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My Personal Values
Bryant Fisher
Belhaven University

Author Note This paper was prepared for English 103, Composition and Rhetoric taught by Kimberly Dowe-Davis. 2
My personal values are those things that are the most important and meaningful in my life, my belief in God and my devotion to and appreciation for family. Those are my priorities and my highest motivations. These personal values are important to me because they shape my behavior, help to guide me through life’s journeys, and help support my faith. My value system is based on my belief in God and shaped by my experiences with my family and other relationships with people who have been in my life. Values are developed early in life and the basic core values do not change. We may modify how much we value certain things and we may modify how we apply our value system to our lives but the basic values are who we are. There is always room to build on your values and that’s what I am striving to do with my belief in God to build my relationship with Him and to become more knowledgeable of Him. In order to do that, I will follow 2 Peter 1:5-8 to guide me through my journey. In 2 Peter 1:5 he says, “And beside this, giving all diligence add to your faith virtue and to virtue knowledge”. God has given me the faith, now I need to build on that. I strive everyday to be diligent in my devotion to God and to add virtue and knowledge to my faith. The people that I come into contact with during my life help me to do that. My pastor has helped me to become more diligent in my faith by preaching and teaching me the right way to be virtuous in my faith. He has helped me to better understand that with God in my life anything is possible. I have relied on his faith when I found my own failing me at times and as he guided me back on the right path, I have found a better understanding to some situations that I could not make sense of on my own. He also has helped me to grow in my faith and not to become “stuck” spiritually. He has showed me how to have discipline in my faith. He told me that the life of Christ that is in 3 me gives me the motivation and power to change and grow spiritually. He told me that God graciously gave me the key to the unfathomable riches of Christ (Eph. 3:8), which supplies me with everything I need for life and godliness (Christlikeness). His point was that I could not grow as a Christian until I trusted and accepted my faith as my essential foundation for growing and expanding upon my path to godliness (Christlikeness). My pastor explained to me that these verses that I am using are just stepping stones along my path. Each step is not to be perfected to take the next step they are all interrelated and build upon each other. My motivation should be God’s grace and the right motivation in Christian life is essential. In 2 Peter 1:6 he says, “And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience and to patience godliness’. So now I am working on my faith and with my pastor’s help my knowledge of my faith, now the next thing is temperance (self-control). This is a hard one for me, I know that I need to be motivated to do certain things in my life. For example, going to the gym, I know that going to the gym will help me to become healthier, but there are some days when I just do not feel like going. This is where I have to exercise my self-control (temperance). This is the same thing that I encounter if I find myself in a discussion with someone who doesn’t believe in God. I know that everyone has a right to his or her own opinion and no one person is right or wrong. This also helps me to practice my patience, because I can not understand why someone who lives in the world we live in and sees all the wonderful things that are around us does not believe that my God truly exists. A God that offers complete forgiveness of sins and eternal life. That makes no sense to me but