Drifting?

The Christian life is not easy.  It takes determined, hard graft, long-term view of life. Many people fall under the spell of easy-living, and for some unearthly reason, when some people become Christians, they expect their life to be one of ease, one sweet breeze.  Where oh where did they get that from?  What dark corner of the heart hides such a banal and idle sentiments?

But this is not so.

Not so, say the Scriptures, not so says Jesus, not so says Paul, not so says the witness of the New Testament.  Hebrews is a book of amazing theology, great exhortation, but also some sober warnings.  The very first warning says, “We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away” (Hebrews 2:1).

In other words, if we do not “pay attention”, we will drift away…..away from God, away from Christ and all His salvation splendour.  Not drifting away requires a determined, hard-graft, long-term view of life.  The Christian life is much more about growing potatoes rather than eating chips; it is much more about feasting like kings rather than snacking like peasants or starving like fools

Once again, Don Carson nails it…..

“People do not drift toward Holiness.

Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord.

We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance;

we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom;

we drift toward superstition and call it faith.

We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation;

we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism;

we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”

 For the Love of God, p.23