You may have started the Christian race incredibly well, but Jesus teaches that you must endure to the end to be saved. You must keep looking to Christ and not throw away your confidence in Him. Don’t rely on past experiences. People can have amazing experiences and end up falling away in the end. Keep looking to Christ, following Him, loving Him, trusting Him…all the way to the end.
And I’ll tell you this, Hebrews 3 talks about the deceitfulness of sin. And it hardens you. And the reality is it’s deceitful. That means you don’t even know you’re drifting. You don’t even know where you’re at. Why? Because you’re deceived. Oftentimes it’s the people who think it’s okay that are in the most danger. They’re not desperate. You remember how Kevin said he found confidence in Psalm 102 because God hears the cries of the destitute. But you get to where you’re comfortable, things are okay, and you take your eyes off Christ and you begin to become relaxed in this place, and this place is not a playground as Tozer said. You better know that there is an adversary and you need to watch and you need to pray and that’s what Scripture calls us to. Don’t lull your own self to sleep by saying: Well, I’m saved! I got saved! So I don’t need to fear this. Listen, you don’t endure in crowds. You’re not born again in crowds. You aren’t saved in crowds. And you’re not going to die in a crowd. This is individual. You individually come into the Kingdom and you individually are saved from this wicked and crooked generation and we individually repent, we individually lay hold on the Lord Jesus Christ. We individually call on the name of the Lord and are saved. And we individually endure. Now we can help one another and we can stir up one another. That is true. But Jesus is not talking about you helping the other guy. He is saying: the one who endures. You have to endure. And listen, look at your life. One of the tell-tale warning signs is when you can look at your life and you can say like those Hebrews: Past tense, I used to do this. Past tense, I used to do this. Past tense, I used to do that. That’s when you’re in trouble. That is a dead giveaway. Brethren, you need to remember something. Faith is a confidence in things that are not seen. And you know what Scripture says? All those saints who made it to the end, they had an opportunity to go back, but they didn’t go back. You know why? A confidence in something not seen. You know what’s said. Noah. What about Noah? By faith… what did he do? By faith. Do you know that chapter, Hebrews 11, it talks about Noah; it talks about Abraham; it talks about Moses; it talks about all these different people. You see, they made it. What was going on with these guys? You know what it says? Faith is a confidence of things not seen. The confidence of something not seen. You know what he says? We believe that everything that is seen was made not by anything that is seen. It’s made by the unseen. You see, we live in light of realities that we cannot now see with these eyes, but they are so real to us. We have a confidence. He has gone through the veil. I can’t see the veil. He’s gone through that veil to the other side. I can’t see the other side. It’s an unseen Christ. I can’t see Him. He’s gone to His Father’s side. I can’t see the Father. There’s glory ahead. I can’t see that. They couldn’t see it either. You remember what Abraham was called to do? He was called to go to a land that he did not know, he had never seen before. “By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out of the place that he was to receive as an inheritance and he went out not knowing where he was going.” Why did he go? He didn’t know where he was going, but what was he looking for? He was looking for a city. “He was looking forward to the city that has foundations whose Designer and Builder is God.” And it says, “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar.” See, the thing that can’t be seen they saw. I would just say this, do you see it? Is it ever before your eyes? You see, sometimes the things that get in our eyes is the stuff of this world. We get taken up. We get absorbed. And Scripture’s constantly saying: Don’t let go of the confidence that you had at the first. Don’t let go of it. Keep on going. The end of this thing is eternal life and it’s not that far away and don’t get distracted. Because listen, you say, how can somebody fall away from the living God? The same way somebody can fall away from the door without actually going through it. You could walk over to that door, not actually go through it, and then fall away from it. That’s how it happens. Yes, you could liken it to: going through the door is genuine salvation. But you know what? My eye cannot discern and your eye cannot discern whether people are on this side of the door or that side of the door. But what our eye does discern is we watch people fall away from that door. Now it may prove whether they were God’s house or not – you’re God’s house if you hold fast your confidence to the end. But we haven’t reached the end yet. And you better beware of presumption and pride because that will be the first way you’ll fall on your face. Brethren, our confidence – our confidence is in our God. That is where we need to be. Our confidence. Brethren, don’t grow weary of prayer. That’s one of the hardest things to maintain. That’s one of the hardest things to battle through. See that with your eyes which they saw, which cannot be seen. See the realities. We have a God in Heaven – a God Who is the Father of lights and Who rejoices in giving to us. We have us a Savior Who spent His blood to redeem us. You can’t see justification. I can’t see it. You can’t see that blood. But you know what, we live on promises. If they had been thinking of the land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. Don’t walk away from the door. Go through it all the way. How do you know if you’re in or out? Well, I’ll tell you this, it’s going to be persevering. It’s going to not be falling away. It’s not going to be giving yourself to some kind of drift that takes you off or some kind of error that takes you away, taking your eyes off of Christ. This excerpt is taken from the full sermon: “Keep Going” by Tim Conway.
