Stand at the edge of the Niagara River about a mile upstream from the falls, and you will see something that ought to shake every Christian. The water looks calm. Boaters drift along chatting and laughing. Yet beneath that smooth surface, the current is already doing its work. It pulls steadily, silently, relentlessly toward the edge. By the time the casual rower realizes he has drifted too far, the noise of the falls is already in his ears, and his own strength alone will not save him.

That picture captures the spiritual condition of countless believers. So many start the Christian life on fire. They love the Bible. They love prayer. They love the people of God. Then, year by year, something cools. The Bible gets dusty, the prayer closet gets quiet, and church attendance becomes optional. They have not formally renounced anything; they have simply drifted.

This is the warning every honest pastor has watched play out time and again. Spiritual life is never neutral. You are either rowing upstream toward Christ through His Word, or you are letting the current carry you back toward the world.

What Does Hebrews 5 Reveal About Stalled Christians?

The writer of Hebrews diagnoses a quiet epidemic among believers who should have been mature but had instead become dull of hearing. After enough time to be teachers, they still needed milk. Their problem was not a lack of opportunity but a lack of exercise in the Word. Stalled Christians are made, not born.

The text is striking in its bluntness:

Hebrews 5:11-14 — “Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.”

The phrase dull of hearing translates the Greek nōthros, meaning sluggish, slow, or lazy. It is the same word translated slothful in Hebrews 6:12. These were not new converts. They had been saved long enough that the Holy Spirit expected them to be teaching others. Instead, they had to be re-taught the ABCs of the faith.

Notice the diagnosis. Maturity comes “by reason of use.” The Greek word for exercised is gymnazō, from which we get gymnasium. Spiritual discernment is a trained muscle, not a downloaded app. You cannot binge-listen your way to maturity any more than you can binge-watch your way to fitness.

Pair this with Hebrews 2:1: “Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.” The verb “let slip” carries the picture of a ship that drifts past its harbor because no one bothered to anchor it. The Hebrew Christians were not steering toward apostasy. They were simply not steering at all.

That is exactly the problem on the Niagara. Drift requires no decision. It only requires that you stop rowing.

Why Do So Many Believers Stop Growing?

Spiritual stagnation rarely arrives as a single dramatic decision. It creeps in through ordinary cracks—comfort, busyness, pride, hidden sin, and shallow teaching. Each of these slowly loosens a believer’s grip on the Word until daily reliance on Christ feels optional. Naming these traps is the first step in escaping them.

Consider how each of these slowly steals spiritual momentum.

• Comfort and convenience. Once a Christian feels safe, has a decent job, pays bills, healthy family, the urgency to cry out to God can quietly evaporate. Deuteronomy 8:11-14 warned Israel of this exact danger, that when their barns were full, their hearts would forget the Lord. Comfort is a quiet enemy. It does not attack the faith; it just lets it atrophy.
• Busyness and distractions. Modern life crowds out unhurried time with God. The phone buzzes, the calendar fills, the news scrolls endlessly. In the parable of the sower (Mark 4:18-19), Jesus named “the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things” as thorns that choke the Word. Few believers consciously reject Scripture; they simply allow lesser things to crowd it out.
• Pride and self-sufficiency. A growing Christian senses his deep need for the Lord every single day. A stalled Christian quietly believes he has graduated. Proverbs 16:18 still warns that “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” The moment a believer thinks he no longer needs the simple disciplines of the faith, he has begun the slide.
• Unconfessed sin. Sin tolerated in any measure sears the conscience and dampens fellowship with God. David testified in Psalm 32:3-4 that hidden sin made his bones wax old and dried up his moisture. An unrepentant heart cannot simultaneously enjoy the sweetness of the Word. Many believers who have lost their hunger for the Bible can trace it back to something they have refused to deal with.
• Shallow teaching in many churches. This one is painful but unavoidable. Many pulpits today serve up therapy with a Bible verse stapled to the end. Feel-good sermons, motivational pep talks, and pop psychology disguised as discipleship will never grow strong saints. Paul prophesied this in 2 Timothy 4:3, that the time would come when “they will not endure sound doctrine.” If your church is not feeding you the meat of the Word, your spiritual muscle will waste no matter how faithfully you attend.

Seen rightly, the disciplines that fight these traps are protective gifts. God’s commands to read, pray, gather, and confess are not restrictions to chafe against; they are guardrails on a cliff. He fences us in for our good, the way a loving father fences a swimming pool. The fence is freedom.

What Happens When a Christian Stops Growing?

Stagnation is never static. A believer who stops growing does not stay where he is; he begins to slide. Discernment dulls, usefulness shrinks, false teaching becomes attractive, joy evaporates, and in some cases, the public testimony is shipwrecked altogether. The cost of standing still is far higher than the cost of pressing forward.

The Bible never describes a stationary Christian, only those moving forward and those drifting back. Here is what waits at the bottom of the slide.

• Loss of spiritual discernment. Hebrews 5:14 ties discernment to use. When the senses are not exercised, they go dull. The believer who once spotted error a mile away now nods along to teaching that would have alarmed him five years ago. He cannot tell milk from poison because his palate has gone numb.
• Inability to teach or help others. A stagnant Christian has nothing fresh to give. He can rehearse what he learned a decade ago, but he has no living word for the soul next to him in the pew. The Great Commission requires growing disciples to make disciples. You cannot reproduce a life you are not living.
• Vulnerability to false teaching. Paul warned in Ephesians 4:14 that the immature are “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine.” When a believer is not anchored in Scripture, every charismatic personality with a podcast becomes a potential master. The drifting believer is the prime target of every wolf in the field.
• Spiritual depression and frustration. Few things are more miserable than a saved man living like a lost one. He has lost his joy but cannot find peace in the world either. He is too saved to enjoy sin and too distant from God to enjoy fellowship. James 1:8 calls this man double-minded and unstable in all his ways.
• Potential shipwreck of the testimony. Paul cautioned Timothy of those who “concerning faith have made shipwreck” (1 Timothy 1:19). Salvation itself is secured forever in Christ (Romans 8:38-39); a true believer cannot lose what God has eternally given. Yet usefulness, witness, and eternal reward most certainly can be shipwrecked. A believer’s heavenly home is safe; his earthly testimony and crowns are not.

Drift always costs more than discipline. The hour spent in the Word feels expensive until you measure it against the years lost when the Word is neglected.

How Can a Believer Keep Growing in the Word?

Spiritual growth is not magical, mystical, or reserved for special saints. It comes through plain, daily means: feeding on Scripture, talking with the Father, obeying what you read, walking with mature believers, and passing the truth on to others. These habits row you upstream while the current keeps pulling.

Five practical paddles will keep any believer moving forward.

• Daily, disciplined intake of the Word. Job said he esteemed God’s words “more than my necessary food” (Job 23:12). A believer should sit down with the Bible the way a hungry man sits down with bread—expectantly, reverently, and regularly. Pick a reading plan, pick a time, and protect both. Read whole books slowly rather than skipping around for verses that match a mood. Underline. Ask questions. Memorize.
• Consistent prayer life. Prayer keeps the heart soft and the eyes upward. Daniel prayed three times a day, even when it was illegal (Daniel 6:10). A believer who prays only in emergencies will live in constant emergency. Schedule prayer the way you schedule meals; the soul needs nourishment, too.
• Obedience and exercising what you learn. James 1:22 commands, “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” Truth not obeyed becomes truth resented. Every revealed command from Scripture is a chance to walk closer to Christ. Skip the application, and the Word stops applying.
• Fellowship with mature believers. Proverbs 27:17 reminds us that “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” Find believers further down the road and walk beside them. Faithful local-church membership is non-negotiable. The lone-wolf Christian is a contradiction in terms; sheep gather, and wolves prefer them isolated.
• Teaching others. Nothing forces a believer to study like having to explain. Whether it is a Sunday school class, a discipleship one-on-one, or your own children at the kitchen table, teaching turns shallow knowledge into deep conviction. You will never master a passage so thoroughly as when you have to make it plain to someone else.

These five disciplines work together. Drop one, and the others limp. Practice all five, and growth becomes the natural rhythm of life rather than a heroic effort reserved for revival weeks.

What Should Every Christian Remember About the Current?

The river never sleeps. The same current that pulled the disciples in the first century still pulls every believer today. No Christian, no matter how seasoned, has ever earned the right to stop rowing. But the same God who warns us also empowers us, and the Spirit who indwells us pulls us upstream as surely as the world pulls us down.

Philippians 1:6 promises “that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” He does not save us and then abandon us in the middle of the river. The Spirit who indwells the believer is a constant counter-force to the current of the world. Yet that promise never cancels personal responsibility. God works in us; He does not row for us.

Your job is to keep rowing. Open the Book tomorrow morning. Bow your knees tonight. Get back to the house of God this Sunday. Confess what needs to be confessed. Pour into someone younger in the faith. Take one stroke, then another, then another.

The current is always pulling. The only way to stay safe is to keep rowing upstream.

Closing Prayer

Father, You see every drifting believer who reads these words. You know the cooling that has crept in through busy seasons and quiet compromises. Stir up the gift that is in us. Give us a fresh hunger for Your Word, a renewed delight in prayer, and the courage to row against every current of this present world. Anchor us in Christ until the day we see Him face to face. In Jesus’ name, amen.