“And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel” (Judges 2:10).
- First Generation
- The Life of Joshua
- Committed to the Anchor
- Second Generation
- The Elders that Outlived Joshua
- Tossing on the Sea of Compromise
- Third Generation
- The Generation that Did Not Know
- Anchorless and Confused
Albert Outler (as quoted in Evangelism for a Changing World) said, “It is as if, once upon a time, an earlier generation understood it all and then forgot to tell their children—who never asked.”
Ruth Rieder in Covenant by Sacrifice tells a story of two fishermen on the reservoir. Caught up in the excitement of the trip, the men neglected to put down the anchor as they reached their favorite fishing spot. Unmindful of the subtle undercurrent of the water, they began to fish. Hours quickly passed; suddenly one of the fishermen looked up. To his horror, the boat was drifting dangerously close to destruction. He shouted a warning to his partner, and they began rowing with all their might, seeking to escape the deadly rapids that lay just ahead. After a furious effort, they made it safely to shore. The fishermen were shocked that they drifted so far. It had happened without notice. The danger went undetected until it was almost too late.
The writer of Hebrews warns, “So we must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may drift away from it” (Hebrews 2:1, NLT).
The King James Version admonishes us to “give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip” (Hebrews 2:1). It is as if the truth could slip out of our hands, and we could slip out of His grace. I can’t allow that to happen. Neither can you!
Revival means “to bring back to life.” As believers backslide they become a corpse. Revival is imperative.
Cook explained that the biblical word drift means “to let something slip away–can describe a ship, which drifts by the dock due to the carelessness of the mariner who failed to calculate carefully the wind or tide.”
“Drift” refers to something that has carelessly been permitted to become lost. It is another word for “shift.”
Life has a way of testing our anchors and tempting us to drift. Storms are a normal, expected part of the Christian life. We can be tossed to and fro on the sea of life as a boat is tossed by waves.
Remember, “a smooth sea never made a skillful sailor.”
James Poitras 