You know, you can grow cold without realizing it. You can neglect your regimen of Bible reading, church attending, and praying, and never realize the oil is leaking out. You can be entering the spiritual darkness and not realizing it.

We have in our country a spiritually dangerous practice called "retirement." The idea of retiring is that now you have no responsibilities and can spend your time traveling, or working on a hobby, or visiting friends, or playing shuffleboard, or doing whatever sounds like fun.

It is reasonable that a person working for a corporation should retire after a number of years. But it is not reasonable that a believer should retire from the Christian discipleship. Yet this precisely is what takes place. The older person feels as though he has earned a rest, and he ceases pressing forward into the rest of God.

If God does not blast those who have retired spiritually out of their laziness they are going to face an angry Christ. Why? Because they are not redeeming the time. They are burying their talent.

A person of any age is to serve God with all of his or her might. To spend our time doing nothing but relaxing is to invite decay and death. It is an excellent way to lose one's inheritance.

There is a Bible passage in Ezekiel that warns us if a righteous person turns and begins to act wickedly, none of his righteous deeds will be remembered.

This Kingdom concept applies to our discipleship. If at any point we cease pressing into God with all our might, not praying, not reading our Bible, not being diligent with the time, strength, and abilities God has given us, then our prior Christian zeal will not be mentioned to us. We have to forge ahead until our last breath if we wish to attain to eternal life.

Can you imagine the Apostles or Christ retiring? No, you cannot. Because to retire in the American sense is to grow careless, lukewarm, indifferent, lazy. Such shall be punished severely for wasting what has been given to them.

The foolish ones said to the wise, "Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out." (Matthew 25:8)

One time I said to the Lord, "I would be glad to share my oil with someone who had none. Is there anything wrong with that?"

The Lord's response was: "You will have just enough "oil" for yourself."

This reminds me of the severity of the Lord's expectations. In America we have become so accustomed to a lazy Gospel, God's "unconditional love," grace, mercy, we all are just about to take off for Heaven, that whoever would remind us that the righteous are saved with difficulty sounds like someone with a mental or emotional problem. We all have been accepted in the Beloved, so what are these weird individuals raving about?

It reminds me of Jeremiah speaking to his nation. Of all of God's chosen people, Jeremiah appears to be the only one who was hearing from the Lord. This is not a pleasant position to be in, but it has happened enough times to God's prophets.

To be continued.