‘These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth’ (Hebrews 11.13).

Benefit of Fellowship

Time, however, is not only lost in excessive attention to home, possessions and recreation, but sometimes in protracted idleness. Perhaps we have been sick or distracted by an intensive period of work or study, and unable to do all the things we would normally do for the Lord, but that period of distraction has long passed and we have never resumed our former pattern of attendance and service. Well, time is short, and we are pilgrims. We are here to make every phase of life count for the Lord, and so we must hasten back to dedicated action and weeknight attendance, resisting all the overtures of the world, the flesh and the devil. Thomas Hornblower Gill’s beautiful hymn has a convicting verse:

I would not, Lord, with swift-winged zeal
On this world’s errands go,
And labour up the heavenly hill
With weary feet and slow.

The hymnwriter was thinking of people who wait until later life before they wake up to serving the Lord, when all the years of energy and capability have slipped past them.

Pilgrims do not take digressions either. I once knew a man, an earnest Christian, who bought a house far bigger than he needed. It was a very beautiful detached house with umpteen bedrooms. It altogether captured his heart, but it ruined his stewardship, absorbed all his resources, and virtually consumed his life. We cannot let that kind of thing happen to us, in any area of life. We cannot take on commitments that will rule us, and negate all Christian usefulness.

Another don’t concerns complaining and murmuring. This was the menace that drove the children of Israel round in circles, and kept them so long from their desired destination. William Cowper had the perfect cure for this expression of faithlessness:–

Were half the breath thus vainly spent
To Heaven in supplication sent,
Our cheerful song would oftener be,
‘Hear what the Lord has done for me.’

Yet another don’t is hostility between believers. Here is direct disobedience to the special law of Christ that his people should love one another. There are some professing believers who vent hostility on others, cause great hurt, and grieve away the Spirit, for years, if unchecked. We hear of pastors newly called to churches, who find there has been hostility for years. What a tragedy! True pilgrims surely cannot allow such things to ruin their lives.

We can even say that pilgrims are dressed for the journey, and so should we be. In deportment and appearance believers are clearly not worldlings who relish the life of the flesh and want to take part in its lowest pursuits. True believers do not follow flesh-flaunting clothing styles, and message-laden ‘rebel’ hairstyles. (The emerging churches and ‘missional’ churches seem to emphasise worldly fashions, some of their middle-aged pastors presenting themselves as teenage streetwise hipsters, seemingly desperate to move as far as they can from a ‘strangers and pilgrims’ image.) . . . to be continued