“Because of the multiplication of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold. But the one who perseveres to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 24:12-13 BSB)
When someone we know well and respect as a person of God falls or fails, it’s discouraging. It seems Biblical standards are so ignored or disregarded in the modern church when it happens it causes us to wonder “What’s the point? Why make the effort to live a godly, holy life? Who cares anymore?”
The motivating energy behind my continuing efforts to be all the Lord would have me to be is my Savior, the Lord Jesus. He never faltered or failed and HE’S MY EXAMPLE, no one else. Human effort fails and falls short, but the Lord will NEVER FAIL, NEVER LEAVE, AND NEVER FORSAKE!
He is my fortress in the storm, the Rock onto which I hold tightly, the voice of calm in the midst of the prevailing winds of culture that seek to sway my opinion to something other than the security of my trust in Jesus. Yet, even as I type these words, I realize the enemy is seeking to discourage me because in my efforts to represent Him well, so few seem to have any real interest in the things of God.
Again, that’s only as the Lord revealed it would be. His Word let’s us know the closer we get to the end of time and life on this planet, the harder it will be to be convinced that Jesus is the only way to heaven in light of all the wrong theology that’s being promoted in our world today. And here’s the irony. It’s not the lost people who are rejecting the Lord, it’s the religiously pious who are secure in their own goodness and right standing with God.
Their eternal “security” has been placed in a profession rather than in a Person, and, while they may not realize it or choose to believe it, their cold hearts that have allowed them to drift from the Truth of a moment-by-moment relationship with the Lord, is allowing them to slip from their security in Jesus into a false sense of security in their own goodness.
As Martin Luther points out: “The heart overflows with gladness and leaps and dances for the joy it has found in God…. You will have as much joy and laughter in life as you have faith in God.” Diminishing faith in God results in diminishing joy and gladness in the things of God. To drift from God is to drift from the joy, contentment, satisfaction, and security that only Jesus can give.
No one really doubts that believers drift, doubt, or at times even deny the faith. The only question is, where do these drifting’s end? Most often they lead to a lax view of sin. We too often wrongly assume that since the blood of Jesus paid the penalty for all sin, past, present, and future, let’s sin to our heart’s content because they’re all “paid for;” however, the writer of the Hebrew letter reminds us in Hebrews 10:26-31: “If we deliberately go on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no further sacrifice of sins remains, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume all adversaries. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses, How much more severely do you think one deserves to be punished who has trampled on the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant that sanctified Him and insulted the Spirit of grace?”
We take sin far too lightly, which results in our heart drifting and our soul growing cold to the things of God. Yes, of course, the Lord will forgive us when we sin, but when sin becomes our way of life once we’ve supposedly yielded our lives to Him, there remains no alternative. It’s as if we spit in the Savior’s holy face when we demand our sinful way over His way of holiness and desire to walk with victory over sin as Scripture clearly teaches we can.
The greater measure we yield to sin, the greater measure our hearts will grow cold.
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 
Loved todays message! Thanks, Steve
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