How Then Can We Live…pay attention to truth

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.

Hebrews 2:1 

Paying careful attention to what we have heard is critical ladies—what we have heard being the Gospel truth, not the word on the street. Truth is: Jesus is the author (2:10), of such a great salvation (2:3) as these Judean believers had, and as we have. 

What were they, what are we being warned about? 

• Don’t drift away from Jesus: Fix your thoughts on Jesus (3:1).

• Don’t harden your hearts: See to it that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God (3:12).

• Don’t be a baby: Be acquainted with the teaching about righteousness, and by constant use (train yourselves) to distinguish good from evil (5:13-14).  

• Don’t willfully sin: If (you) deliberately keep on sinning after (you) have received the knowledge of the truth (10:26), you essentially have trampled the Son of God underfoot…treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him…insulted the Spirit of grace (10:29).   

• Don’t be unresponsive: Be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many (12:14-15).

I have been in a canoe drifting down a lazy river, at ease in the gentle flow of the surrounding current. Likewise I have had to paddle like mad through rapids to keep off the rocks. When I am in the current of truth, guided by the Spirit of God, I know I will be okay in both calm and turbulence. If I do not pay careful attention to what the Lord has said I will drift away into the ways of the world and end up on those rocks. 

Some would say we need to stay firmly anchored to the dock, but I prefer to be out in the current with Jesus. I guess one could say the living and active word of God (4:12) is my paddle, cutting through the more convenient truths of popular thought into what really counts. 

Nancy P