There's No Such Thing as Divine Drifting

I've been thinking a lot lately about perseverance, and what it means to persevere in my christian walk.  As some of you may know I am an avid journal writer.  I've written every day since February 1996, and it is always interesting to see how I've changed over the years and how God has been at work in my life.  Looking back I can also see how the idea of perseverance has played out in my life.  

Have you ever thought about how most of the words we use to describe our relationship with God are all active verbs?  We talk about our walk with Christ or our journey.  We follow Jesus and carry our crosses.  These words don't paint a picture of sitting still; rather they point us toward the idea of actively pursuing Christ as we pursue godliness.  No one can stand idle in their relationship with Christ and expect to be transformed into his image.  A quote I heard recently from D.A. Carson sums up very well what I've been thinking lately.

“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.”  

How true; we do not drift toward holiness.  If we are on this road with Jesus then we are moving.  We might be moving toward Him or away from Him, but we're always moving.  There is no standing still.  We can't loiter our way to godliness.  We're not on some heaven-bound moving sidewalk.  When we stand still we naturally gravitate toward godlessness, prayerlessness, and the lack of discipline.  These are not words that characterize the christian life.  

The christian life is a race; more of an endurance race rather than a sprint, but a race nonetheless.  In Hebrews 12:1 we are encouraged to,"run with perseverance the race marked out for us."  In a race no one expects to win unless he runs.  You'll never make it to the finish line unless you keep moving.  James 1:4 says, "Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."  How are we to mature in our faith if we do not seek the Lord daily?

So what does it actually mean to walk with Christ?  Psalm 105:4 says, "Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always."  We seek God by reading His word and opening our hearts to him in prayer.  I've talked to some people who don't think it's necessary to read scripture on a regular basis. I don't think you'll go to hell if you don't read the Bible everyday, but it is incredibly important for Christ-followers to seek the face of God through his revealed word to us.  Our lives ought to echo Psalm 119:105 which says, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path."  Without the guidance of the Word of God it would be easy to start to morph God into the image we want  him to look like rather than who he is.  That's a very dangerous road to tread.

I don't want to sound legalistic here, but I believe that true christians will actively walk with Christ.  I believe that Ephesians 2:8 is true when it says, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith- and this not from yourselves it is the gift of God -- not by works, so that no one can boast."  We can do nothing to save ourselves - that is the redeeming work of Christ on the cross alone.  However, when we are saved, we should continue to pursue Christ throughout our lives.  Salvation isn't just a check in the box where we then go back to our old life as usual.  Like Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"  And like D.A. Carson said, no one drifts toward holiness.  To be holy means persevering to walk as near to Christ as we can.  We can walk toward or away from Christ.  Which direction will you choose?