Drifters 070906 Am

Drifters Adapted from an outline by Mark Copeland

The word ‘drift’ is defined as, “to float or be driven along by or as if by a current of water or air.” Drifter: A person without aim, ambition, or initiative. (Merriam-Webster) INTRODUCTION Last week I read an article in the Portsmouth Daily Times that just broke my heart. A young man my age was driving a Dodge Neon on Route 20 with his two young daughters when he drifted off the right side of the road. Sadly, when he tried to correct his mistake, he crossed back over into the wrong lane, slid sideways, and was broadsided by a large truck, killing him and both his daughters instantly. I can’t imagine the heartache that this family must be enduring right now. I can’t begin to fathom the pain. And how it must plague their minds to think how it could have been prevented, if only their father hadn’t drifted off the road in the first place. Drifting on the highway is very, very dangerous. I remember when as a teenager I was riding with my friend Darren in his mom’s Jeep when he accidentally dropped his cigarette on the floor. Not wanting to burn a hole in her nice Jeep, he leaned down to get it. But in doing so, he drifted off the road, smashing us into a tree in the ditch. Darren’s decision to take his eyes off the road caused him to drift into the ditch, and in the end he did far more damage that a cigarette burn would’ve done. Drifting is a dangerous thing. But, do you know that the dangers inherent in drifting are not limited to the material realm? . Turn with me to Hebrews chapter 2:1 and listen to the warning that the Apostle Paul gave to his fellow Christians. “Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip In the original Greek, the word, translated as ‘slip’ means ‘to flow by’ or ‘carelessly pass’. The Revised Standard Version puts it this way, “Therefore we must pay the closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” Paul was writing to warn these early Hebrew Christians, who were undergoing serious pressure to revert to Judaism, that drifting away from Christ and the truths of His word was a very dangerous thing to do. Notice what he went on to say in verses 2-4… “For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward; How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing

them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will? These early Christians were facing pressure from within the religious community to depart from the faith, and from without there was the Roman Emperor, who began to implement measures that led to severe persecution. In the face of all of that, many Christians were tempted to turn from Christ back to the safety of their old ways. Paul warns that to do so would only result in destruction. It puts me in mind of the passage in which Jesus asked, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36) The message is clear… In the great scales of eternity, there is no comparison between the pleasures of this world and the worth of your soul. ____________________ God has for every one of us an intended destination. You may be thinking I’m talking about heaven. Yes, that’s true, but I’m referring to a different kind of destination as described in Romans 8:29 says, “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” God’s destination for every believer is to become like Jesus Christ – to be transformed into His likeness. This is God’s goal for us. And yet, there is a subtle danger that we will not arrive at the goal – we will not become godly. And there is an even greater danger that instead of becoming godly, we will actually drift so far away as to risk eternal destruction. Paul refers to it as slipping, or drifting from the faith. So the questions we face today are “Is it possible that I am drifting from the goal of godliness?” and “Can I recognize the signs of drifting so that I can avoid its dangers?” Let’s answer these questions right now. First, let’s see if we can identify some of the… CHARACTERISTICS OF DRIFTING Drifting requires no effort. A boater only has to stop oaring or tacking against the wind, and he will begin to drift. The same is true for the Christian, which is why we are told: "We must give the more earnest heed..." In Philippians 2:12, Paul wrote, “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”

The idea is not that we work to get saved or stay saved. No, what he’s saying is that in reverent obedience to God we must put forth effort to grow in Christ and to live as He wants us to so that our salvation is maturing and getting stronger everyday. However, if we fail to make effort, we will drift. It is the natural order of things.  Left untended, a garden is soon overgrown with weeds.  Left unmended, a brick wall crumbles to dust.  Left to itself, a child will become the worst of criminals. It takes effort to set a course, move toward a goal, and stay on course. But it requires no effort to drift along in whichever way the wind blows or the current carries us. Likewise, if you think that being godly happens through some magical ‘altar experience’ or you’re hoping from some strange spiritual thing to help you grow, you are in fact, in danger of becoming a spiritual drifter. Second, drifting is an unconscious process. The life of the drifter is the life of the unaware, the unguarded and the unconcerned. And it doesn’t seem possible that it could be me, or that it could be you. But it may well be! It is possible to drift from God unawares.  Great ships in the sea, or on a great lake or river, can easily and quietly be moved by undercurrents that are often unnoticeable from the surface.  Likewise, powerful planes in the sky can be moved off course by winds or

gravitational forces that are invisible. The same is true in the spiritual realm. Many Christians slowly drift away from Christ through little errors in judgment – one after another. They cannot see that each one, if left uncorrected, leads to another, and another, until they are completely off course. And yet, because it happens slowly, in increments, they wrongly believe that they are on course. John Piper, of Desiring God Ministries, writes, “We all know people that this has happened to. Some are in this room. Some are reading this sermon. There is no urgency. No vigilance. No focused listening or considering or fixing the eyes on Jesus. And the result has not been a standing still, but a drifting away.” Third, drifting never moves us upstream or against the tide. Faithfulness to Christ is an upstream swim and a fight against the tide. Jesus said in John 15:19, “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.”

The point is that following Christ is against the popular stream. To be faithful to Jesus is to live a life of self-denial and to be willing to endure the trouble that comes with swimming against the tide. Drifting, however, is easy. Christian Drifters don’t swim upstream. They don’t fight the tide. They think like the world, act like the world, and live like the world. And you know what, that’s easy. But to become like Jesus we must be constantly moving against the tide. We must be "adding to our faith’ and ‘growing in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Another thing to consider is… COMMON SIGNS OF DRIFTING First, there is a diminishing desire to pray and study the Bible. This is always one of the very first signs that a person is drifting from Christ. He no longer desires to read the Bible and he no longer hungers for prayer. The drifter may rationalize by saying that he can’t understand what he reads. He may reason that he doesn’t have time to pray. But the truth is that he’s lost that holy hunger – that passionate desire for the things of God. And though he may show up in church dressed real nice, singing in the choir, putting money in the offering plate, the fact is that He no longer worships God alone, in private. If you’ve lost your desire for prayer and the Bible you are drifting! Second, he no longer wishes to be with God’s people. The drifter has lost the joy of being around other Christians. You approach him but he seems distant and he doesn’t want to talk like he used to. Soon he’s missing all the activities he used to attend and then he’s missing church services too. Here and there, at first, but then regularly as he continues to drift from the Lord. Listen… if you no longer desire to around other Christians or to worship God with them, you are drifting! In Hebrews chapter 3:12-13 we read, “Beware, brothers, lest perhaps there be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God; but exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called "today;" lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”

The warning is clear to the drifter… don’t fall from God into unbelief. The Word is also clear to the faithful… encourage each other every day to help keep one another from falling into the sin of drifting. A third sign of the drifter is that he no longer cares about sharing the Gospel of Christ. When a person is genuinely saved, he ought to have joy (like the Ethiopian Eunuch of whom Acts 8:39 says, “…he went on his way rejoicing.” Also, he ought to want to tell others about it! Consider the…  Demon possessed man of the Gadarenes. Jesus sent him home to tell all his friends and family.  The woman at the well, who went into town telling all the men, “Come see a man who told me all I ever did. Is not this the Christ?”  Or Phillip, who eagerly told his friend Nathaniel, “We have found Him…!” Listen, when you’ve found something or someone who’s changed your life, you can’t help but want to tell everyone! I remember feeling that way about exercise and nutrition when I first began with it three years ago. That’s also how I felt when I discovered the Way of the Master witnessing method. I was excited and I wanted everyone else to be excited. Let me ask you… “Do you feel that way about Jesus?” Do you have the desire to share Him with others? If not, you are drifting! Last, the Drifter will have an increasing excitement over worldly things. You get excited about the new boat you bought. You get excited about the trip to the mall. You get excited about that bonus your boss gave you. You get excited about your new satellite TV system. You get excited about your team’s record. You get excited about vacation. And while there is nothing inherently wrong with being happy about good things, it becomes a problem when this excitement replaces or becomes greater than your excitement about the things of God. It is one piece of evidence that suggests a drifting heart. In 1 John 2:15 the apostle John warns us… “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” The idea is that we are not supposed to have inordinate desire for the pleasures of life. We are not to put worldly goods or worldly pleasures ahead of God. We are not to attach ourselves to the things that are popular in a society that is devoid of Christ. We are not to put worldly pleasure ahead of or in the place of worship. Period. If we do, we are drifting.

WHAT CAUSES DRIFTING? What are some of the unseen currents working as invisible forces to draw us from Christ? The currents of time and familiarity. A Hot Rod Magazine article told about an old car that Jay Leno bought that had a right fender with a hole clean through it. And believe it or not, that hole was caused by one drop of water. One drop, that is, that fell day after day, for decades, onto that fender from a leak above where it was stored. Time gave power to that drop of water to do great damage. Likewise, time gives familiarity the power to cause us to drift from Christ. I remember when I rededicated my life to Christ in 1991. I was excited. I saw life through a new lens. I’m not kidding! I can still remember the feelings that I had that everything was brand new. I couldn’t get enough church or Bible or prayer – even though I really didn’t know what I was doing a lot of times. But after a few years of going to church, reading the Bible, and praying, the excitement faded. Has that happen to you? Maybe you were excited at first, but now the sermons sound the same. Most of what you hear at Bible study is stuff you already know. Even the excitement of having a new pastor has worn off, and you’re finding it harder and harder to stay awake. Church seems much less rewarding than a day outside or in your easy chair The drift is well under way! The current of daily life. Jesus likened the dangers of daily life to a garden plant with a thorny vine wrapped around it. Listen to what He said… “And these are they which are sown among thorns; such as hear the word, and the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. (Mark 4:18-19) Jesus talked about the danger of the “cares of this world”. Oh how we know about that in the church in America! We know what it’s like to live by the pressure of the clock. Run here, go there, and leave no time for God. We know what it’s like to have to burn the candle at both ends so that those ends can meet. So, unless we absolutely prioritize God in our lives, we will drift away.

WHAT ARE THE REAL DANGERS OF DRIFTING?

Drifting will keep you from your destination. When Arctic explorer William Parry and his crew were charting the Arctic Ocean they calculated their location by the stars and started marching north. After walking for hours, they stopped, totally exhausted. Taking their bearings again, they discovered that they were farther south than they had been when they started. They’d been walking on an ice floe that was moving south faster than they were walking north. The ocean currents had unknowingly worked against them and they had drifted far from their goal. Imagine using so much effort to go somewhere, only to find that for every step forward, you were taking two back. Such is the life of the drifter. Always moving around, but never getting where God wants him to be. Remember that verse I shared with you earlier? Romans 8:29 says, “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” God wants to make us like His Son. But we miss the mark if we drift from our relationship with God. And no matter how much energy we expend, we find we’re moving further from the goal. Drifting endangers you and others around you. In January of this year, a CBS news report out of Sacramento, California reported that a riverboat in the Sacramento River was in danger of drifting directly into the path of some pricey yachts. Held to a few old telephone poles by a thin plastic mooring line, the abandoned 3-story, 85 foot, 200-ton riverboat, once known as the Spirit of Sacramento, lies only a couple hundred yards up stream from The Sacramento Yacht Club jeopardizing numerous expensive yachts moored at the club. The Yacht Club contacted the Coast Guard but they told the club that because the riverboat is privately owned, they cannot get it out of the river. The owner said, that he’s ‘aware of the problem, and is sending someone to check it out’. But, he stopped short of saying what will be done. So, members of the yacht club are keeping close watch, hoping they'll be able to divert the riverboat's path when the rope snaps. The Christian drifter is a lot like that old riverboat. As he pulls away from his relationship with God by neglecting regular prayer, Bible reading, and worship, he inevitably drifts into wrong habits and bad deeds. Little by little, his tether to Christ gets weaker and weaker,

until one day, it simply snaps, and without God’s Power and Direction, he drifts into the path of oncoming ships, endangering both himself and them. Proverbs 27:8 says, “As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place.” Maybe someone would say, “How can it hurt someone else if I drift from God?” My relationship with God is a private thing with no bearing on anyone else.” Listen, if you believe that, you’re only fooling yourself! Everything that you do, good or bad, affects others, either directly or indirectly. When you drift away from God and into sinful patterns of life, guilt follows, and soon your attitude sours. You begin to be ornery, depressed, and even apathetic, drifting even further from that which is right and good. And those closest to you feel the effects of it - your wife, your kids, your church, and even your co-workers. Consider the damage that 200 ton riverboat will do to a river full of yachts! A drifting ship is a hazard to itself and every other vessel in its path. Drifting inevitably ends in shipwreck The dangers of drifting increase with the speed of the drift. As we move farther and farther from the Lord, we care less and less about what we do. We become less spiritually sensitive and chalk it up to Christian Liberty. But, eventually, our drifting boat will crash. Either on the rocks, into another vessel, or, over the falls. Paul warned the Hebrew Christians not to drift back to Judaism. To do so would be apostasy and disaster. Likewise, we are warned not to drift away from Christ. The danger of the drift is just as real. Unbelief and apostasy are the rocks we will crash into. If there were no danger of it, there would be no warning. BEATING THE DRIFT First, set your course! Everything action begins with a decision. Decide now, and every day forward when you get out of bed, that your goal is Christlikeness. Obviously, you need God’s power, but you also need your will to be in line with His. “Work out your own salvation…” Secondly, keep rowing! There will be times when you’ll get off course, or hit a rock, or get stuck in the doldrums. Don’t throw in the towel. Don’t lose heart. The Bible says we will reap if we “faint not!” Proverbs 24:16 say, “For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again:”

Third, watch out for the undertow! Some very good swimmers have died because they got caught in an undertow. The undertow we must beware of is those lusts of the flesh John talked about – those temptations that come and cause the war within our soul. Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” Fourth, expect to go against the tide. Though some have tried to change it, there really is no such thing as popular Christianity or popular Christians. The tides of this world will ALWAYS run against the things of God. Rule of thumb – if the world loves it, it will glorify Jesus Christ. True Christianity runs against the tides of popularity, peer pressure, materialism, humanism, and worldliness in the church. Lastly, Make sure your life is tethered securely to Jesus Christ. Colossian 2:6-7 – “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.” Ephesians 4:14-15 – “That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:” Hebrews 6:19 - “Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil;” CONCLUSION I read the story of two young men who were fishing above a low dam on a river near their hometown. As they were concentrating on catching fish, they were unaware that they had drifted until they were not far from the water flowing over the dam. When they realized their situation, the current near the dam had become too powerful for them to keep their boat from going over. Below the dam the water was dashing with strong force over great boulders and through crevices in the rocks. Caught by the swirling waters under the rocks, they never came to the surface. After days of relentless searching, the divers finally found one body, and then, two or three days later, the other."

That awful tragedy was made even worse by knowing that it was totally avoidable. So it is with Christian drifting. It is avoidable. But we have to be diligent. Watch for pitfalls. Examine your heart. See if you are in love with Christ. Do you hunger for the Bible and prayer and to be in Church and witness to others? Be careful, because drifting is a danger that we all face.