Lest We Drift Away - Hebrews 2:1

"Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away."

It is impossible to park on a river, unless I suppose it is frozen or dried up. But in the normal flow of life, life will take you with it. Which, if life were holy and good, would be a good thing. Unfortunately, life in our world is rarely good.

And so we must diligently, tirelessly row our boats upstream. How do we do this? Hebrews 2:1 says we must "give earnest heed to the things we have heard." If we translate the rather old-fashioned phrase "earnest heed" into something more modern, we might say we should give the things of God our eager attention.

Eager is different than dutiful or fearful. Eager means it's something we want very, very much to do. The only way we can become eager to pay attention to God is through a daily process of discovering how wonderful He is. Otherwise, there are many other things and places and people and ideas that can easily seem more wonderful.

D.A. Carson has summed up this process very wisely.

"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."

If we truly desire to discover the wonderfulness of God, in a way that is powerful enough to fight the strongest currents, I would suggest spending some time reading the book of Hebrews. You see, if the key is in the "things we have heard," well then, we need to hear those things very often and very clearly.

So, let's start with chapter one, verses one through four.

"God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they."

When I read this a few days ago (and when I've reread it every day since), I am overwhelmed by the idea that God upholds ALL things. In a world where so many things seem to be falling through the cracks, or just plain falling apart, it is immensely reassuring to know that if we back far enough away, we can "see" (with the eyes of faith) that God has it all well in hand. In His hands. Every terrifying event, every evil deed, every arrogant ruler, every desperate circumstance -– all of these are still being upheld by the hand of God, by the simple word of His power.

And in this knowledge, we will find peace. It is a very different sort of peace than the "peace" of ignorance or indifference. Those will take our boats downstream faster than we can imagine. Nor should we settle for the "rest" that comes from indulging in pleasant distractions. If we seek comfort by amusing ourselves, we will miss God.

True godly peace requires every bit of our spirits straining to resist our flesh and the temptations that surround it. What Dr. Carson calls "grace-driven effort" is the steady hand that grasps the oar of God's truths, even when we can't quite see where we're headed.

But as we pull against the tides of temptation, we will discover that it becomes easier and easier. Why so? Because in fact we are created to do His will. Our beings are actually designed to agree with God. Even though our fallen nature is still with us, we can by God's grace choose in our spirit to line up with His will.

And as we make this choice to agree with Him on a regular, moment-by-moment basis, we will not only grow strong and confident and joyful, but we will also become truly eager to keep our full attention on Him.