If you see someone walking towards the cliff, about to fall over…dead, and you say nothing, that is not loving of you.  If your “tolerance” leads to someone’s death, that is not loving.  How much more hateful then, is it to see someone walking towards a spiritual cliff, where eternity holds in the balance, and to say nothing?  Many churches, many pastors, many people are afraid to call people to question their salvation, even though we are commanded to test ourselves Biblically (2 Cor 13:5)  If you claim to be a Christian, and you do nothing to encourage your brother or sister to repent in humble fear, and turn to God, you’re not being kind or loving – you are complicit in sending those people to hell.

We see this in dead churches all the time.  Where no one really gets to know anyone, and even if they do, they never love them enough to encourage them away from sin.  Now no one likes the person who really doesn’t know people, but always can find sin to point out.  Don’t be that person.  I’m saying people in your close community, these are the people that absolutely should be encouraging/challenging you in your struggles, and you in theirs.

Let’s get Biblical.  If you are truly saved, you will always be saved, but do you know how you know you’re saved?  If all you have to support your claim is a decision, or statement, or prayer in the past.. your faith is dead, and you are deceived.  The Bible does not talk about saving faith that way.  Yes, I know there are places where it says if you believe you will be saved, and that’s true, but that belief was defined as enduring belief that bears fruit until death by the rest of the New Testament.  How do you know you’re saved, and walking with God?  You know you’re saved because there is an ongoing work of the Spirit of God in you that manifests itself in your life in ways you can see/test, and in your heart you have a growing affection not for what God can give you, but for God Himself.  This isn’t true for everyone who claims Christ.  Some people leave/abandon their pursuit of God to follow after the world/sin.  They were never saved, and it wasn’t evident immediately.  (Read the parable of the soils from Matthew 13/Luke 8)

1 John 2:19 – “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”

Here is my encouragement and challenge for you all.  Each day we make choices that harden our heart against God, or submit to Him as Lord.  Take these daily choices/struggles seriously.  How do you know whether God may want to use you to keep a brother/sister from falling away?  How do you know God doesn’t plan on using other people to sustain/save you?

Hebrews 3:7-14 – “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years.  Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’  As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.'”

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.  But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.  For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.”

Saving faith endures to the end, but God uses means by which to sustain our faith.  We need true, honest community to walk with us through life.  Do you have people who truly know you?  Do you have at least 2 or 3 people?  Love your brothers and sisters enough to have hard conversations in a loving way, eager to extend the grace of God through Jesus Christ, just as you have been forgiven much.  Today it may be them walking towards a cliff, tomorrow it may be you.  Church, and authentic Christian community where you are truly known by others should not be burdensome, but are gifts of God for you.  Embrace and fight hard for them, and God will greatly bless you.

Grace and Peace,

Adam