The highway of the upright is to depart from evil: he that keepeth his way preserveth his soul. – Proverbs 16:17
At my work, we have a Maintenance Department which makes sure all our machinery keeps running smoothly. The department practices “preventative maintenance,” attempting to catch problems before they can delay our work. We have many different types of equipment, and each piece has a maintenance schedule where somebody from the department comes regularly to check that its various components are still functioning well.
Sometimes, however, the maintenance crew gets sidetracked by problems that are more pressing than a preventative maintenance test, and they end up skipping parts of the schedule. Or, if they have performed a particular test many times without encountering any problems, they might decide that doing another one would be a waste of time. So, they just say, “It’s okay,” and neglect that maintenance.
A few years back, I was working on a machine that developed a problem. I called maintenance to come look at it, and it turned out to be a serious issue that would take quite a while to fix. We even had to get management involved, letting them know how long our unit would be down. When the manager came out, his first question was, “When was the last preventative maintenance test?” We found out that the last test had been neglected. The problem would have been an easy fix; it would have just taken a few moments if the test had been done. But because it was neglected, it caused a serious breakdown.
As Christians, there are steps we must take to maintain our relationship with the Lord. We must read the Bible, apply its principles to our lives, and pray regularly in order to grow spiritually. If we neglect those steps, problems will arise and will not go away. And if we continue to overlook them, we will eventually experience a spiritual breakdown—a serious problem that could cause us to lose our salvation.
We do not want to neglect our Christian maintenance. Rather than dealing with critical problems, it is much easier to just do the regular upkeep that will ensure we are living in God’s will. A Sunday school song says, “Read your Bible, pray every day, and you’ll grow, grow, grow.” It is a simple song, but that is how the Gospel is—simple. When we do our part, God does His.