AP

An unbelieving family member once asked me “Why do you go to church every Sunday? Why don’t you take one Sunday off and go down to the beach instead?”. He found it almost unfathomable that a person would be stupid enough to prefer worshipping the Son instead of worshipping the sun.

I was almost tempted to say to him “Get behind me Satan” but thought better of it. Instead, I answered that the joy of worshipping God was not anywhere near to baking in the sun.

I was musing over this incident a few weeks ago when I bumped into two colleagues. Both purport to be Christians, and neither attends a church of any kind. They used to worship God, but they had drifted away. The downward currents of Australian secular (aka godless) culture had pulled them away from the churches to which they had been moored.

One now went to the gym on the Lord’s Day. He had been a church hopper trying to find the ideal church. The other had found churches unfriendly and unwelcoming. Both could easily attend a church. Both had decided to drop out and drift away with the godless.

Another professing Christian had written to me last year to tell me that he too had stopped going to worship. The reason? The person who prayed last month had prayed about Israel but not about Palestine. Admittedly, churches should pray for both Israel and Palestine … but was that a biblical reason to stop worshipping?

Many professing Christians find the flimsiest of reasons for drifting away from God.

Spurgeon writes pointedly to professing Christians who at the drop of the hat go from church to church searching for the ideal church and when they do not find it stop attending altogether.

“If I had never joined a church till I had found one that was perfect, I should never have joined one at all; and the moment I did join it, if I had found one, I should have spoiled it, for it would not have been a perfect church after I had become a member of it. Still, imperfect as it is, it is the dearest place on earth to us.”

What is the real reason professing Christians stop attending church? A chief reason they drift away is that they were never moored to Christ. And we too will drift away with the godless cultures of the day if we are not safely moored to Christ.

Christ is our strong anchor against the godless sea that pulls so hard to drown us beneath its murky waters (Isaiah 57:20). How many in our churches have drifted away towards the foggy darkness, never to be seen again?

Jesus truly promises that both He and the Father hold us securely in their Hands (John 10:27-30). And yet the Bible warns us again and again about drifting away from Christ.

It is so terribly easy to drift away. Satan will rarely violently man-handle us away from Christ. That would be too sudden, too violent, too raw to the nerves.

Sudden movements against the soul often result in spiritual adrenalin alerting us to our spiritual danger. No. Satan normally prefers the gentle subtle drift – the gentle waves and currents – which pull us ever so slowly from Christ.

Under this Satanic stratagem the senses are not so easily alerted. Like a cane toad placed in the freezer the professing Christian slowly falls asleep until he is spiritually dead. And in this strategy Satan has been very successful. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of church goers, have drifted away from Christ in the last 50 years.

How did they so easily drift away from Christ?

It is easy to drift away from attending church. The Scottish missionary John Paton wrote that he had only known his godly father missing church twice. Once because there was an ice storm so cold that it was perilously dangerous to travel to church. And once, because of a pandemic outbreak.

Many who slowly drift away find the flimsiest reasons to excuse themselves from worship. They have a football game that is scheduled at the same time as worship. What must give? Worship naturally. Their children have a cross-country competition on Sunday. What must they give up? Worship of course.

The weather is foggy and drizzly. The bed is nice and warm. Where would they rather be? Definitely not in church. If it had been rainy and miserable on a Wednesday they would be up and at work – their boss would wonder where they were.

But how easily worship can be skipped. Weak excuses are given and slowly two services in a month are missed; then three; and then finally they are at church once or twice a year.

It is easy to drift away from keeping the Lord’s Day holy. Sunday is now Funday. God is now a distant memory to most people. Sunday is for sleeping in. Worshipping the sun. And watching the footy. Sunday is not designed for worshipping God. It is not designed for reading the Bible and praying. And Christians are highly pressured to conform to this unbiblical reality. (Romans 12:1-2)

It is very easy to join the throng as they march gleefully along the broad road. There are the enthralling sights and sounds of the football tournament, the modern day cathedrals of the shopping mall, and the addictive nature of computer games and YouTube.

They all entice us away from spending time with Jesus. If we do not wish to drift away Jesus must never be crowded out on the Lord’s Day. Jesus must never be a distant second.

It is easy to drift away from reading the Bible. King David tells us to meditate on God’s word day and night (Psalm 1:2). Moses tells future kings to write out the whole book of the Law by hand (Deut. 17:18-20). The prophet Jeremiah said he delighted so much in God’s words that he ate them (Jeremiah 15:16). God’s word, says the Psalmist, in sweeter than honey (Psalm 119:103).

We watch telly instead of reading God’s word. We spend more time playing games on our Xbox then memorising God’s word.

In short, the Bible is crowded out of our lives. Instead of eating a Big Mac of God’s word we eat a single French fry or nothing at all. We become lifeless spiritual skeletons. Healthy Christians let the word of God dwell richly in them (Colossians 3:16). They are heavy in the word and so less likely to drift away. Prick them and like Spurgeon said on Bunyan “You will find that his blood is bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him”

It is easy to drift away from prayer. Satan trembles when Christians pray. The very nature of a Christian is to pray. To be a living Christian is to be a praying Christian. Christians who drift are Christians who busy themselves with everything except prayer. A Christian who is alive can say with Luther: “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer”. Or as praying Paysonof Portland said: ““Prayer is the first thing, the second thing, the third thing necessary to a minister. Pray, then, my dear brother; pray, pray, pray.”

Professing Christians who drift towards the abyss are prayerless Christians. We do not meet them daily at the Throne of Grace. John Newton wrote to a friend: “I trust we meet daily before the Throne of Grace; hereafter we shall meet in glory”.

They are rarely found on their knees. By degrees their prayers become shorter and less frequent. Their relationship with the Father grows distant and cold. And in time communication comes to an end. They drift away and fall over the cliff to their spiritual death.

Christians must ever be on their guard. Ever watchful. Ever alert. Ever vigilant. If Satan is subtle and cunning to destroy our souls can we expect a favourable outcome if we are spiritual sloths?

Their stories are well-known in hell. It is a common story told in that dark place. Do your utmost that if your life story is told in hell it will be that you did not drift away.

– Troy Appleton