Danger of Drifting

My family loves the beach. Aside from the beautiful mountains where we live, sitting in front of the ocean would be my pastime of choice. I remember one summer, the kids and I were swimming in the ocean waves and looked up to discover we could no longer see Dad on the beach. Panic set in, and I realized I did not recognize anything on the shore. We had been enjoying ourselves so much that we had drifted far from where we started. Sure enough, as we exited the water and walked back up the beach, we saw Dad, waving his arms. I couldn’t believe how far we had drifted in the waves without even realizing it. We didn’t mean to drift. We had taken our eyes off the shoreline, letting the ocean take us where it willed. Only when we fixed our eyes back on the shore did we notice our drifting.

Spiritual drift often happens in the same way. We let down our guard. We become lazy in our spiritual disciplines. We choose something easier than the hard work of studying God’s word. It is only when we fix our eyes back on Christ that we realize we have drifted.

Hebrews 2:1 says, “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” In chapter 1, the author of Hebrews reminds us of the superiority of Christ over all else. He now urges followers of Christ in chapter 2 that, “therefore” - because of Christ’s superiority over all things; because he is better than everything else, “we must pay closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” Tim Keller says this idea of “paying closer attention” could be translated as “furiously obsessed” with what we have heard.

Do our lives look like we are furiously obsessed with God’s word? Are we that determined not only to know the truth but also to let it transform us?

In his book, For the Love of God, D. A. Carson writes, “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 must intentionally pursue God through His word daily, or there is danger that we will drift.

John Piper claims that “there is no standing still. The life of this world is not a lake. It is a river. And it is flowing downward to destruction. If you do not listen earnestly to Jesus and consider him daily and fix your eyes on him hourly, then you will not stand still; you will go backward. You will float away from Christ.”

If we are not moving forward towards knowing Christ more and becoming like him, we will drift and float in the current of this world. We will look up one day and realize we are far, far away from where we started.

What, then, can prevent this drifting? It is found in the daily dying to ourselves and living for Christ. We must be intentional. We avoid spiritual drift by hearing, reading, meditating on, and obeying scripture. Our spiritual growth will not just happen on its own. We must set the alarm the night before. We must plan to go to bible study. We must not give up gathering together with other believers on Sunday morning. This is not something we can do on our own. We need the church. We need other believers to swim next to us against the current of this world.

Don’t drift. Let God’s word be the anchor of your soul.

-Andrea Shustella (Covenant Member)