part0021

A dark fear haunts the minds of many coming to Christ. They fear they won’t persevere to the end. I’ve heard one seeking salvation say, “Once I cast my soul upon Jesus, what if I’m drawn back into the penalty of hell after all? I’ve had good feelings before and they’ve died away. My goodness has been like the early dew. It came on quickly, lasted for a time, promised much, and then vanished.”

I believe this fear is often the indicator of the fact that some people who have been afraid to trust Christ for all time and for all eternity have failed because they had a temporary faith, which never went far enough to save them. They set out trusting Jesus to a degree, but still looked to themselves for continuance and perseverance in living a godly life. Because they didn’t put their faith in Christ alone, as a natural consequence, they turned back before long.

If we trust in our own ability to hold on, we will fail. Even though we rest in Jesus for our salvation, we will fail if we also try to place trust in self for anything. No chain is stronger than its weakest link. If Jesus is our hope for everything, except one thing, we will utterly fail, because in that one thing we’ll come to nothing.

I have no doubt that this faulty thinking about the perseverance of the saints has prevented the perseverance of many who did run well. What hindered them? What stopped them from continuing to run? They trusted in themselves for that running and so they stopped short. Beware of mixing even a little of self with the mortar with which you build, or you’ll make it untempered mortar, and the stones won’t hold together. If you look to Christ at the start, beware that you don’t look to yourself to complete Christ’s work in you. He is the Alpha (beginning). See to it that you trust Him as the Omega (end) also. If you begin in the Spirit, you must not hope to be made perfect by the flesh. Begin as if you mean to go on, and go on as you began. Let the Lord be all in all to you. Pray that God the Holy Spirit will make it very clear where the strength must come from for us to persevere until the day of our Lord’s appearing.

Here is what Paul once said about this subject when he wrote to the Corinthians: who shall also confirm that ye shall remain unimpeachable unto the end, in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom ye were called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord (1 Corinthians 1:8-9).

This language silently admits a great need by telling us how it is provided for. Wherever the Lord makes a provision, we can be sure there is a need for it, since no superfluities hinder the covenant of grace. Golden shields hung in Solomon’s courts, which were never used, but there’s no such thing in the armory of God. What God has provided we will surely need. Between now and the completion of all things, every one of God’s promises and every provision of the covenant of grace will be used.

The urgent need of the believing soul is confirmation, continuance, final perseverance, and preservation to the end. This is the great necessity of the most advanced believers, as we see when Paul wrote to believers at Corinth who were considered knowledgeable thinkers, of whom he could say, I thank my God always on your behalf for the grace of God which is given you in Christ Jesus (1 Corinthians 1:4). It is such people who most assuredly feel they need new grace daily if they are to hold on, hold out, and succeed as conquerors in the end.

If you weren’t a believer, you would have no grace and wouldn’t feel the need for more grace; but because you are a believer, you feel the daily demands of the spiritual life. A marble statue requires no food, but the living man hungers and thirsts. He rejoices that his bread and water is certain or he would faint along the way. The believer’s personal needs make it inevitable that he should draw from the great source of all each day, because if he couldn’t resort to his God, what would he do?

This is true of the most gifted believers − of those people at Corinth who were enriched in all word and in all knowledge (1 Corinthians 1:5). They needed to be confirmed to the end or their gifts and attainments would turn out to be their ruin. If we spoke in the languages of men and angels but didn’t receive fresh grace, where would we be? If we gained more and more experience until we became leaders in the church − if we were taught by God to understand all mysteries − still we couldn’t live a single day without the divine life flowing into us from Christ, our covenant Head. How could we hope to hold on for a single hour, to say nothing of a lifetime, unless the Lord held on to us? He who has begun a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6), or it will prove a painful failure.

This great necessity arises to a great extent from within ourselves. Some harbor a painful fear that they won’t persevere in grace, because they know their own faithlessness. Related to general character, some people are unstable. Some are even-tempered by nature, but others are naturally unpredictable and hot-tempered. Like butterflies, they flit from flower to flower, until they visit all the beauties of the garden and settle on none of them. They are never in one place long enough to do any good, not even in their job or in their academic pursuits. Such people may be afraid that ten, twenty, thirty, forty, perhaps fifty years of continuous spiritual watchfulness will be too much for them. As a result, we see people joining one church after another, until they can recite the thirty-two points and quarter-points of the magnetic compass both clockwise and anticlockwise. Such people have double the need to pray that they can be divinely established and made not only steadfast but also unmovable. Otherwise they won’t be found always abounding in the work of the Lord (1 Corinthians 15:58).

All of us, even if we have no deep-seated temptation to fickleness, once we are born again of God, must recognize our own weakness. In any single day, you will find enough to make you stumble. If you desire to walk in perfect holiness, as I trust you do, you must set a high standard regarding what a Christian should be. For most of us, before the breakfast dishes are cleared from the table, we’ve displayed enough foolishness to be ashamed of ourselves.

If we shut ourselves up in the lonely cell of a hermit, temptation would still follow us, because as long as we can’t escape from ourselves, we can’t escape from the pull of sin. Within our hearts, there is that which should make us watchful and humble before God. If He doesn’t strengthen us, we are so weak that we’ll stumble and fall spiritually, not because we are overcome by an enemy, but by our own carelessness. Lord, be our strength, because we are weakness itself.

Besides that, there is the weariness which comes with a long life. When we begin our Christian life and profess our faith to others, we mount up with wings like eagles. As we grow in Him, we run without weariness, but it is on our best and truest days that we walk without fainting (Isaiah 40:31). Our pace may seem slower, but it is more useful and better sustained. I pray to God that the energy of our youth will continue with us when it comes to the energy of the Spirit and not just the excitement of proud flesh.

He who has walked on the road to heaven a long time finds there’s good reason why it was promised that his shoes would be iron and brass (Deuteronomy 33:25), because the road is rough. He has discovered Hills of Difficulty and Valleys of Humiliation; that there is a Vale of Death Shade, and, worse still, a Vanity Fair − and all these are to be traveled. If there are to be Delectable Mountains (and, thank God, there are), there are also Doubting Castles of Despair, the inside of which pilgrims have too often seen [1] . Considering all things, those who hold out to the end in the way of holiness will be men of wonder (Zechariah 3:8).

“O world of wonders, I can say no less.” [1] The days of a Christian’s life are like many large, colorless diamonds of mercy threaded on the golden string of divine faithfulness. In heaven, we will tell angels, principalities, and powers of the unsearchable riches of Christ which were spent on us and enjoyed by us while here on earth. We’ve been kept alive on the brink of death. Our spiritual life has been a flame burning in the midst of the sea, a stone suspended in the air. It will amaze the universe to see us enter the pearly gates, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. We ought to be full of thankful wonder, if we are kept for a time, and I believe we are (John 6:39).

If this was all, we’d have enough cause for anxiety, but there’s much more. We have to think about this world we live in. It’s a howling wilderness to many of God’s people. Some of us are greatly indulged in God’s providence, but others have a serious fight of it. Some of us begin our day with prayer and often hear the voice of holy song fill our houses, but many good people scarcely rise from their knees in the morning before they are greeted with profanity. They go out to work and are aggravated with filthy conversation all day long. Can you even walk down the streets without being assaulted with foul language?

The world is no friend to grace. The best we can do with this world is to get through it as quickly as we can, because while we are here, we live in an enemy’s country. A robber lurks in every bush. We need to travel everywhere with a drawn sword in our hand, or at least have that weapon called all-prayer always at our side because we must struggle for every inch of our way. Make no mistake about this, or you will be rudely shaken out of your warm delusion. God, help us and validate our spiritual birth to the end, or where will we be?

True faith is supernatural at its beginning, supernatural in its continuance, and supernatural at its close. It is the work of God from beginning to end. There’s still a great need for the hand of the Lord to be outstretched. It’s a need you feel now, and I’m glad you feel it. That means you will look to the Lord for your own preservation now. He alone is able to keep us from failing and to glorify us with His Son.