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.This means that as Christians we need to constantly on our guard lest we drift. Paul calls Timothy to watch his life and doctrine closely (1 Timothy 4:16). The author of Hebrews calls his hearers to pay much closer attention to the gospel message that they heard, lest they find that they drift from it (Hebrews 2:1). We need to be constantly watching ourselves and constantly returning to the gospel. If we don't we shall find ourselves drifting further and further from the gospel and from the godliness that comes from applying the gospel to ourselves.We need to constantly be preaching the gospel to ourselves and to examine closely our Christian walk.
This is also why we need one another as Christians. That is why it is so vital that we are stuck in at a local church. We need one another. We need to continue to speak the gospel to each other and to challenge one another to lives that are in line with the gospel. We cannot do this by ourselves. We need other brothers and sisters in Christ who will love us enough to point out when we've gone wrong, both in our beliefs and in our living, and to call us back to embracing the truth of the gospel and to living that is in line with the gospel. We need to surround ourselves with those who will constantly be encouraging us with Bible truths. If we do not have this we will gradually find ourselves drifting further and further out to sea.
