Steadfastness and No Hesitation
Steadfastness… and No Hesitation
I spoke to you in the past weeks about “spiritual vigilance” and about God’s work in us… A person must, in order to live a sound spiritual life, be watchful over the salvation of his soul, and allow God to work in him… And he must also have a clear goal and be without hesitation in his spiritual life. For many people have a shaky spiritual life; they may begin in the Spirit and complete in the flesh… Perhaps God lives in them, and the world also lives in them at the same time… For they open their doors to God, and they also open them to the world…!
Therefore the Apostle says, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
We want people who are steadfast in the way of God, and the way of God is the clear line in their lives, now and forever… with no turning back, no hesitation, no bargaining or negotiating with the devil… They walk in the way of the Lord and do not return… and they do not look back like “Lot’s wife,” who walked with the Lord and came out of the land of “Sodom,” but her heart was still in “Sodom”!
What is astonishing about this woman is that she was not destroyed inside “Sodom,” but rather she perished outside it… She was not burned by fire like the wicked people of “Sodom,” but she turned into a pillar of salt…!
Many imagine that they have left the life of sin and left “Sodom,” yet they perish outside it…
And so the Scripture says, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit…” This placing of the hand to hesitation is what “Elijah the prophet” reproved when he said to the people, “How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him!”
We want a spiritual life that is steady, firmly rooted in the Lord, unshaken… For the example of “Lot’s wife” happened again in the history of the children of Israel. They came out of the bondage of Pharaoh, passed through the Red Sea, and its waves did not drown them. Yet they perished in the wilderness of Sinai… because their eyes were still looking backward… just as they cried for the meat and food and drink that were in the land of Egypt…
Their minds were still present in the land of bondage… They were a hesitant people, neither firm nor rooted in the way of God… They left the land of bondage with their bodies, but their hearts were still there!!
We want the clear and explicit line; we want the heart that clings to God with no turning back.
There are people who sway between two paths, wanting to combine God and the world, exactly like “Ananias and his wife Sapphira,” who wanted to combine joining the children of God—those who sacrificed their money, offering all they owned at the apostles’ feet—while at the same time keeping illicit money… Therefore St. Peter did not allow them to live, because they represented deceit… the deceit with which a person wishes to deceive his Creator!
This attitude, the attitude of hypocrisy, is exactly like the attitude of Pilate… who handed Christ over to the Jews to crucify Him, while at the same time washing his hands and saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this righteous Man.” This type of hypocrisy is unacceptable.
And exactly like Adam, who eats from the tree and then offers an apology…
And like the person whom Christ called to follow Him, but he said, “Allow me first to go and bury my father!” These are astonishing attitudes of the hesitant, who want to combine the world and God… like Solomon the wise, whom God granted more wisdom than all people, yet he had “foreign women”… marrying them and building high places for them…
He wanted to combine God and the world, so he failed and sinned…!
And like “Samson,” who was “consecrated to the Lord” on the one hand and a friend of “Delilah” on the other, a son of Jerusalem who frequently visited Gaza—so he was lost and perished, if not for the mercy of God that reached him at the end of his life!
And like “Rachel,” the beloved, whom Jacob loved, yet she wanted to combine Jacob and her father’s idols!
They are people who want to obtain both the world and heaven at the same time, while the Lord Christ has said, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will please one and anger the other…”
We want the heart that gives all of itself to God, for God has said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength”!
We want the clear, explicit line in the life of a person and in his relationship with God…
There are people who returned to God with all their hearts… They returned to Him with all their hearts, like St. Peter who says, “We have left all and followed You,” keeping nothing of the world for himself… and like Paul who said, “I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him”!
And Paul also mentions his calling, saying, “When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb… immediately I did not confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to those who were apostles before me in Jerusalem”!
And also Abraham, the father of the prophets, when God called him saying, “Go out from your country and from your kindred and from your father’s house…” he went out immediately, without hesitation, without retreat, without inner struggle…
And also when God said to him, “Take your son, your only son, and offer him as a burnt offering to the Lord…”
He responded immediately, for Abraham was certain that God must be obeyed—even by offering the only son… And Scripture says that Abraham rose early, took the wood and the knife, and took his son with him… He did not hesitate nor negotiate… It is a clear line… absolute and complete obedience to God…!
Therefore God sent an angel from heaven to stop Abraham’s hand so that he would not slay Isaac!
They are people who know their way to God and walk in it with a steadfast heart, with steadfast eyes fixed on the goal, not turning aside nor deviating either to the right or to the left!
In our days, the first problem is hesitation in the way of God, instability in the spiritual path, and deviation to the right and to the left… and the lack of steadfastness in the covenant between a person and God!
It is a life not steadfast in Christ, and therefore the Lord Christ says, “Abide in Me, and I in you”!
When the angels brought Lot out of Sodom, they said to him, “Do not look behind you, nor stay anywhere in the plain… Hasten and flee for your life.” And Christ wants a person to be firm in his life—clear and steadfast, whatever it costs and whatever the price…
I will show you a very astonishing and very firm commandment of the Lord Christ in this matter; He says, “If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and cast it from you… If your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and cast it from you”! This means firmness and decisiveness…
No discussion with evil and the thoughts of sin… but firmness and strength…!
Thus the one who repents must have repentance that is sincere and without return… Repentance does not mean a vacation from sin, but cutting all ties with sin… repentance with no turning back… For the one who rises… and falls, then rises and falls again, then comes and returns… when then will he ever arrive??
This is like the saying of the poet:
How can a building ever reach completion… if you build it while another demolishes it!
Repentance, my brothers, requires determination and strength and steadfastness in abandoning sin… Do not leave anything of sin, however small, in your heart, and do not leave its causes present…
And the saints say: Do not engage in give-and-take with the person through whom the enemy fights you…
And St. Anthony says: Do not return to the city in which you sinned, nor enter the house in which you sinned!
Do not leave anything of the enemy in you at all… but cast him out, and all that belongs to him, completely…
If the devil finds in us a hesitant will—undecisive and unstable—he becomes encouraged and returns to attack… once again and many times!
This is the state we want in our spiritual life: that we have steadfastness in our relationship with God, and that we avoid hesitation in the spiritual life.
We want strong steadfastness… and the repentant person must not allow himself to negotiate with the devil or to give and take with him… nor should he be double-hearted or double-minded, lest he be unstable in all his ways…
In the clear goal, God must be everything, and nothing beside Him… and we must walk in the ways of God, not thinking of changing our path again!
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III published in Watani newspaper on 30-7-1972
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