We Do Not Drift Into Holiness

Several years ago, I was out in the boat and dropped anchor to fish. We fished happily, not knowing that our anchor had not caught but instead was dragging along the mud beneath us. Next thing I knew, we had drifted into an oyster rake.

Drifting is dangerous, and yet so often we can drift in our walk with the Lord without noticing it. Slowly, we spend less time in prayer or in the Word. What we once despised, we now indulge. Spiritual drift happens similarly to the way Ernest Hemingway described the way going bankrupt happens: it happens very slowly, and then all at once.

DA Carson is helpful here:

“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.”

Brothers and sisters, are you adrift in your walk with Christ? Drifting begins with caring more for the things of this world more than the things of Heaven. Before long, we begin to accept lukewarmness as the new normal of our souls, and may only faintly remember a time when we were truly passionate for Christ. If we are not careful, drifting can lead to make a shipwreck of our faith (1 Timothy 1:18-20).

So how do we keep from drifting? We must hold fast to Christ, the anchor of our souls! A vibrant faith is the rope that connects us to Him. Keep Him ever in your sights, seek to serve Him in all that you do. Meditate upon His Word. Let His praise be upon your lips. Speak of the Gospel, first to your own heart, and then to others. Seek to say with the Apostle Paul, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2).

With love in Christ,

Pastor Alex