The Way to Keep from Losing Christ

First, keep the eye fixed steadily upon Him. Suppose Joseph and Mary had done this, then the separation which cost them such solicitude and pain would never have occurred. The thing to do is to allow no object come between us and Christ. Keep the eye on Jesus; not occasionally, but fixedly and continually. It can be done, thank God, in the busiest life. So Paul says, “Looking unto Jesus.”* (Hebrews 12:2) Not looking to the temple, but to Jesus. There are some people who are absorbed in the church rather than Christ. And there is no question that if they paid as much attention to Jesus as they do the church they would be saints of the highest order.

Second, keep talking to Jesus. How are we going to lose Him if we preserve an unbroken communion? When silence is realized in the soul, there is reason for alarm, and we should at once re-establish the heavenly intercourse. We read that when Abraham ceased communing with God, then the Lord went up from him (Genesis 17:22). It is so still. If we would retain Christ by our side we must see to the unbroken communion of our soul with His Spirit.

Third, get Christ as an indweller. Many of God’s people know Him as a visitor, as one who comes and goes, visiting the heart and then leaving it. It is in these conscious absences that so much spiritual hurt is realized, and Satan gets in his work. There is an experience which greatly increases our religious strength and so lessons the likelihood and peril of backsliding. This experience is spoken of by the Savior in the fourteenth chapter of John where He says, “If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”* (John 14:23) In a word, He will cease to be a visitor and become an indweller. He who would keep Christ near all the time should seek this blessing. The wonder with me is how a man can lose the Savior when he obtains this grace.

Finally, keep claiming “the blood.” If the slightest shadow and spiritual trouble arises, if there has been any neglect of duty, any word spoken or act done that brings a shadow or feeling of unrest, then fly at once to the blood that cleanses from all sin, and claim its present merit and power (1 John 1:7). There is such a thing as staying under the blood all the time. He that does that will hardly lose Christ. Thousands have lived this life; ten thousands are living it today; and countless millions will yet do so.

God grant that you who have Christ today will never lose Him. It would be better to part with friends, the whole world, and life itself, than to give up Jesus. May we hold on to Him at every cost, and by so doing, will be gainers both in this world and the world to come.