Act 27:15 And the ship being seized, and not being able to beat against the wind, giving way we were borne along. Some of the reasons why vessels drift can be quite interesting:
Often it is a breakdown in the engine room. As long as the engines are in perfect order the vessel holds to its appointed course. But let the shaft snap, as sometimes happens, and immediately the ship begins to drift.
And as it is with ships, so with our lives; they drift because of interior breakdown.
It may be a breakdown in morality, though no one knows anything about it yet. It may be a breakdown in the will, for the will is the shaft of life. It may be a breakdown in our prayer life and the ship goes drifting on the sea.
There is a story of an officer in the 1st War who went drifting and was finally saved. He came back again to his old home and entered the little bedroom of his boyhood. Then, turning to his mother, "Mother," he said, "the whole thing began when I stopped praying as a lad beside that bed."
Drifting Caused by the Rising of the Tide or Change of Circumstances
Again, we must not forget that boats may drift because of the rising of the tide. You tie the rowboat high up on the shore, and you leave it there, thinking it is safe. But that night is the night of a spring tide, and along with the tide there blows a strong wind. And in the morning you go to get the boat, only to find that it is gone: the spring tide has come and set it drifting.
That is often how young people go drifting. Youth is the spring tide of life. Passions awake, pushing and turbulent; new thought and knowledge lap around the boat. And lives that once were safe, beached in the securities of childhood, go drifting like ships upon the sea.
That often happens when a guy goes to college out of a conservative home. He enters a new world of thought and gains a new conception of the universe. And the ship that was so safe once amid the unquestioning safety of home, finds itself drifting on the deep. Spring tide has come.
Lives that drift like that can be recaptured. There is One who is out to save. I find a major significance in a Savior who could walk upon the sea. Drifting stops when He is taken aboard.
A Drifting Ship Is a Danger to Other Shipping
a Drifting ship is always a danger to the other shipping. Every captain would agree.
You can chart quicksand or a reef, and having it on the chart you can avoid it. But nobody can chart a drifting ship; it may be on you in a moment in the dark.
Consider that in that regard a drifting life is like a drifting vessel; it is full of danger and disaster.
When a man drifts from his anchorage in Christ, he affects a hundred other lives. No one can tell the hurt that he may bring when he drifts into indifference and worldliness—damping the zeal of eager people, making it always easier to be skeptical and always harder to be true.
One of the signals of a drifting iceberg is a rapid lowering of the temperature. Drifting lives are just like drifting icebergs: wherever they drift there is fall in temperature. They chill the church. They chill the congregation. They chill the eager loyalties of youth, not because they are notoriously bad, but just because they are drifting.
Christ Warns Us of Drifting Lives
That is one reason why He is against a life with no direction.
Think how He describes the days of Noah. According to Genesis the earth was full of violence; but our Lord says nothing about violence as the precursor of calamity. He says that in the days before the flood men were eating, drinking, merrymaking, marrying— and then, suddenly, the flood came. Noah was a man of action, of swift decision, of determination. The others went drifting on from day to day, thoughtless, heedless, irresistible.
It is His warning against the life of drifting as leading to disaster, and He is always insisting upon that. The man of the one talent took no risks. He forfeited everything for doing nothing. The man who built his house upon the sand found that in the drift was his destruction. The man who worshipped God today and tomorrow was the slave of mammon was intolerable in the eyes of Jesus.
Christ calls for action, for decision, for determination of the will.
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