Skip to main content

Drifting Away




The second chapters of Hebrews begins with these words: “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” We do not want to be guilty of drifting away. What is the author referring to?

 

The things “we have heard” were laid out in the first chapter, namely that Jesus Christ is supreme over all things, the only one able to bring us salvation. Drifting away from that would be terrible. But I want to point out something that should be obvious: drifting takes time. 

 

It has been pointed out that the Greek phrase employed by the author of Hebrews has nautical connotations, describing a boat that was carelessly tied to the dock; when the boat’s owner goes back to retrieve it, he will find that it has drifted away. However, that same phrase has also been used to describe the process of evaporation. Go outside and pour some water on the ground, and eventually you will not be able to find that water. It has made its way into the clouds and will eventually fall down as rain. 

 

This process takes time. Drifting away from the truth is just as slow as evaporation; in fact, it is usually even slower. Rarely does a committed church member wake up an atheist. The drift away from God and His truth is more often seen in a series of compromises over a period of time. This is what we must be on guard against. 

 

Sometimes these people who have drifted find themselves in a crisis. They receive bad news and don’t know what to do, and then they remember they used to pray in times like these. But now they are far from God, and their prayer lives have become a little dusty. Describing this drift, Louise Evans, Jr. once wrote, “The process is not dramatic, nor sudden; rather, it is insidious and quiet. The shock comes when one returns to use the faith in a time of need and finds it has evaporated with neglect.” 

 

I am not talking about a person losing his salvation, because I do not believe the truly saved can become unsaved. I like how Louis pegged it—a period of neglect resulted in the drifting away. Regularly spend time in the Word and on your knees, and you will stay docked in your faith. Ignore God through your own neglect, and you will drift far from shore.  



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To Save a Life

(Like my blog about the peace symbol, this blog was written as a default response to all the parents, students, and other people who are asking my opinion of To Save a Life.) By now you have probably heard of the movie To Save a Life, which opened nation-wide in theaters on January 22nd. The movie deals with so many issues that teens face today, like suicide, cutting, drinking, drugs, premarital sex, teen pregnancy, and abortion. At first glance this movie looks like an awesome resource that we should recommend for our teens, parents, youth pastors, and youth workers. But a closer look at the movie reveals a few disturbing things. For starters, according to pluggedin.com, there are 2 uses of the “A” word, 5 uses of hell (used as a curse word), and once the “D” word is used. There are other crude terms used to describe a girl, and crude terms for referring to sexual activity. There is also a bedroom scene that shows a girl removing a boy’s shirt, then afterwards the girl putting he...
38 comments
Read more

Catechism #15

Q. By what sin did our first parents fall from their original condition? 
A. Our first parents’ sin was eating the forbidden fruit. The first sin we see in the Bible was in the eating of the forbidden fruit by Adam and Eve. But as we saw last week, there are sins of commission and omission. The eating of the fruit was an act of commission—a sin that was committed in the Garden of Eden. But before Eve ever took her first bite, a few sins of omission occurred that led up to the sin of commission. First, notice that it was Eve, not Adam, that did all the talking with the serpent in Genesis 3. Yet it was Adam, not Eve, who was created as the spiritual leader of the family. For whatever reason Adam abdicated his role as the spiritual leader and stood silently by as Eve ate the fruit. After Eve’s bite, she gave it to Adam, and he ate it too. Not only did Adam omit his role as leader, Eve omitted her trust in the goodness of God. Not only did she misquote God ...
Post a Comment
Read more

All Things To All Men

One of our favorite verses to use in our evangelism methods is where Paul said that he “becomes all things to all men” so that he might “by all means save some (I Corinthians 9:22).” This is certainly a good idea if we keep it in its proper context and application. For example, I remember a time in high school where I knew a kid that loved skateboarding. Being the chicken that I am, I was never a skateboarder. All he would talk about was skating, and I knew none of his lingo. But to help develop a relationship with him (he was new to our church and didn’t know many people), I brushed up on my skating lingo so I could ask if he had done any sick ollies lately (impressed?). This would be like Paul saying “to the skateboarder, I became a skateboarder.” This is effective and necessary. But then there are the people that use this verse to justify doing sinful things in the name of evangelism. The first one that comes to mind is about drinking. Some people will go into the bars to evan...
23 comments
Read more