was concentration. I wasn't looking at a building they're building. Oh, look at that, honey. Putting up a new building over there, or there's a new subdivision going up. That's how I talk, you know, normally. I could care less what they're building on Blue Ridge Road. I wasn't, you know, fiddling with the radio station, trying to find something, what's on it, you know, 3 a.m. I have no idea. Let's find it. I could care less. I had one thing on my mind, not delivering a baby in the car. Getting my wife to Rex Hospital on time, which we did. I've never been more focused on driving than at that time. That's the idea of making haste, the sense of urgency. Nope. Peter's not saying that urgency equals anxiety. Urgency in the biblical sense doesn't mean you're panicking, it means you're purposeful. In fact, biblical urgency might lead you sometimes to just stop and pray and wait. But there's a sense. Lord, I don't want to waste my life. I want to apply it in the right way. So these seven supplements are given in that regard. By the way, you ought to know that these seven supplements are not sequential. In other words, you don't master the first one and then move to the second one, and when you get that one nailed down, you move to the third one. This is the direction you're heading. And you'll never master all seven. This isn't perfection, this is intention, this is progression. Here they are. There's seven different facets, you could say, of a godly life. So here's the first supplement. All right, everything I've just done is an introduction. All right, so let's go back to verse five and let's look at the first one. We'll cover just one. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue. Peter begins with a description of something that's good. He says, add goodness. Add what's right to your faith. Bring it alongside your faith. Your faith assumes you already have it. Now, with a definite article, add this to it. Bring it alongside. A supplement that's actually good for you. You might think that pearl dust is good for you. We don't know yet. But God has told us what's good for us in his word. So without him, we have no objective standard, but he's given us his objective standard for what is virtuous, what is right, what is good. Because what you think is good and what I think is good might not be good. It might not be good for us. In fact, we can justify just about anything, can't we? And all the while be taking in something that's not good. I remember as a little boy, I was around the age of four, I think three and a half into four. My older brother was five and a half at the time, and he wasn't feeling well. So my mother gave him a little orange aspirin. You old enough remember those? Tasted like orange candy. And uh she gave it to him, and then she put that bottle in the medicine cabinet there in the bathroom, and he watched her do it. Well, we shared a bedroom, and um that night we were just talking instead of sleeping, and he informed me that he knew where some candy was being stored, and that intrigued me, of course. So we got out of bed, we went to the bathroom, he climbed up, I can still see him climbing up on the counter, reaching into that medicine cabinet and pulling out that bottle. It was full. We split it right down the middle and went back to bed and fell asleep. Well, my grandmother was spending the night at our home that night, and she woke up around one or two o'clock in the morning, used the bathroom. We only had one bathroom in our little house. She went in and she found that empty bottle of aspirin lying in the sink. She immediately figured out she knew my older brother was trying to kill me. That's the way I interpret it. The next thing I remember, and I can still feel it, I was on a cold metal table in the emergency room, having my stomach pumped out, and my brother was on a metal table next to me. I thought it was good. Tasted good, but it was deadly. And if my grandmother had not been there that night, by the grace of God, I would not have grown up and become your pastor. And I'm glad she was there. You see, what someone values isn't necessarily virtuous. Did you know there's a big difference between a value and a virtue? I I valued that aspirin. I wanted that aspirin. I thought that was good. It was it was tasty. What's wrong with it? But what I valued wasn't good for me at all. You know, this is an election year. We're gonna hear a lot of politicians talk a lot about their values, what they consider valuable. It might not be virtuous. A politician might value a woman's right to an abortion for convenience. They might value a child's right to transgender without you being informed. They they might think it's valuable to have same-sex marriage. That's a that's a valuable thing for our country. They might value an evolutionary curriculum for third graders. They think that's the best thing for them to learn. They value that. But values aren't necessarily virtues. We make our own set of values, but God defines virtue right from wrong. By the way, two weeks from now, even now is early voting, there's a municipal election, town mayors, some seats on the town council, members are up for a vote. We'll be standing before a town council here in a year or so with building plans. It'd be great to have believers on that town council who would be sympathetic to the gospel. We care more about what we're doing than how many cars we're parking and where. So do your homework and vote. It's amazing to me how few votes put these individuals into office with such power. But I don't really care when any of them talk about, whether it's local or regional or national, when they when they talk about their values, or he's talking about their values. I want to know about their virtues. What do they define as right and wrong? Now, this word, interestingly enough, was also used in Peter's day for something they considered excellent. One Greek scholar I was reading wrote that the basic meaning of the word in the first century was for someone who stood out by means of their excellence. Whatever they did, whatever their job was, they pursued a standard of excellence. In fact, they would use that word for just about anything that fulfilled its purpose with an outstanding merit. They would they'd call a horse that could run fast, an excellent horse. It was a horse with virtue. They would refer to a tool that was designed to do the right job and it did it well. They'd call it a virtuous tool, an excellent tool. One of my favorite tools around the house is super glue. I mean, that is a great tool. Why it works so well. So there is this broader sense in the mind of Peter that virtue is a supplement where a believer will fulfill the role God has given them. They are devoting themselves to what God has given them to do. Whatever they have found to do with their hand, they are doing it with all their might. Ecclesiastes 9, verse 10. No matter how mundane, what God may have ordered for you today is a sink full of dishes. Tomorrow you might go to your shop and you've got a dozen cars to repair. How are you gonna repair them when no one sees but God? You got a report to write. What are you gonna put into that? You have a Sunday school class to teach. How'd you prepare to get by? Or the standard of excellence with determination and urgency and dedication and desire for excellence. All that is bound up in this supplement of virtue. It's a loaded word. It it encourages us to move forward, not just to reach a minimum standard, but to stand out at that job, in that home with excellence. God would applaud that. Here's the supplement of excellence, virtue. This is a virtuous life. In his classic little book that I require my seminary students to read by Howard Hendrix, is entitled Teaching to Change Lives. He's a longtime professor at Dallas Seminary, now with the Lord. He told us in class, basically, his notes became that book, about how he went to a Sunday school convention in Chicago a number of years. Ago. He was one of the keynote speakers with two other uh men. Well, during the lunch break, uh, he and these other two speakers went across the street to a hamburger shop to eat lunch, and uh the place was full. Finally, a table for four opened up, and and and they saw an elderly lady there. She had the bag, she had the lantern, they knew she was from the same convention. They invited her to sit with them to fill out this table of four. She was 83 years of age. She lived in the upper peninsula of Michigan. She's from a little church, and it had a Sunday school attendance of 65 people. And for decades she had taught fifth-grade boys. She told them that she had traveled by Greyhound bus all the way from the Upper Peninsula to Chicago the night before. It had taken all night so she could be there. Hendricks asked her why she had come to the convention. He writes, I will never forget her answer. She said, I have arrived here so that I can become a better teacher. Eighty-three years old, taught for decades. I can do it better. I can pick up a few things here to teach my students well. She was pursuing the virtue of excellence. Well, with that, you know, these three speakers are just now focusing on her, plying her with questions about her decades of teaching. And Hendrix writes that she spoke with humility and gratitude. She knew all her boys by name. She had prayed for them. She'd kept track of them as they went into high school and on to college. Then she said quietly that 84 of her former students were now in full-time vocational ministry, and 22 of them had graduated from Dallas Seminary. A church with 65 students. She had a hundred boys. He was taking them to the next step. Her passion had been to fulfill that particular assignment God had given her. And in 83, her standard of excellence, she's still pursuing it. They're in that little church, that little classroom. I couldn't help but think that boys are going to arrive to her classroom, and they'll have no idea that they're about to meet a woman of virtue. This is Peter's encouragement and warning to have a focused, urgent passion for excellence, no matter what it is, so that we will not lead ineffective, fruitful lives that lead us to misery after a fall. What has God assigned you today? No matter how mundane, how spectacular. What is he assigned for you today? What are you gonna do tomorrow? At the job, the office, in the classroom, home? Let me change the question. If you were told that you had one month to live, what is it about your life that you would change? What would you start doing? What would you stop doing? What would you bring into your walk with Christ? What would you do differently tomorrow at work? At school. In the home. If you had one month left to live, what would you change? What supplement would you pursue? Here's another question. Why wait? What are you waiting for? That's his idea here. Come on. He's writing to believers. Come on. In my vernacular, he's saying, pedal to the metal. Get moving. God has already deposited everything you need. Go withdraw it and apply it. You're saved. The foundation is poured. Don't stop with that. Build on it. Bring alongside your faith this supplement, this passion for excellence, this virtuous desire to fulfill what God has given you. And hear Peter applauding and the Spirit of God through him when you decide to do just that. Would you pray with me? Let's put an exclamation point here in your heart. When I asked the question, what would you change? What would you stop? What would you start? Something probably came to your mind. Why don't you talk to your Lord about that? Take this admonition, this exhortation to go for it. And the Spirit of God through his word empowers, enables. Ask him for that. So that you can start it. So, Father, with your guarantee, and the cooperation of our will with your power, help us to build on this foundation of faith. To take our assignment, no matter what it is, there are many of them, but to do them unto you for your glory, so that we will stand out as a new standard of excellence that points people to our Creator God who has defined truth virtue. And in so doing, thank you, Father. But this is a promise.