Parents sometimes watch as their children slip further away, either because of drugs, or shame, or bad company, or evil entanglements, or personal failure, or private issues.
These parents are unable to get their children to open up, to talk, to seek help.
These parents watch as their children drift further and further away, toward total and inevitable destruction, unable to break through the wall of separation, the depression, the resistance, the hopelessness.
Pastors sometimes watch as parishioners do the same.
Nothing seems to reach them.
In fact, the parishioner cuts off open and meaningful communication with the pastor, making it impossible to lead them into spiritual deliverance and victory.
When the lines of communication are severed, the message of God is unable to reach the drifter.
When God's word is cut off, God and His salvation are cut off.
When God and His salvation are cut off, destruction becomes inevitable.
Do not harden your heart...
Proverbs 29:1
(1) He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.
Romans 2:5-11
(5) But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God;
(6) Who will render to every man according to his deeds:
(7) To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life:
(8) But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath,
(9) Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile;
(10) But glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile:
(11) For there is no respect of persons with God.
Hebrews 3:12-14
(12) Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.
(13) But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
(14) For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end;
Hebrews 10:25-29
(25) Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.
(26) For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
(27) But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.
(28) He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses:
(29) Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?
Hebrews 12:25
(25) See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven:
