STEADFASTNESS
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.
We stand in
the present but dwell on the past in order that we can be steadfast for the
future.
Dale Ralph Davis
1 Samuel, Christian Focus Publications, p.
78.
When once you are rooted in Reality, nothing can shake you. If your faith is in experiences, anything that happens is likely to upset that faith; but nothing can ever upset God or the almighty Reality of Redemption; base your faith on that and you are as eternally secure as God. When once you get into personal contact with Jesus Christ, you will never be moved again. Oswald ChambersMy Utmost for His Highest, 1935, December 3 Reading.