What happened to me?!
Have you ever noticed that as you grow older you rarely make conscious and intentional decisions to gain weight? It just sort of seems to happen to you unbidden and unwanted. You wake up one day, look into the mirror, and think, “What happened to me?!”
Drift happened…and some unfortunate changes in metabolism! As you grow out of adolescence, your activity level slowly changes. As you leave home, your eating habits become less controlled by your parents, and you replace balanced meals with fast food, candy, and treats. When this is coupled with changes to your body over time and the stresses and responsibilities of life, the results can be alarming and significant. All of a sudden you weigh 10 or 15 pounds more than you did. This is drift.
Slow and often unnoticed changes in our decisions and habits can have astounding accumulative effects over time. We rarely notice the progress and impact of these changes because they happen over weeks, months, and sometimes years instead of over minutes and days. We drift into them. Drift is the unintentional effect of slow changes over time. We don’t mean to drift. We do it because we aren’t paying enough attention and exercising enough self-discipline. Before we know it, we look up to find ourselves way off course.
The wrong heading
The dangerous element about drift is that follows the path of least resistance, so rarely are the changes resulting from drift positive, helpful, and healthy. Our hearts are deceitful, and our flesh wars in our members. As such the path of least resistance is most often the path towards laziness, selfishness, and sin. This is why I have told you before that you can’t drift into holiness or maturity in Christ. These things require effort, intentionality, and constant course corrections. In fact, they require a sensitivity to the conviction of the Spirit on a daily basis.
Certain seasons of our life and even of the yearly calendar seem to encourage drift of various kinds. The holidays seem to encourage drift when it comes to our diets and our fitness. Social drift seems to occur when we really busy or stressed. Spiritual drift can occur in the midst of a great season of blessing when we feel that everything is going great and we don’t really recognize our dependence on God. I like to call this the test of comfort and it is also more seductive that than the test of difficulty and trial. In fact, John Piper says, “The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18–20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable” (A Hunger for God [Wheaton: Crossway, 1997], 14; emphasis mine).
Course correction
As we approach the summer, I want to encourage and challenge you to avoid the dangers of drift. Summer is usually a time of relaxation, refreshment, and vacation. These are all good things that we need in the warp and woof of our life. But, let me caution you to not allow the need for those things to become the occasion for drift. A spiritual drift away from God most often begins when we drift away from His Word, His people, and His presence. Use the summer season to find refreshment and renewal in the change life’s pace and activities. But, please couple that will a renewed commitment to four things:
Reading and studying God’s Word regularly
Joining with His people in corporate worship, teaching, and fellowship
Seeking God’s presence and acknowledging your dependence on Him through prayer
Practicing meaningful and honest accountability with other believers
These basic commitments can be powerful tools in the hands of God in protecting us from drift and pushing us towards Christ.
And course, pray that God would bind your heart to his so that you might know him, love him, serve him, and please him. Listen to the counsel of the old hymn:
O to grace how great a debtor
daily I’m constrained to be!
Let that grace now, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here’s my heart; O take and seal it;
seal it for thy courts above.
