7TH APRIL, 2019
SCRIPTURE: HEBREWS 2:1, HEBREWS 4:2, EPHESIANS 4:11-14, I PETER 2:5
To grow into maturity as Christ-followers both as individuals and as a congregation, we need to be grounded in the 3 areas that we have called “The Tripod Vision” for the church. This tripod stands upon:
• Fellowship
• Prayer and
• Discipleship
We need to reach maturity in Christ so that we can play our role as His representatives here on earth. To this end, Christ Himself has given us apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, to equip us so that we can all reach this level of maturity, attaining the whole measure of the fullness of Christ – Eph 4:11-14.
We however need to watch out against drifting away from all that we have heard – Heb 2:1. Drifting away suggests a slow and gradual move away from something or someone. Like a leaking container that gradually loses its contents by slowly dripping away, we can also leak out the truths we have heard and previously held dear, until at some point we run dry.
Jesus Christ exhorts us to be the good soil; that our hearts would be attentive (to hear His word), receptive (take it in), retentive (not allow it to be stolen or choked out of us) and if we do all this, He will make us productive – yielding much fruit from the seed that has been planted.
We drift away when we are not anchored to solid ground or when we have a weak foundation. A boat that is unanchored or a floating piece of wood will drift away with time. We also will drift away unless we hold on to something stable in this unstable world. Drifting away is an action of negligence. If we do nothing, we will drift away.
The scriptures instruct us to pay careful attention to what we have heard, but also to add on faith to the truths we have heard. In other words, we do not merely hear the word but by adding faith to the truth, we become practitioners. Like everything else, faith needs to be put to use for it to survive.
In church, we get fed with the words, which are Spirit and life (John 6:63), to build us up. Peter says that we are all living stones, with God’s love as the mortar that binds us together to build a spiritual house and a royal priesthood that offers acceptable spiritual sacrifices to God (1Pet 2:5). We each need to be built up first at an individual level before we can come together as the spiritual house God desires of the church. Like the stones that King Solomon used to build the temple, we each need to be cut, shaped and well-finished at the quarry – 1 Kn 6:7. The Lighthouse (our small home-based fellowship groups) are the quarry where this cutting, shaping and finishing is done.
Everyone should be a member of a Lighthouse. It is here that real fellowship happens, where we are taught and also have an opportunity to discover our areas of gifting that we can then use to serve the body of Christ.
If we are deliberately and actively working towards advancing our Christian walk through fellowship, prayer and discipleship, we will be assured of not drifting away. The reverse however is also true, if we do nothing, we give the devil an open invitation and he will come in to do what he does best –steal, kill and destroy. The 2nd law of Thermodynamics on entropy holds true even in matters of our faith and Christian walk: “Any system left to its self will eventually decay or self-destruct”. Whatever good thing we neglect, we will regret and as Mensah Otabil says, “Present carelessness can sabotage future success”
Heb 2:1 Therefore, we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away.
