Christian Living

Don't Let Your Faith Stall

by Jeff Drinnan
10/08/20
For Sale
Author requests article critique

  Message Writer
  Hire Writer

Tweet

"For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus." -Philippians 1:6 I have heard this called "progressive sanctification."

Taking an inventory is something businesses do. They check out what they have. Do they just stop there, after taking an inventory and just go on? Not order and restock? Chances are, if they stop acting on their inventory they may end up having to close shop, go out of business! In our personal lives, we too need to take an inventory. In fact, step 10 of the 12 steps reads: "Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it."

Until we reach Heaven, Christians will not reach perfection. God is still working on us. The world and it's temptations and doubts about God does not slack. Les Feldick, an Oklahoma rancher who televises his informal Bible study, made an analogy about our spiritual journey to paddling a canoe upstream. If you stop paddling, you get carried downstream. When we stop staying in the Word, in fellowship, in prayer, and in singing hymns and psalms, and don't confess our sins, we are in danger of being pulled downstream, wiped out!

Jay E Adams, father of the BIblical Counseling Movement, said that problems occur when santification stalls. We have not arrived yet, as the apostle Paul admonishes us to keep pressing on.

Plato's idea that we have not arrived but are is a state of becoming is spot on. His worldly philosophy is not Godly, but his model of becoming is a Biblical model.

Step 10 is not a popular step, according to verywellmind.com, but "without this step, progress toward recovery can not only cease, it can actually lose ground." This is true with any problem, which is rooted in sin, not just drug or alcohol addiction. In a sense, we are all in recovery. Since the fall of man in the Garden, we have been tainted with sin.

I summarize step 10 by saying "Don't be cocky." You don't have it made! You may have made lots of progress and are somewhat stable, but you have not arrived!

“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” -Proverbs 16:18

Don't slack off. Keep paddling!