Can you see that tiny little speck in the middle of the sky, kinda right in the middle in the whiter part? I know it’s super hard to see. I wish I was a better photographer. I’m constantly checking out the clouds and watching for Jesus while morning walking. A couple of weeks ago the Worst/Best and I were doing our thing, and I look up and what do I see? (You’re asking the same thing because you can’t tell from the picture). It’s a balloon, floating up and up on the breeze.
You’re probably saying big deal, balloons float in the sky all the time. The big deal is that this balloon was floating upwards at 5:45 a.m. It was moving pretty quickly and it came from the direction of the mountain. From where I know not. It just appeared. Weird. There was no crying child, no one saying quick catch it, it was just this one balloon silently floating upward being carried by the unfelt breeze. To be honest, it was just a little bit creepy, like something you’d see in a creepy movie. Not because there was a balloon floating around, but because it was doing this at 5:45 a.m. Not your usual party time.
As I watched it swaying left and right, surging forward and fluttering aimlessly, it reminded me of what can happen to us when we’re untethered.
So we must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may drift away from it.
Hebrews 2:1
A very solemn warning. You may be thinking, how could that ever happen ? Peeshaw. I will never drift away from the Lord. But unless we are constantly on guard, that exact thing can and will happen to us. It is more common for Christians to simply drift away from the Truth than to cut the string abruptly. If we are not on our guard the tether, the string, our connection will slowly untie, become unknotted, and we will drift off. Visualize that – we are the balloon, the Lord is holding the string, the string is the conduit, the connection, the relationship to Him. That string is our communication, what keeps us tethered, that keeps us grounded. If we are not constantly making sure that our connection is secure through prayer, the Word, our service to Him, the knot is going to loosen and eventually come untied.
Again, we say this will never happen to us, but I’d venture to guess those who have drifted away from the Lord also thought the same thing when tethered. How easily we may fall into believing false teachers. False teachers or false teaching is anything that is not Truth teaching. We think that a false teacher is someone with horns on a grand stage espousing notions that are completely outrageously false, and that may be true but more often than not, false teachers deliver their false teachings in a much more subtle way. Proclaiming a worldly moral truth as a Biblical truth is false teaching and if we aren’t super careful, and completely connected to the Spirit, we may even entertain that false position as Truth when in fact it is not. One by one those false moral truths loose the knot. Just think about the many high profile Christians who have been in the news who have deserted or departed from the Truth for a lie. Lies that say that the Lord is vague, that the Lord doesn’t keep His promises, that the Bible is errant. Believing the lies and abandoning or renunciating our faith in God, is called apostacy. Yep, new word.
Our Truth comes only from The Word of the Lord. We’re called to pay strict attention to the Truth we have heard. Not only are we to know the Truth, we are to obey the Truth, that’s what secures the knot, that’s what keeps us tightly tethered to the Lord. We are to learn and apply, that’s the obedience part. Indifference is deadly.
What makes us think that we can escape if we are indifferent to this great salvation that was announced by the Lord Jesus himself?
Hebrews 2:3
I watched the balloon until I could not see it any longer. It bounced around randomly, never again connected, eventually floating into the atmosphere never to be seen again. We must not let this happen to us. This world is working on our knots, subtly disconnecting our string from the balloon. It is constantly tugging at our knot. Do not underestimate or completely dismiss the pull. The Lord will never let go of his end of the string. We must do our part in the relationship. Pay attention. Be on guard. Do everything possible to tighten, double or triple the knot. Do anything to stay tethered to Him.