- Are You a Disciple?
- The Key is Surrender
- The Old You vs. The New You
- Time for a Check-Up
- Learning to Float Upriver
- It’s About Time
- The Bible in Your Quiet Time
- Your Daily Quiet Time
- Livin’ On A Prayer
- To Serve Man
- What’s That About Spiritual Gifts?
- Together We Stand…
- Growing Through Giving
- Don’t Be a Dead Sea Christian
- All You Need Is Love
A few years ago our family was in Jamaica, and one of the fun things we did there was to ride tire inner tubes down a lazy river. Basically, we all got in line on a little dock, and when it was my turn, the guide turned me around to face him with my back to the river, and he suddenly shoved me backward so that I fell into the tube waiting for me in the river. Not a great start! Most of the float downriver was slow and lazy, but there were also times when the water got kind of rough. And then there were the times you drifted too close to the bank where huge spiderwebs were just waiting for hapless tourists. In the end, it was a great, relaxing thing to do.
We’re still talking about spiritual growth, and we’ve talked about the need for certain spiritual disciplines in our lives that will help us to grow in our walk with Christ. But why do we have to be disciplined in our relationship with God? Didn’t Jesus come to free us from the Law? If we are forgiven based on what Jesus did for us on the cross and not based on anything we do, then why are there certain things we need to do in order to stay close to God?
Because, without discipline in our lives, we will slowly, silently drift away from God. In our river tube ride in Jamaica, there was no way that we could get in those tubes and float upriver, against the flow. We just naturally drifted downstream. In our walk with God, if we don’t practice some discipline in our lives, we’ll just float away from him, not away from our relationship with him, but away from intimacy with him, away from his power and comfort and strength and wisdom in our lives. We’ll also slowly drift away from being useful to God, away from being and doing all that he planned for us to do, and away from impacting the people he wants us to impact and serve.
Jesus had something important to say about this…
Luke 11:23 (NLT) – “Anyone who isn’t helping me opposes me, and anyone who isn’t working with me is actually working against me.”
If you’re in the middle of this slow drift away from God, Jesus says you are actually working against him. That isn’t a very happy thought.
So if you find yourself in a long, slow, lazy drift away from God and into uselessness and emptiness, if you feel like God is just a long lost friend that you’ve almost forgotten about, what can you do?
You can turn to him. God has never left you. He has been right by your side the whole time you’ve been drifting, just waiting on you to turn back to him. Start spending time with God, ask him for help, invite him to lead you, thank him for what’s he’s done in your life, and give him praise for being the almighty, all-powerful, holy, loving, forgiving, gracious God that he is.
You can also start exercising your faith in God. Faith is simply believing that God will do what he has promised. When you became a believer, you did that by having faith that when you gave your life to God you would become his child. The same is true now. When you’re facing difficulties or temptations, believe that God’s strength is on your side, then do what you know to do, do what you know is the right thing to do, and learn to trust God a little bit more every day.
Third, if you want to stop drifting away from God, when you sin, confess that sin and then repent. Agree with God that what you’re doing or not doing is a sin, and then change your behavior. When you sin, the Holy Spirit will nudge you with conviction, so stop fighting that. Admit to God that you’ve sinned, and turn back to the way that you know God desires for you to live. You will be forgiven.
1 John 1:9 (NLT) – But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong.
Stop your tube from floating downriver, away from God and into uselessness. Turn to God, he’s there waiting on you with loving, open arms. Start exercising your faith, learning to trust God more and more. And when he prompts you to, admit your sin and change; allow him to grow you from the inside out. These steps will help you travel upriver, and you’ll start becoming all that God wants you to be.