05/28/26 IT IS YOUR CHOICE, BUT IT HAS CONSEQUENCES
Sometimes a person does not realize he has, or is close to having, major health problems until he gets a complete physical exam, including a total blood workup.
Such a checkup can ward off impending dangers, or discover the need for specific treatment, or expose an imminent threat to life, and sometimes it is too late. Sometimes it takes well-trained healthcare workers or high-tech medical equipment to detect the problem.
This principle applies to our spiritual lives as well. The Bible tells us what normal spiritual health is, how to achieve it, and how to maintain it. The Bible also warns us that the believer can become callous, unaware of his own condition, and will even think that he is doing well.
God gives us shepherds, teachers, counselors, and mentors to lead, train, exhort, warn, correct, reprove, and rebuke. Remember, we are a body. We work together, we minister to each other, we submit to each other, we honor each other, we love each other, we build each other up. We are not Lone Ranger Christians. Another model of the local church is that we are a family, a household. The norm, the plan of God, is for babies to be born into families, to be nurtured by parents, to be socialized through family relationships, to work together with the family, to serve the family, to support the family, to be united with the family.
Of course, the person who thinks that he stands may be failing in grace or falling from grace. It is possible that a person will not heed godly instruction, seek spiritual guidance or even yield to legitimate authority, which will result in that person being fallen from grace.
God has provided all that is necessary for life and godliness, from the beginning of our salvation through ever step we take, until we have finished our course. To resist or reject God's grace at any point is to separate ourselves from God. Any way you look at it, the person who is disobedient to God or is resistant to the graces and provisions of God is not following Jesus, or cleaving to Jesus, or continuing or remaining or abiding in Jesus, or in God's grace, or in the faith God has provided. I am not making this up as I go. These are various ways the Bible refers to the same issue.
