Help others cling to Christ | Clip from Sanctification

And like you, I think the third one that he mentioned, being absorbed or entangled with just the nice stuff that the world offers, is probably the most plaguing for me. And I have to look at ways that that enters into my heart, whether it's getting an email ad saying, hey, the newest fountain pen is available.

That may not tempt anybody else out there. But I find it quite tempting. So I just delete it. I think, I don't want to know about the new fountain pen. And I am right now speaking to Teddy James, who just is looking at a new pen.

So if you're listening, Allison, you might need to check the credit card balance.

All right.

Christ as the Cure for a Distracted Heart

Now, let me read his cure, because I find it so helpful. He says, here's the cure to a distracted heart, and it's Christ. Here's what he says. Oh, that I might prevail with you to try and try again how good the Lord is.

That you might daily study more and more the ravishing sweetness and pleasures of a holy and devout life, even a life of faith and fellowship with God in all acts of holiness. So enjoying God in every deed you do that day, thereby anticipating the unspeakable joys of the glorious upper world.

This will at once sweeten all the bitters and render insipid all the vain and sensual pleasures of this life. Walking near the Lord will enable us to go through the bitter times with a sweetness. And all the things that the world offers us, it will make them appear as they really are.

And that is insipid, just kind of, you know, lukewarm, not worth really paying attention to. Then he goes on to say, this will cause you to move closer and closer to the Lord. Believe it, oh, believe it, that as to be carnally minded is death, so to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

And that comes from Romans 8, 6. So the cure to a distracted life is not legalism. It is to give a great deal of spiritual energy, focusing on the Lord, to draw the heart off and onto him. Well, we wanted to give a concluding thought to all of this, and there's a whole lot more in the chapter, but a concluding thought would be what we mentioned earlier on.

Helping New Believers Cling to Christ Wisely

It isn't enough to read this chapter and then look at your own life and apply it. If you're a believer, you want to also look at other believers, especially those who have just embraced Christ, whatever age they are.

And consider how to take, so just take those seven points of how to cheerfully cling to.

The Lord.

What if you went back and you read the chapter for yourself and marked down those seven points? And what if you use that as a guide of how to help new believers walk very carefully.

With the Lord?

But while we say that, there's probably some cautions we should give.

Yeah, you want to be careful how you approach people. You could come, you know, intending to kind of preach a mini-sermon and probably not be well received, at least not more than once or twice. So you should think ahead how to ask these questions in a way to be helpful and not to be seen as judgmental, or also I suppose make sure that you have some concrete, correct advice on how to point them to the Lord and not just sentimentalism yourself.

Yeah, surely one of the best ways to do that is that you have given significant time to these points, you know, alone with the Lord over weeks or months. And so these seven points, in a sense, are kind of second nature to you, like this is part of clinging to the Lord today, guarding my heart here, guarding it here, focusing.

It here.

It's a reality that you yourself are living on.

Yeah, if you've walked that path, it is so much easier than to turn back to the young believer and say to them, I have been there many times and I have found this to be so.

Helpful.

And then it's not like you've appointed yourself as the preacher and you come with a kind of a sterile list of seven things that you're not doing it again, I have seven things, how many did you do this week, which would probably just mean that they would run from you every time they saw you.

And that isn't necessarily that they're not spiritual, it just may mean they're not ready.

To trust you.

You're not.

Yeah, you're not spiritual. Yeah, so I think that's probably, acquaint yourself with these seven things in the chapter. Find room in the soul for working them down into the fabric of normal everyday life.

And that will take some time, learning, memorizing, you know, writing them down. That's the easy part. But the great adventure is applying them. And then in applying them, you will be able to look back and call to the younger believer and say, don't get stuck there.

I've been there too many times, you know, here's the way forward. And that is so much more significantly helpful than just saying to someone at church, so how's your week been? Or how, you know, how's your quiet time?

How's your prayer life? Well, those aren't bad questions, but there ought to be people in your life that you know well enough to say, how's it really going? You know, and you know, what are areas, you know, and they trust you enough to open up.

God's Work and the Believer's Response in Perseverance

Well, there's a wonderful closing doxology in the book of Hebrews that unites both the activity of God and the responsiveness of the believer in this persevering. So let me read that. Hebrews 13, verse 20 and 21.

Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead, the great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus, our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Thank you for watching the clip. We hope that it was helpful for you. If you want to hear the full audio of that podcast, you can find it on any of your favorite podcast apps.