Most of us don’t just walk away…we drift!

This is from John Maxwell: He gave his daughter these guidelines while teaching her to hit a baseball. "Elizabeth, it is your responsibility to swing the bat.  

It is my job to hit the bat with the ball when I pitch it." "Elizabeth fearlessly began to swing the bat.  She had nothing to lose! Every time she would swing the bat she was a success. The problem - I kept missing the bat with the ball I was throwing. Finally, after many swings and as many misses, Elizabeth threw down the bat, looked at me with disgust and said, `Daddy, you keep missing the bat.'"

Sometimes we treat our walk with God that way, in reverse order! It is the job of the pitcher to only get the ball over the plate; it is the batter’s responsibility to connect his bat with the ball! It is God’s responsibility, which He placed on Himself, to give us opportunities to fellowship with Him and become intimate. It is our responsibility to take advantage of those opportunities and grow in intimacy.

I have found this requires a focused attention to our life and our walk with Him. Before we move on to Judges 18, which is just as strange as the previous chapter, I want to contemplate on how believers can end up in the condition that Israel was in Judges 17. Most believers do not wake up one day and just decide they don’t want to follow God anymore. Sometimes it happens, but not often. So how do we see people that follow God get to the point that we see in Judges 17 where there is no apparent evidence of God in their life?

I believe it is due to a lack of focus on their life and that opens the door for their life to “Drift” away from the Lord. I want to spend the next few Devos examining at what this drifting looks like, what “lack” does it expose in our life and how we can test ourselves to see where we are. Over 35 years ago I spoke at a youth camp where a brother named Kevin Huggins that spoke along with me shared the basic concept and outline of this material. With his permission I took it and added some things, this material has been used by me for all those years and God has touched many through it. I am indebted to the Lord for how He interconnects His people to maximize their abilities, and I am indebted to my brother Kevin who I have not seen in over 3 decades. I pray he is doing well!

Remember, like being in the ocean, drifting is very subtle. In Hawaii we had a man on his honeymoon lay down on a bed inner tube in Waikiki, which is a calm as a pond many times, and he fell asleep. When he awoke he was between 2 – 5 miles out to sea! He drifted without ever awaking, because it happened so slowly. This story has a happy ending; he was rescued, although with very serious sunburn, which did not please his wife on their honeymoon, OUCH!

Physically, drifting can be very dangerous; drifting spiritually can be disastrous! As we look at these conditions of drifting we need to be asking ourselves “where am I?” Taking into consideration that we are all fallen human beings we have to face the fact that we will drift at times…BUT if we catch it early the Holy Spirit will redirect us back into the “current” that leads to intimacy with our Lord!   

Hebrews 2:1 For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it.

Ten Conditions of Drifting:

First - Warning #1 Laziness

Spiritual laziness will begin the drifting towards unfruitfulness. Do not confuse this with “resting!” Everyone needs a break and time to reflect, but laziness is when the flesh is in control.

Galatians 6:4–9 Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else. For we are each responsible for our own conduct. Those who are taught the word of God should provide for their teachers, sharing all good things with them. Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.

When we become lazy in our spirit it exposes a: Lack of Discipline – the flesh never desires to take the difficult road, or that which would inconvenience it. 

Test yourself: Do you only do the difficult or inconvenient when forced to, or do you choose to do the difficult, i.e. Memorize Scripture, Read through the Bible, Fast, etc. just to stay in shape?

2 Timothy 2:15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.

Second - Warning #2 Boredom

We find ourselves tired of the life we have, because we think there is something better out there. So life becomes a burden and tiresome.

Hebrews 6:9–12 Dear friends, even though we are talking this way, we really don’t believe it applies to you. We are confident that you are meant for better things, things that come with salvation. For God is not unjust. He will not forget how hard you have worked for him and how you have shown your love to him by caring for other believers, as you still do. Our great desire is that you will keep on loving others as long as life lasts, in order to make certain that what you hope for will come true. Then you will not become spiritually dull and indifferent. Instead, you will follow the example of those who are going to inherit God’s promises because of their faith and endurance.

The society we live in is dominated by busyness. After a while of “doing” we can become bored of it because we want to experience something new. The problem is not “what” we are doing; it is the “way” we are doing it! We do not have “ownership” of what we are doing. This exposes a: Lack of Purpose! When you sense eternal purpose in what you are doing you never get bored!

One more thought: There is nothing wrong with wanting something better than you have right now, that desire may be from God. Remember, the grass may be greener on the other side of the mountain…but the water bill will always be higher!

Test yourself: Are you Proactive in your walk with God? Do you seek from Him on your own to create new ways to grow and serve Christ?

Hebrews 5:11–14  There is much more we would like to say about this, but it is difficult to explain, especially since you are spiritually dull and don’t seem to listen. You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.

Where are you? These first two conditions are the first warning signs of Drifting. Examine them and take the tests. In following Devos we will look at the other 8 conditions as we move from Warning to Existing to Danger Zone!

What’s the difference between a job and a call?

Judges 17:7-13 Now there was a young man from Bethlehem in Judah, of the family of Judah, who was a Levite; and he was staying there. Then the man departed from the city, from Bethlehem in Judah, to stay wherever he might find a place; and as he made his journey, he came to the hill country of Ephraim to the house of Micah. Micah said to him, “Where do you come from?” And he said to him, “I am a Levite from Bethlehem in Judah, and I am going to stay wherever I may find a place.”  Micah then said to him, “Dwell with me and be a father and a priest to me, and I will give you ten pieces of silver a year, a suit of clothes, and your maintenance.” So the Levite went in. 

The Levite agreed to live with the man, and the young man became to him like one of his sons. So Micah consecrated the Levite, and the young man became his priest and lived in the house of Micah. Then Micah said, “Now I know that the Lord will prosper me, seeing I have a Levite as priest.”

This is a response letter from a high school senior who had received a letter of rejection from the college he wanted to attend. “Dear Admissions Officer,' the student wrote, `I am in receipt of your rejection of my application. As much as I would like to accommodate you, I find I cannot accept it. I have already received four rejections from other colleges, and this number is, in fact, over my limit. Therefore, I must reject your rejection, and will appear for classes on 9/18!'"

When you refuse to deal with reality you can end up doing some very strange things.

This is a pretty incredible story that demonstrates that when we are out of touch with truth we can justify just about anything.

We have two Jews here who should know what is right and wrong when it comes to worshiping God, yet what they both do is completely contrary to God's law. We saw in the beginning of this chapter how Micah took money from his mother but because of her curse gave it back to her. She in turn built an idol for him. Now the chapter continues with the travels of a young Levitical priest that comes upon Micah's house. Micah offers this young priest a job and the priest accepts it.

Two important truths are here in this passage. First, just because you want something to be a certain way, it does not make it so. Micah knows what God expects when we approach Him. He also knows that the tribe of Levi is the priests for the nation of Israel to approach God. So in his mind he convinces himself that if he can get a personal priest that God is going to be on his side. This is what religiosity produces in the minds of people. It actually is superstition and we fall into it fairly easily. I remember reading about a terrible crime committed against a person, but the story emphasized that the crime was so terrible because it was done in a church building. Now I understand how we view a church building, but we need to be careful because we almost become superstitious about it. A sin in the forest is much a sin as a sin in a church building. It's like people going to a bar and behaving sinfully on Saturday and then becoming something very different when they enter the church building on Sunday. What God is concerned about is what's going on inside their heart, not where they're at. If I disobey God, no matter where that takes place, it is disobedience. Micah was committing idolatry, and it didn't matter that he tried to dress it up by having a priest from the Levitical line to represent him.

Micah deceives himself in believing that he can purchase a restful soul. He's able to ignore all that is wrong because deep inside he wants God on his side, but not God's way. That is something that the Lord will never agree to. How many times people have given sums of money to the work of God thinking that that would cause God to bless their lives? It is true that when we give to God's work the Scriptures teach that He will bless… But there are two principles tied to that promise. Did we give because we were led by our love of God to do so, and the blessing that is promised is based on this question: is what we are in our lives bringing honor to God? The blessing is not carte blanche to do anything we want. It's always wise for us to check our motives of why we're doing something for the Lord.

The other sad aspect of this passage is that this Levite has convinced himself that his calling can be bought. There are many leaders in the church that have allowed their calling to become a job. The end result is no power and no joy in what they do. I have had to deal with men in the ministry that have slipped into that kind of thinking. They confuse Who really meets their needs. They compromise on their stand in the Scriptures because of the threat of the church firing them as a pastor.

I have personally experienced the protective hand of God while I was in the pastorate and had to take a Biblical stand that was not popular with people in the church. I had already filled out my resignation and put it in my desk, in case the church would not support what the Bible called us to do. God gave me an incredible peace inside my heart that gave me full confidence to stand where God called me to stand, and the knowledge that if I were to lose my position that my family’s needs were going to be supplied as they always had been from God. He had just used the pay check from the church to give us those needs however, if that pay check were to stop, then our needs would be supplied in a different way. So what I'm sharing here is not some “book knowledge,” - my family and I have lived this truth for almost 4 decades. For the last 22 years we have been self-supporting missionaries and God has always met our needs. We have even gone without medical insurance because of lack of funds and during that time no one in the family got sick.

Let us learn from this young priest to never confuse our calling with our vocation. Every believer is called by God to accomplish things in this life for Him. What our job is, may be very different. Also, the supply of our needs does not come from the money we make from our job, that is what God uses, but we must remember in reality, if we are children of God, He is the source that supplies our needs. This truth should give every believer great strength to stand firm in their walk with God. The world can take our jobs from us, the world can even take our freedom away, but if God wants us to feast or to have freedom, it will happen in His timing in His way! The Scriptures are full of examples of individuals that God supernaturally met their needs or delivered them from circumstances even though the world stood against them.

Meditation: Do you believe you can buy God’s favor? Are you in a religion or a relationship? Where is your trust? What or Who supplies your ability to live? Do you see your job as part of your call? What is your call? Should your call impact your job?