And so how can you, as a Christian, ensure that such a thing doesn’t happen to you? The answer is simple: You must do that which is necessary to keep your fellowship with Christ maintained and strong. How do you accomplish this? You do it through such things as: daily prayer, daily Bible study, weekly church attendance, cheerful giving, frequent witnessing, and regular confession and repentance. I know, I know, these things have been promoted so much they’ve become virtual cliches of Christianity. But they’ve been promoted so much because they work!

In Jeremiah 6:16, the prophet Jeremiah says to the people of Judah:

Thus says the Lord: “Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it. Then you will find rest for your souls…”

By encouraging the people to ask for the old paths God was telling them, “The things I’ve had you do before will still work and keep you in right fellowship with me.” To those Jews that meant keeping the moral specifics of the Mosaic law, bringing their sacrifices to the temple as acts of worship, offering up their prayers to God, confessing their sins and repenting of them, and looking to God for their guidance and protection. Sadly, though, those people would have none of it. Jeremiah 6:16 ends with the mournful words:

…But they said, ‘We will not walk in it (the good way found in the old paths).’

Now, I do realize that the “old paths” for the Christian today aren’t the same as the ones the Old Testament Jews were to walk. However, the basic template is still the same: adherence to God’s word, worship, prayer, confession, repentance, and seeking God’s guidance and protection. The Christian whose life evidences these things need never worry about rotting or sinking because his spiritual boat will be solid and worthy of sailing the seas of life. As we all know, those seas can sometimes be stormy, choppy, and downright dangerous, but the Christian who is walking God’s in old paths won’t sink. How can he when he has the Lord Himself as his captain?

This world is filled with people who will bail out on a difficult circumstance when the sledding gets rough. They won’t be going for help either; they’ll be looking out for themselves. Sadly, too many times this applies to how we Christians relate to following Jesus.

One of the most somber questions that Jesus ever asked is found in John 6:67. Let me set the context for you. A tremendous crowd of 5,000 men (not counting women and children) gathered around Jesus to hear Him teach near the slope of a mountain hovering over the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus miraculously fed this crowd by using a young boy’s lunch of five loaves of bread and two small fish. Following this miracle, the crowd tried to take Him by force and make Him their earthly king. Wanting no part of such an election, He dispersed them, commanded the twelve to get in a boat and cross over to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and went up into a mountain alone.

That night a terrible windstorm swept down onto the Sea of Galilee, preventing the twelve from making much headway to the other shore. When they reached a state of exhaustion and despair for their lives, Jesus walked on the water, calmed the storm, and joined them in the boat. At that point the boat was miraculously transported to the other shore.

The following morning many of the original crowd got into boats and crossed over to find Jesus. They caught up with Him in a synagogue in Capernaum. Shortly afterward, Jesus accused these people of only following Him for His miracles. Then He launched into a weird teaching about Him being the bread of life and how they needed to eat of His flesh. You talk about throwing cold water onto a fickle bunch! When the teaching was finished, they turned away and never followed Jesus again. Just as He had said, they were only interested in following Him as long as the miracles were rolling and the teachings were pleasant and easy to understand.

It’s at that critical moment that Jesus looked at His chosen twelve and asked the penetrating question, “Do you also want to go away?” Some of them may have, but Peter spoke up before anybody else could answer. He said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also, we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Good for you, Peter!

Tell me, Christian, are you right now going through a difficult time with the Lord? Are you confused? Are you frustrated? Are you out of heart? Has He hurt your feelings? Trust me, you aren’t the first to go down such a road. The question is, how will you respond? Will you turn back from following Christ? Or will you, like Peter, understand that turning away from Him is akin to turning away from the source of life and truth? Please understand that I’m not talking about a Christian possibly losing his or her salvation. As the old saying goes, “once saved, always saved.” What I’m talking about is breaking fellowship with the Lord and bailing out on what He is trying to teach you through your difficult times. Trust me, such a bail out might provide a modicum of temporary relief, but in the end you’ll come to know all too well that you should have stayed on the plane with your Savior.

As the council members tried to figure out just exactly who “The Keeper of the Spring” was and why he was paid a fee each month, only one member could even offer a clue. He said, “I think there is an old man who lives near the top of the mountain, and he cleans out all the springs and creeks that flow down to the river that fills the reservoir that provides the town’s drinking water.”

The other council members didn’t dispute the answer, but they didn’t see the need to keep paying the fee either. One said, “We’ve never even seen this man.” Another said, “That’s right, so how can we be sure that he’s doing his job?” A third added, “If he was an old man, he might even be dead by now.” So the council voted unanimously to stop paying “The Keeper of the Spring” and sent out a letter of dismissal to the mountaintop address to which the fee had always been sent.

A few months later the town’s citizens began to notice that their drinking water wasn’t as clear and sparkling as it used to be. No fuss was raised, though, because it wasn’t that big a deal. More months passed and they noticed that the water’s color was now different. Still, though, there didn’t seem to be any cause for alarm. More months passed and some of the citizens started getting sick. It wasn’t even suspected, however, that the town’s water might be the reason. Finally, a full-fledged epidemic broke out and some of the citizens lost their lives.

Panic now ruled the streets and the town council voted unanimously to have a team do a thorough investigation to discover the cause of the epidemic. You can guess how the report came back: a polluted, unsafe water supply. Obviously, the town council had failed to realize just how important “The Keeper of the Springs” was. Even though they hadn’t known it, he was the true secret to the town’s livelihood and happiness.

Going into this new year let me encourage you to realize that Jesus Christ is “The Keeper of the Springs” for you. As long as your relationship and fellowship with Him are right, there will be a purity and vitality to your life and you will know the joy, comfort, and inner peace that are only found through Him. But, on the other hand, if you foolishly chose to ignore Him and try to operate without Him, at some point you will have to deal with the costly fallout from your choice. Jesus doesn’t want that for you, and you wouldn’t want it for yourself if you had enough sense to know it. So this year, day in and day out, night in and night out, build your life around Jesus and let Him be “The Keeper of the Spring” for you. If you’ll do that, you can rest assured that He will keep the issues of your life clear and pure.

Each New Year’s day most of us make certain resolutions. Truth be told, though, those resolutions typically don’t get kept. And when the next New Year’s day comes crashing upon the shore of our life and recedes back out into time, it takes with it all of those big, beautiful resolutions that were still lying there.

For the Christian, New Year’s resolutions often have a spiritual connotation to them. For example, the Christian might commit to read the Bible more, pray more, give more, or attend church more in the upcoming year. Such resolutions are fine in and of themselves, but I do want you to think about something: Once a resolution becomes what we might classify as a “vow” to God, that puts it in a much more serious category. Consider the words of Ecclesiastes 5:4-5:

When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it; For He has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed – better not to vow than to vow and not pay.

Christian, keep this passage in mind this New Year if you plan to make any spiritual resolutions and bring God in to serve as a witness to your dedication. I’m not telling you not to make such resolutions; I’m simply pointing out that God’s word does have something to say on this subject. So if you are going to go down that road, be sure that you are honestly prepared to travel it to its end.

Consider the following verses:

1. 1 Samuel 15:22: So Samuel said: “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.”

2. Proverbs 15:8: The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is His delight.

3. Proverbs 21:3: To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.

You’ll note that each of these Old Testament verses speaks of sacrifices. To understand this, you must understand that the Old Testament Jews lived their lives under that body of law that God had given to them through Moses. Sacrifices were a fundamental, foundational part of that law. The law laid out incredibly precise rituals for the offering up of: burnt offerings, peace offerings, sin offerings, trespass offerings, freewill offerings, and heave offerings. These categories of offerings all involved the sacrificing of animals. Also, the law laid out precise rituals for grain offerings and drink offerings. Israel even had an entire tribe (the tribe of Levi) that served as its priesthood, and those priests, dressed in their priestly garments, faithfully offered up all these offerings at the tabernacle (later on, the temple).

You see, when a Jew brought an offering to a priest for it to be offered up, that was nothing less than an Old Testament worship scene. They didn’t have churches or synagogues. They had the tabernacle (the temple) and the law-prescribed sacrifices. That was how they publicly and corporately worshiped the Lord.

So do you see the teaching? Let’s use the Proverbs 21:3 verse as an example. If it was being written to the Christian realm today, it could read something like this:

To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable than going to church, praying, reading your Bible, dropping money in an offering plate, or giving to missions.

The point is that God really isn’t all that impressed with your attempts to worship Him when you spend the vast majority of your life doing sinful things. What you call “worship” doesn’t fix, excuse, or legitimize a lifestyle of habitual sin. If you lay drunk all week and then come to church on Sunday, that’s a problem. If you smoke pot or do other kinds of drugs Monday through Saturday and then come to church on Sunday, that’s a problem. If you roll out of bed with a person to whom you aren’t married and then drive to church, that’s a problem. If you won’t pay your bills, but you drop $10 in the offering plate every Sunday, that’s a problem. If you engage in dishonest business practices but you say the blessing before every meal, that’s a problem. If you treat people like dirt but you read your Bible every night, that’s a problem.

There’s an old story that supposedly comes from the life of Mark Twain, and it sums up what I’m trying to say here. So I’ll close with it. A man once said to Twain, “I’m going to take a trip to Israel. When I get there I’m going to hike to the top of Mount Sinai, and then I’m going to shout down the ten commandments.” Twain looked at the fellow and said, “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you stay home and keep them?” That was a good comeback then, and today’s church-goers and professing Christians could still learn something from it.

Now here’s the test question: Do you think that man will honor the “deal” that he made with God? The answer is: There’s a pretty good chance that he will go to church that first Sunday, but if nothing else changes he won’t keep up the attendance for long.

You see, it takes more than a quick moment of desperation to create a lasting turnaround in your life. As a pastor, I’ve seen so many people who were going through difficult times make grandiose boasts about what all they were going to do for the Lord if He helped them out of their messes. But how many of those boasts actually came to pass, even after the Lord gave the help? Maybe there were two or three, but right now I can’t even remember there being that many.

One Sunday morning I preached and gave an invitation, and a woman promptly made her way to the altar and knelt for prayer. When I went over and asked her why she had responded to the invitation, she told me something along the lines of she wanted to dedicate herself more completely to Jesus. She was crying hot tears and her face was something of a mess from the running makeup. I knew that she was sincere. I also knew that she was a good Christian woman who had some areas of her life that could have been more submitted to Christ’s lordship. So I prayed with her and asked the Lord to help her be even more devoted to Him. The emotion of the moment was almost palpable.

But did that woman even show up for the evening service that same Sunday? No. As I looked around the sanctuary that night and didn’t see her, I was in virtual disbelief. That was the moment when I truly understood for the first time just how fickle and inconsistent we are when it comes to serving the Lord.

Jesus knew us all too well. On the night of His arrest, He took Peter, James, and John into the garden of Gethsemane with Him. He said to them, “Stay here and watch with Me.” Then He walked alone a little further into the heart of the garden and prayed, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39). Following that prayer, He returned to where He had left Peter, James, and John at their watch-post. And what did He find? Rather than keeping diligent watch, they had all drifted off to sleep.

After a fairly strong rebuke, Jesus summed up the problem by saying, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). In my opinion, those words perfectly describe why that Christian woman didn’t come back for church that Sunday night. Her spirit was willing, but her flesh was weak. When she had devoted herself more fully to Jesus in the altar that morning, she had meant it. In that moment, she couldn’t have meant it any more. But, unfortunately, that moment had soon passed and the rest of her life had come crashing back in upon her.

I’m saying all of this to encourage you to work at eliminating the fickleness from your walk with the Lord. Try to avoid the roller-coaster devotion that marks the lives of so many people. I know that your flesh is weak. So is mine. But we can’t keep using that excuse to consistently fail the Lord and not live up to the commitments we have made to Him. And, by the way, we needn’t expect Him to keep sending mountain lions to keep us committed either.

At year’s end, he returned to the musician, confident that the master would change his assignment and give him a new, higher grade of music to learn. But it didn’t happen. The master simply said, “Practice the same piece for another year and then return here.”

Somewhat discouraged, the young singer returned home and begrudgingly rededicated himself to his task. For twelve more months he practiced that same piece of music over and over again. Then he returned again to the musician. As he went, he thought, “Surely this time I will be given a new piece to learn.”

Once again, however, the master instructed him to work at the same piece of music for another year and then return. But this time the young man objected. He said, “No, I want to practice something new. I have worked hard, and I deserve to move on up to a more advanced lesson.” Stubbornly, though, the master held his ground, saying, “No, my son, the same lesson this year.”

So now the young man had a decision to make. Should he continue to trust in the great musician and keep practicing the same piece of music? Or should he question the musician’s expertise and seek training elsewhere? Two long years had come and gone. The young singer had worked hard and done as he was told, but he wasn’t seeing any fruit for his labors. Maybe it was now time to cut his losses with the supposed master and change everything.

The young man pondered the issue for quite some time, but in the end he decided to stick with the great musician’s training. So he went back to practicing the same old lesson and faithfully worked at it for yet another year. Then he returned to the master.

But this time the singer wouldn’t be given any more preparatory assignments. Instead, the great musician simply looked at him and said, “Go, my son. You have nothing more to learn.” The young man was both shocked and relieved, but he took the master at his word and began auditioning for singing parts. He nailed performance after performance, no matter how difficult the song, and eventually he rose to become the leading singer in all of Italy.

How was such a thing possible? It was possible because that one piece of music that the singer had so faithfully practiced all those years held within it a certain combination of notes, and that combination had allowed his vocal cords to be developed to perfection. The master, of course, had known this all along.

Christian, it may be that God has had you working on the same assignment for years now. And it also may be that you have grown very tired of singing it. So you’ve begun to long for something new, something different, something that will break you out of your rut. Perhaps you are right now even contemplating going off and doing your own thing because you are tired of living the life in which God has stationed you.

Well, let me ask you this: Could it be that for the past several years God has faithfully been preparing you to do great and mighty works for Him in the future? And, furthermore, could it be that even now your spiritual “vocal cords” are almost perfectly trained to handle these great works? You see, at this point, the last thing you need to do is short-circuit God’s whole plan by foolishly abandoning your master’s training and making some change that you shouldn’t make.

Call this a warning. Call it a word of encouragement. Call it what you will. But just know that God never sends out His servants unprepared, and if He still has you working on the same old assignment, then your training must not be fully completed yet. You ask, “How much longer will it be?” I don’t know. All I know is that there will come a day when God will send you forth to put all of your training to incredible use for Him.

As Christians, we have the God-given responsibility to share God’s truth. This responsibility means that we cannot remain silent about the sin that surrounds our world and threatens to destroy it. We must speak out. We must instruct. We must warn. If we don’t play the role of watchmen, no one will.

The Legislature of the state of New York recently ruled to legalize same-sex marriages. That made New York the sixth state to do so. So should Christians stop sounding the warning that homosexuality (like adultery, premarital sex, incest, and bestiality) is sexual sin in the eyes of God? Should we just throw up our hands and say, “Oh, let’s cave in to the homosexual agenda and let them have their hearts’ desires?” Should we concede defeat and rationalize it by saying, “No one is listening to us anyway”? My answer is an emphatic, NO. True watchmen simply cannot remain silent when danger is at the door.

I’m not going to lie and say that we will win all the battles. The fact is, we may not. But if “winning” the cultural war is the only reason that we are crying out, then we are operating from the wrong motivation anyway. God hasn’t given us the mandate to “win” the war. Our mandate is simply to be responsible, diligent, effective, persevering watchmen. And no matter how much the citizens complain, that’s a duty that we must never shirk.

A man and his wife walked into a store. A parrot sitting on a perch greeted them at the door by saying to the man, “Hey you, you’re stupid and your wife is ugly.” Shocked, the couple quickly moved away from the bird. But the bird wouldn’t let the matter go. Even as they moved toward another part of the store it said to the man again, this time a little louder, “Hey you, you’re stupid and your wife is ugly.”

At that point the store manager came out of the back, and the couple immediately reported what the parrot had said to them. The manager said, “Oh no, is that crazy thing doing that again? I’ve warned him about that.” Then the manager walked over to the bird, grabbed it by its neck, and swatted its backside a few times with his hand. The bird took its punishment and squawked in pain, after which the manager returned it to its perch.

Well, by then the couple was pretty upset about the whole episode and decided to just leave the store. So they headed for the door, which meant that they had to walk past the parrot again. And just as they opened the door to leave, the bird said to the man, “Hey you.” The man’s first instinct was to just keep walking, but curiosity got the better of him. So he slowly turned around and looked straight at the bird. The bird stared back at him for a second and then said, “You know.”

Graham’s point was that critics are everywhere. He’s right. So if you are doing something that you know is right, don’t let them get you down. Just keep on doing it.

You say you went to church Sunday. Fine, but what did you do Monday? You studied your Bible Tuesday night. Okay, but what did you do Wednesday? You prayed a great prayer Thursday. Excellent, but what did you do Friday? You see, occasional flashes of brilliance in serving the Lord just don’t compare to a life that is wholly devoted to serving Him 24-7. So, how’s your case for a promotion right now?