There was an old man who was very sick. There was nothing more the doctors could do, so they went him home so he could spend his last few days with his family near his bedside.
He awoke the next morning to the smell of newly baked chocolate chip cookies. Oh, how that reminded him of his wife’s good cooking and his favorite food. He was so weak he could barely move, but with every last bit of energy he could muster, he pulled himself out of bed and slowly made his way, inch by inch, down that long hallway – into the kitchen.
After what seemed like an eternity, he got to the kitchen and saw a big stack of newly backed chocolate chip cookies on a platter on the table. He slowly sauntered over and with an old and feeble hand that shook, he started to pick up one and eat it.
That is when his wife turned and smacked his hand with a spatula. She said, ‘Don’t touch them! They are for the funeral.’
Have you ever seen a ship being decommissioned? I saw one and it was a very formal and flamboyant affair. It was in the harbor in Yokohama, Japan back when I was in the Navy. That ship went out in style.
As I look back at that, I wonder if Christians are going to go out in style, too? Or when the time comes, are we just going to go out, kind of like that old sick man did?
I think all pastors read statistics that are pertinent to church growth and church productivity. One of those statistics is that out of every 10 new members, within three years, only one will remain; all the rest will drift away for a variety of reasons.
One pastor had recently baptized 10 new members to his church. After a couple of weeks, he invited all of them to his home for dinner. They were not only excited about their new lives in Christ, but now they were being invited to the pastor’s home for dinner.
It went, as you would expect, all having an enjoyable time all the way through dinner. And after dinner, they congregated in the living room. It was at this point that he asked them an unexpected question. He asked them if they would like for him to predict their future for the next three years. They were puzzled, but all said ‘Yes.’
And this is what the pastor said.
‘According to statistics,
··· 1 of you will drift away from church due to a divorce
··· 3 of you will get your feelings hurt and leave the church
··· 1 will experience a tragedy that shakes your belief and you will leave
··· 2 of you will fall down morally and the shame will make you leave
··· 2 will just lose interest and drift away
··· and only 1 of you will remain, being a happy and productive Christian’
This prediction startled them, and all of a sudden, one of them asked, ‘What can we do to change that?’
The pastor had been praying for them to ask that question, so he replied, ‘You can choose to not let any of you go. You can begin right now to form a bond among yourselves. You can decide to band together to help each other. You can learn how to not only know each other, but to care for each other.’
And from that night on, these people did form a small group. They met weekly at one of their homes, learning about the Bible; finding out what each other’s needs were; and helping each other when a problem came up.
And three years later, only one person had left the church. And that was through his going home to Heaven.
That is the reason small home groups, or cell groups, are vital to the health of a Christian. A Small Group is not a ‘feed-fest’ where the central point of the evening is eating food. We might have snacks afterwards, but the central point of the evening is getting together with other Christians so that you can help each other in the physical world when needed, and to help each other grow in the spiritual world.
In the fall, CrossRoads will start up our Small Groups Ministry once again. And I encourage you to turn the TV’s off, uninvolve yourself from some of your worldly activities, and involve yourself with these Godly activities. You and your family will be much better off in the long run.
Today, I want to talk about something we all do.
1. WE DRIFT FROM PLACE TO PLACE
People are always on the go, never stopping more than for a moment to just catch their breath and then they are off again, moving to some other location. And we are not just going physically; we also wander to and fro with our minds.
There is nobody here today who is where you were two years ago. Your age has increased. Your attitudes on some things have changed, and some of you have new jobs or homes. Nobody stays the same. They even have a name for it in political circles. They call it ‘flip-flopping.’ And we can see it demonstrated in every candidate every day, can’t we?
The point is, we are constantly changing. We were not created to stay the same. That is how all of us came to eventually be in church today; we were on the move and ended up moving in the direction of God.
And because we change so much, it is easy to start just aimlessly drifting. It is easy to drift because it takes no effort on our parts. It is like flying a kite. Once the kite is up, you can either let is be at the mercy of trhe wind, or you can pull and manipulate the string to get the kite to do certain things. To let the kite drift is the easy way because all you have to do is hold onto the string. It takes no effort, but it also gives no results.
It is easy to just drift, but we have to be careful because we can very easily drift away from God.
There is a controversy in churches. Some churches say ‘once saved, always saved,’ and other churches say a person can walk away from their salvation. Both beliefs concern themselves with where we are with God at any given time. Is either belief true, and if so, which belief would that be? On one hand, the ‘once saved – always saved’ belief comes from verses like,
JOHN 10:28 [Contemporary English Version]
‘. . . and I give them eternal life, so that they will never be lost. No one can snatch them out of my hand.’
This would seem to substantiate the ‘once saved – always saved’ belief. But upon honest and thorough investigation, we need to also pay attention to passages like,
ROMANS 1:21 [New Living Translation]
‘. . . they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused.’
Let’s explore both passages. In the first passage, God says He gives them eternal life, and in that life, they cannot be lost. That is very true. When you are in Christ, you are always saved. But the last half of the sentence is the key. It tells us that nobody can reach into God’s hand and steal us away. But it doesn’t say we cannot choose to put other things ahead of God and therefore walk away ourselves.
This is exhibited in the second passage I read. Those people knew God. But their own desires became more important to them than God’s laws, and when they decided to engage in their own sinfulness, they walked away from the life and protection God offered.
That is exactly what happened in the Garden of Eden. So it is my belief that when God gave us free will, He gave us the option of using it, even if we hurt ourselves and break God’s heart in doing so.
HEBREWS 2:1-4 [The Message]
‘It’s crucial that we keep a firm grip on what we’ve heard so that we don’t drift off. If the old message delivered by the angels was valid and nobody got away with anything then, do you think we can risk neglecting this latest message, this magnificent message of salvation?
‘First of all, it was delivered in person by the Master, then accurately passed on to us by those who heard it from him. All the while God was validating it with gifts through the Holy Spirit, all sorts of signs and miracles, as he saw fit.’
So we must be very careful, as drifting can just as easily lead us away from the Lord as to the Lord, unless we are ever diligent. We are told that the ancient message is just as valid today and is being shown around us in all kinds of signs – if we will but just look at them. It seems that the problem today is we have been desensitized to all things Godly because we have been justifying our actions for so long we now believe them. And one of the biggest problems the church has today is the number of false teachers we have teaching all kinds of profane things about the Word of God.
One of them the other day actually said, ‘God wants you to have a big bank account!’ I wonder if this is why Jesus told the rich young man to give away all he had so he could follow Jesus.
God knows that we are weaker than we are willing to admit. He knows that if most of us became very wealthy, our focus would be turned away from God so we could take care of our fortunes. So, does God really want us to have big bank accounts?
Now, let’s talk about …
2. WHAT CAUSES US TO DRIFT
One of the easiest ways to drift away is by not reading your Bible every day. You get kind of busy and decide to put it off until tomorrow. Too often, ‘tomorrow’ turns into next month or next year, and the Bible ends up catching more dust than it does interest.
You need food to live. If you didn’t eat, your body would slowly decay and die. You don’t want that to happen, so you eat. And you would never, not even for a moment, choose to just stop eating, would you?
Yet, the Word of God is our spiritual food. It keeps us alive spiritually. It is as needed to our spirits, as our food is to our bodies. So, why would we choose to go without it?
And another reason we drift away from God is that we don’t really pray. Oh, we might utter a few words every now and then, but we don’t really pray. We think praying is giving God a quick holler when we are in trouble. But when things are going smoothly, we forget all about talking to Him.
Picture yourself standing in the middle of quicksand, and you are slowly sinking. You know that you cannot help yourself and you know you are going to die – by suffocation. How scary is that? What do you do? Nothing, for there is nothing you can do to help yourself.
And then you see a person come up and stand next to the quicksand. What do you do? Let me tell you what you would and would not do.
··· You would scream loudly to get his attention.
··· You would not ignore him as if he didn’t exist.
··· You would cry out to him to save you.
··· You would not refuse to talk to him.
··· You would tell him exactly what you wanted – to be saved.
··· And if he said he could help save you, you wouldn’t convince yourself he couldn’t.
People are like that man in quicksand. And that quicksand is like the pull the devil has on us through this sinful world. We are totally unable to do anything at all to help ourselves. The only thing we can do is rely on someone else. It makes no sense for the man who is sinking to have a pride-filled and stubborn heart, does it?
But when we humble our hearts, we can see that Jesus is the man who is standing there. The man by the quicksand would not wait for you to scream for help. He would run over and get a limb or rope or something you could grab on to.
And Jesus isn’t going to wait, either. He took the first step. He came to us. He let Himself be beaten and tortured, and then nailed to a cross and hung, with His body disjointed until he suffocated.
If the man held out a limb, or threw you a rope, would you grab it or would you refuse it? Jesus threw out His life that whoever would believe in Him would be saved. Why do we think it makes sense for us to ignore it rather than grab hold of it?
Oh, there is one more thing you would do if the man saved you. You would appreciate him so much, you would spend the rest of your life telling others how wonderful he was and what he did for you! That is called praise! That is what Christians are so persecuted for – telling others what Jesus can do for them if they will just let Him.
Why do we see the need to save our physical bodies and not see the need to save our spiritual souls?
Someone asked what our spirits actually were. I believe our spirits are our awareness. When we die, our spirit goes to heaven. It will be there that we receive our glorified bodies. Do you think we will be aware of them? We sure will be! Do you think we will be aware of Jesus on His Throne? Yes we will! So why aren’t our spirits aware of the danger in ignoring Jesus as we live our short physical lives? The answer is that Satan has blinded our eyes. And without choosing to have Jesus as your Savior, you will never be able to be aware.
So, what is real prayer? It is talking to God directly from the center of your heart to the center of His heart. His children coming to Him to have a conversation. That conversation might be a plea for help, or it might be a time when you are so happy all you can do is just talk to God and say ‘Thank you!’
But I think your number one priority in life is to do everything you can to just keep getting closer to Him today than you were yesterday. If you did that, can you even imagine how sweet your tomorrow would be?
But we aren’t focused, we drift. Drifting is a very dangerous thing! So it becomes imperative that we stay on course. We know that if a ship at sea is left to drift aimlessly, it will meet a horrible fate eventually. Humans are no different. So to keep safe, we must keep focused.
I think to keep safe; we must know the order in which we become unfocused. Here is the general order in which this happens.
··· We become numb. We begin to ignore our conscience. At first, we get these little twinges of guilt, but we justify them over and over again, convincing ourselves over time that we are actually doing God’s will, or that He really doesn’t mind. Eventually, with our prideful hearts and numb minds, we no longer feel His leading.
··· And this causes us to step out of God’s will. Because you aren’t being led any longer, you begin to drift out of God’s will. The next thing you will do is succumb to the temptations of the enemy, and you begin to sin. But because your heart is hardened, you do not hear the alarms going off.
··· The next step in this journey is to start shrinking away from God. You stop doing all the things a Christian does so there is no conflict inside you when you start doing all the things your carnal nature wants to do.
··· And finally, you walk away from God and all He offers. You have made the decision so many times that you are going to do what you want to do, even though you know it isn’t what God wants you to do, that you have become numb.
So if our natural action is to drift, what can we do to combat that? We need to know ...
3. HOW TO STOP DRIFTING
If you have ever owned a boat, you know that when you want it to stay in one particular place, you throw out an anchor. That anchor is a weight, and it keeps the boat from drifting out to sea, to be lost or demolished.
I spoke last week about how some people consider themselves good Christians but do not see the need to go to church regularly. These are the same people who do not have a desire to know the Bible.
They are people who pretty much take God for granted. The sad part is they also take their salvation for granted. And the truth is; when you take that for granted, you don’t take it at all.
If we have really made that choice to receive Jesus and to be saved, we must also make a choice to stay our course. We must tether ourselves in some way to Christ, so that we don’t just float away. We must anchor ourselves to the Word of God. We must study His Word and hold on to them for dear life.
DEUTERONOMY 11:18 [New Living Translation]
‘So commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these words of mine. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders.’
The ancient Israelites knew how important it was to stay tied to the Word of God. They knew how vital it was to their very souls. They did not water down the message to fit their daily agendas like we do. They valued the Word of God. They were totally devoted to the Word of God.
They even had little boxes they tied to their heads or wrists, and they would write out verses and put them in these boxes ….. just so they could be close to God’s Word day and night.
Let me give you a short truth about the difference in how they looked at God versus how we look at God today.
Scribes were secretaries of sort. Their job was to write things down. They helped some of the disciples write their letters, and they copied the Word of God so others might have it, too. They were painstakingly slow, but that was because they were devoted to total accuracy.
As the scribes would be copying a sentence, when they ran across the word ‘God’ or ‘Lord’, before they wrote it, they would go bathe, change clothes, and get a new quill that had never been used before. They did that because they honored God with reverence and holiness. Even if that word appeared several times in one sentence, they would go through that process each time before they wrote the word. These men were devoted to the holiness of our God.
For the most part, we aren’t devoted to anything today except for being able to do what we want to do. Look at the financial crisis we are in. I saw a newscast the other night that talked about how all the banks were failing us and even our government is failing us. Since when does taking personal responsibility mean relying on handouts?
That program showed a man who was forced to take in borders just to make his house payment. Now on the surface, it looks like we might feel sorry for that man, but then the reporters said his mortgage payment was $3500.00 per month and the man was a skycap at an airport.
Instead of thinking the system failed him, I would be more inclined to think this man over-bought! Life is not about our gambling on something so we can have the most of what we want. Life is about being responsible enough to know that some things are not beneficial to our welfare.
And one of those things is ignoring the Bible. Oh, we might have more temporary fun if we did something else with our time instead of reading the Bible, but we would have more permanent joy if we did take the time to read it.
The point of this message today is to let us know that we are in a lot of personal danger today. We have stepped out onto a slippery slope and it will be much easier to slide down than to climb up if we aren’t totally aware of where we are.
And, of course, I am talking about the condition of our spiritual walk with Jesus. If you want big muscles, you take the time to lift the weights. If you want deep faith, you must take the time to get (and stay) close to God.
I would suggest you do it through real prayer, studying the Bible daily, and then go back into some real prayer.
If you were going to put a bicycle together, you would read the instructions so you would know how everything was supposed to go be assembled. You would have to know it what order to put together each part to work properly. It would never work if you just put parts together at random.
It is only when we try to put something like that together without knowing how, that we run into problems. That is why we read the instructions first.
The Bible is God’s instruction manual for our lives. He tells us everything we need to know so we can live a full and happy life. His instructions assure us of His love, tells us of the blessings He has in store for us, and He gives them in such a simple manner that anyone can understand if they just take the time to read them.
As I close, let me ask you to take a good honest look at where you are. What is it that pulls your interest the most? Is it what you want to do later this afternoon, or is it using this time now to get ready to go to heaven?
Toni’s 14-year old nephew got killed in a car wreck last week. We would all agree on how tragic that was and how we need to keep his family in our constant prayers.
But do we realize that could happen to any of us on the way home from church? It is time we realize just how quickly our time to meet Jesus will come. No matter when we meet Jesus, whether it will be when He stands in the clouds and calls us up, or when something happens and we die, I guarantee you this: You will not be totally ready for it spiritually, and you will have wanted more time to get ready.
You have that time today. God is giving it to you freely. The question is: Are you going to take it? Will you use this time to your benefit?
We all like guarantees, don’t we? Let me give you one more. If you will just feel Jesus in your heart, and then just realize how much you need and want Him in your life, He will flood your soul with more joy than you ever knew before. He will surround you with His love and protection.
In short, He loves you so much, He wants to give you all He has. Will you take it?
INVITATION
