The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"Held Fast. Hold Fast."
The chairman of deacons visited his pastor in the hospital after the preacher had minor surgery. "Good news, Brother George" said the chairman. "The deacons voted 12-7 to pray for your recovery!"
The pastor of the church I first attended after becoming a believer told that story more than 40 years ago. It has stuck with me through the years, which leads me to wonder, "How well have the far more important truths I have learned during the days of my Christian life stuck in heart and mind?
"Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus" (II Timothy 1:13).
We must "hold fast" because spiritual enemies fight hard to tempt the loosing of our grasp on "those things which are most surely believed among us" (Luke 1:1). We cannot lose our redeeming relationship with God through the Lord Jesus, which He secures as the intercessor who "ever liveth" for as at the right hand of God (Hebrews 7:25). We can, however, fail to "lay hold of eternal life" in the sense of not experiencing the vibrant presence and working of the Spirit of Christ (I Timothy 6:19). We can "neglect so great salvation" by failure to avail ourselves of the truths that lead us to know, love, trust, obey, and represent our Lord along the pathways of our walk with Him (Hebrews 2:3).
The possibility certainly keeps us in the Word of God. It certainly leads us to pray for spiritual growth rather than atrophy. It certainly motivates us to fellowship with other believers who can serve as encouragement and challenge in our determination to "hold fast." And it most certainly draws us to "look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith," the only One who can enable us to maintain the encouraged heart that leads to a trusting and obedient heart (Hebrews 12:2). He is the Keeper. We hold fast in response to the realization that He holds us fast. Indeed, all the truths we hope will abide in our hearts rest in the Person and work of the Lord Jesus. Keeping rapt focus and attention on Him as we read, pray, fellowship, and look will go far in our remembrance and response to "those things which are most surely believed among us."
"Consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds."
(Hebrews 12:3).
"As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him, rooted and built up in Him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ."
(Colossians 2:6-8)
Weekly Memory Verse
"I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth…. Be clothed with humility."
(III John 1:4; I Peter 5:5)
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