There is an interesting warning in Luke 9:23-26 and with that you ought to know it is coming from Christ. This is a typical warning. There are many, many more. The warnings begin early in the book of Genesis, when Adam and Eve are booted out of the Garden. Warnings continue all the way through the Old Testament with God's almost constant displeasure with Israel's conduct. Then Jesus warns us to make sure that we count the cost. The apostles make many appeals for us to get with it because time is closing in on us. In the church experiences of virtually every one of us adults in this room are memories of family and friends who were once part of the Worldwide Church of God. We witnessed the rapid growth of that organization in membership as people made professions of faith in the doctrines. They became part of the body of Christ, but have since, at least spiritually, left for other pastures, even Protestant and Catholic ones. Some people have simply dropped out of sight. The recording of Israel's journey through the wilderness provides a sobering witness of the kinds of trials that threaten the Christian's journey. Are you aware that the Bible provides us with a fairly clear pattern of how it is that people fall away? People fall away despite God's awesome power (that can be drawn upon by anyone of us), despite the fact that God's patience and mercy seem to be fairly inexhaustible and He sincerely urgently wants all of us to make it. There is, just like the song in the Phantom of the Opera, there is a point of no return. The Bible actually gives a very clear picture of how this drifting away occurs. Here is step number one on a program of how people leave the church. There are clear stages that are shown in the Bible and if you happen to be in any one of them, your eternal life is more or less in danger depending upon which stage it is you happen to be in. Here in stage one: Example is Lot's wife looking back. When she looked back toward Sodom, she did so with some degree of longing for what she had just left. The loss of her life was literally on the line! God was going to destroy that place, and her life was literally on the line. Here she was giving higher priority to life's lesser matters than the great matter of preserving her life. That ought to lead us to understand that the matter of preserving our life is always going to be in the future and the present at exactly the same time. It is in the present that we are going to make decisions, but it is in the future that is going to show the trajectory of how resolved we were whenever we made a decision. When she looked back, she revealed that her heart was still there in Sodom, in the world, and this action gives indications of regret. There is the key, I wonder if I really did the right thing in what I did. There is a tinge of sorrow, I was having such a good time there. Everything just seemed to be just honky dory and now here I am running, my life is on the line. Things are getting a little bit desperate, but she nonetheless looked back. Success in God's way requires following an awesome vision to the glory ahead. Abraham is a primary example. He looked for a city whose builder and maker was God. God's calling becomes our vocation and it requires concentrated attention going forward. A vocation is ones regular occupation. In other words, we have become involved in something that touches on our life every day. It is not something here and there. It is all the time. This is why David describes the Christian as being one in which all his thoughts are filtered through God. Is there anytime when you are not thinking? We think an awful lot. Maybe this can be illustrated in this way: it is somewhat similar to a person talking on the cell phone while driving their car. They are frequently (if you have watched them) all over the road, swerving this way and that. Their attention is at least split between conflicting priorities. Oh, the phone is so immediate and I have got to get this

Examining that we all serve something (even when we celebrate freedom from other burdens such as sin and addictions), we focus here on how we serve God when trials and tribulations crash around all our lives. Psalm 77 provides a solid answer for us. The first half of the chapter seems to be full of despair as Asaph cries to God and feels abandoned as God's trials cause insomnia from an unceasing fear that those challenges will not end. But in the second half he remembers to appeal to God and remember those actions that God has previously taken on his behalf. In humility he remembers that God acts on His own timeline and that He always remembers where we are and what we need. Asaph or the songwriter rediscovers or restrengthens His faith, which has a passive and active component—passive, where he always believes God's promises and diligently waits for His promises, and active, where one should proactively seek a relationship with God. Our service to God will encompass a wide variety of seemingly positive and negative seasons in our life, and we must remember to serve Him faithfully with our full strength and might at all times.