Weekly Pastoral Message prepared by Rev. Murray Adamthwaite
for Sunday 31st August 1997

From the Pastor: Perseverance I

We all know of someone, or perhaps several, who have made shipwreck of their faith. They are people who seemed to be stalwarts of the faith in their younger days: Sunday school teachers, leaders in the church, even preachers. They would often quote Bible texts, engage in the loftiest spiritual converstaions, and lament when error was taught. But now all that has gone: they are far from the faith, scornful of those who hold to it, and refuse to have any part of it themselves. What has happened? There are two stock replies which will not satisfy, basically because they are too slick and too dismissive. One says, "He was a Christian, but he has lost his salvation." This flies in the face of abundant Scripture teaching that those in whom God began a good work will be completed at the day of Christ (Philippians 1:6), and that "those whom God justified, He also glorified." (Romans 8:30) - no exceptions, no losses or casualties. The other says, "He was never a Christian in the first place." This has a measure of truth, but as it stands fails to grapple with the problem of experience. The truth is that we can never know the human heart. Who really knows what a person is capable of or where in the moral and spiritual sense he will end? The psalmist had the same dilemma when he complained that his once familiar friend with whom he had sweet spiritual fellowship had now turned against him, (Psalm 55:14). Hence we need constantly to attend to the preaching and personal study of God's Word, and to prayer and wholesome conversation. "Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall", (1 Corinthians 10:12).