Video from Desiring God
Seventy Years Without Shipwreck
Five Reasons That Some Fall Away
"My aim in these next few minutes is to provide another incentive for the perseverance of your faith and your fruitfulness for the next seventy years. To say it another way, my aim is to sharpen your sword so that you will be able to fend off the forces that threaten to make you faithless and fruitless for the next seventy years.
I chose the number seventy not only because a few of you will live that long, but also because this year — 2022 — marks the 70th anniversary of my becoming a Christian. I have been pondering, with a kind of trembling thankfulness and wonder, how God has held me fast for so long. That’s what I want for you. Will you endure to the end, or not?
Be Tree-Like, Not Trendy
The word deconversion is not in the Oxford English Dictionary. At least, not yet. Words are created to name reality, not the other way around. But we didn’t need the word deconversion. The Bible abounds with words and descriptions of some forsaking Christ:
apostasy (2 Thessalonians 2:3)
falling away (Matthew 24:10)
shipwreck of faith (1 Timothy 1:19)
turning back from following the Lord (Zephaniah 1:6)
trampling underfoot the Son of God (Hebrews 10:29)
going out from us (1 John 2:19)
cutting off of a branch (John 15:2)
becoming disqualified (1 Corinthians 9:27)
turning away from listening to the truth (2 Timothy 4:4)
denying the Master who bought them (2 Peter 2:1).. from the transcript: Seventy years without a Shipwreck: Five Reasons Some Fall Away