“We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.” Hebrews 2:1

Most summers we try to find a day on which a few of us can go out fishing. One of our favorite spots just off the Connecticut coast is where the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound come together. It’s a great place to fish and one of the things I’ve noticed is that when the captain turns off the boat’s motor and we drop our lines we don’t just stay where we are. We drift with the current, and if we aren’t paying attention we can drift pretty far, pretty quickly, without realizing it.

That’s the thing about drifting. It doesn’t even feel like you’re moving because you’re just going along with the current. When you look at a landmark or a nearby buoy you can see that you’re moving, and you’ve got to take action before you drift away from where you want to be.

It can be the same way spiritually, and the writer of Hebrews warns us to pay attention before we drift away. It’s all too easy to be carried along by a worldly current that leads us to a place where we begin to neglect reading the Bible regularly, where we forget to pray, and where we stop going to church and investing time with other believers. And before we realize it, we’ve drifted far from the faith that should be our anchor.

When we’re fishing the captain keeps us from drifting too far. To keep from drifting away spiritually the Bible tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). It also exhorts us to be doers of the word and not hearers only (James 1:22), to pray continually (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and to be encouraged through fellowship with other believers (Hebrews 10:24-25). Pay careful attention to your faith so you don’t drift away without realizing it.