When we hear the word backslider, we tend to think of those who have completely abandoned their faith and turned their backs on God. And certainly, they could be classified as backsliders. But there are also Christians who are backsliding and aren’t even aware of it.
No one plans on backsliding. It often happens gradually. It happens subtly—so subtly, in fact, that you may not even know it is happening. The Bible warns us about backsliding and says that one of the signs of the end times is that people will fall away from the faith.
So, what should we do if we have backslidden? God tells us that we should return to Him. Speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, God said, “My wayward children . . . come back to me, and I will heal your wayward hearts” (Jeremiah 3:22 NLT).
God also warned, “Your wickedness will bring its own punishment. Your turning from me will shame you. You will see what an evil, bitter thing it is to abandon the Lord your God and not to fear him” (Jeremiah 2:19 NLT).
And Jesus said to the church of Ephesus, “Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first” (Revelation 2:5 NLT).
We might say, “I would never fall in this area,” or “I would never, in a million years, commit that sin!” But we need to be careful. That could be the very area in which we fall into sin.
We don’t know how wicked our hearts really are. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” (NLT).
We all have the propensity for doing the wrong thing. Like the hymn says, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.” So, don’t ever say you would never do this or that because the fact is that you’re fully capable of that and more. An unguarded strength is a double weakness.
When Peter denied Jesus, his first step down was self-confidence. He said to the Lord, “Even if everyone else deserts you, I will never desert you” (Matthew 26:33 NLT).
What moved Peter to say this was Jesus’ revelation that Judas was a traitor. Peter effectively was saying, “Look, I don’t know about James and John, the so-called Sons of Thunder. And I’m not sure about Matthew and some of the others. But I’m going to tell You this: I will never let You down.”
It was self-confidence. The Bible says, “Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18 NLT).
Are you in a fallen state? Are you in the process of backsliding? You are going either forward in Christ or backward. Either you are progressing spiritually, or you are regressing. But the moment you put your spiritual growth into neutral, you will find yourself going in the wrong direction.
Don’t rest on your laurels. Don’t live in the past. We need to be constantly growing as followers of Jesus.
‘My wayward children,’ says the LORD, ‘come back to me, and I will heal your wayward hearts.’
—Jeremiah 3:22
Sometimes, our consciences can condemn us. They go into hyperdrive and won’t let us alone, whispering, “You are unworthy. You have done wrong. You can’t approach God.”
Yet the Bible tells us that God’s Spirit can cleanse us of a guilty conscience because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ on the cross. Hebrews 10:19 says, “And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus” (NLT).
And in 1 John 3:20, we read, “Even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings, and he knows everything” (NLT).
This means that we can approach God no matter what we have done.
However, the devil doesn’t want us to know this. He wants us to think that we can only approach God when we have done well. He wants us to believe that if we have been walking closely with the Lord, then we can pray. But if we’ve fouled up, we can’t.
For example, maybe you’ve had a disagreement with your husband or wife. You think, “Maybe we should pray before we go to bed. But that would be hypocritical because we just had a fight. How can we pray after we’ve had a fight?”
Or maybe you’ve thought, “I can’t pray because I lost my temper in this situation,” or “I can’t pray because I just had an impure thought.”
That kind of thinking is from the devil himself. The Bible calls him “the accuser of our brothers and sisters” (Revelation 12:10 NLT). And as you prepare to go into God’s presence in prayer, he’ll say, “Do you think you are worthy to approach God? You call yourself a Christian! What a hypocrite you are! What a failure and disappointment to God you are!”
But he is a liar. And when Satan talks to you about God, he lies. He lies to you because he wants to keep you away from God. He also wants to keep you out of the Word of God because he knows that is where the power is. That is how changes will take place in your life.
When the Spirit of God convicts us, He will use the Word of God, in love, to seek to bring us back into fellowship with the Father. In contrast, when Satan accuses us, he will use our own sins in a hateful way to drive us away from fellowship with the Father.
God’s Spirit will make us aware of what we’ve done wrong, but He always will bring us back to the cross. When we have messed up, we need to go to the cross. When we have done something wrong, we need to go to the cross. We always need to go to the cross and to God in prayer.
The devil wants to keep us away from God, and his accusations always will drive us away from the cross. God’s Spirit, however, always will bring us to the cross.
The cross is empty and so is the tomb.
You can try to bury Power, but it won't stay there. You can try to bury Truth, but it is not dead. You can try to bury Love, but it cannot be contained.
Jesus is alive, He won the victory of sin and death. And He’s still the same, even in all the days after the Easter weekend. He never changes.
He made a way for us to live free.
No other truth in history has the ability to change our lives and affect our future like this. Yet so many still choose to reject Christ’s sacrifice and love. He offers us a choice today, and it’s the best decision you could ever make.
What Christ’s Death on the Cross and the Power of His Resurrection Offers:
-It provides a bridge, a way, to God. It gives us an opportunity to have a personal relationship with the very God who made us and loves us more than we could imagine. Without the cross, there is no way to cross over to the other side of relationship with him. Any attempt will fail. He is the Only Way.
-It provides opportunity for forgiveness of sin. Through the price that Jesus paid on Calvary, we have the chance to be forgiven of our own sin. He took our sin and shame upon his very shoulders. He took the blows on our behalf so we wouldn’t have to suffer. Such incredible love. Such amazing sacrifice.
-It provides freedom to all those who believe. Freedom from the shackles of sin. Freedom from shame. Freedom from fear. Freedom from worry. Freedom from hopelessness. Freedom from despair. Freedom from addiction. Freedom from guilt. Freedom from darkness and eternal separation from God.
-It provides new life. We are not only forgiven and set free, but we have a whole new life and destiny through Christ. We are changed, from the inside. He renews our minds. He changes our hearts and desires. He gives us fresh purpose for every day set before us.
-It provides power for us to live today. When Jesus died on the cross, and was buried, it didn’t stop there. The final picture of all that the cross provides lies in the powerful Resurrection of our Lord. He won. He didn’t stay dead. His power broke through, and that same power is alive within us today. As believers, God gives us the power of the Holy Spirit, living and moving through us each day.
-It provides the way to have victory over the enemy. We don’t have to fear him or his attacks. As we live aware of his traps, the power of Christ over our lives gives us a covering and protection from his evil schemes. We’re not left to fend for ourselves. We don’t fight in our own strength. We can stand strong in the Mighty Name of Jesus Christ.
-It provides for us an eternal heavenly home. We never need to fear about what will happen when we die. In Christ we have been given the gift of eternal life. This earth is only our temporary home. God is preparing a place for us, with him, to live forever. And you can be assured it will be far greater than we could ever imagine.
“But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Cor.15:57
Intersecting Faith & Life: Dear God, thank you for your great gift of love and sacrifice, so that we can live free. Thank you for the power of the cross and the Resurrection. We ask that the truth of it all sinks deeply into our hearts and changes us forever. Fill us fresh with your Spirit today. In Jesus’ Name, Amen
Further Reading:
2 Corinthians 5:17
John 8:36
Ephesians 1:7
Acts 1:8 Their minds are full of darkness; they wander far from the life God gives because they have closed their minds and hardened their hearts against him.
Ephesians 4:18
Moses had made a mess of things. He was a Hebrew who was raised in the house of Pharaoh, groomed to become the next leader of Egypt. Yet Moses was concerned for his fellow Hebrews and the plight they faced. And one day on an impulse, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
He looked to the right and to the left, and then he killed an Egyptian. When word reached Pharaoh, he put a contract out on Moses’ life. So, Moses fled for his life into the wilderness.
He settled down there and tended sheep until the Lord recommissioned him forty years later. God told Moses he was to go back to Egypt to the court of Pharaoh and demand the release of his people.
Understandably, Moses was reluctant. He offered some flimsy excuses as to why he wasn’t qualified, which the Lord refuted. God even performed some miracles to convince Moses of the authenticity of his calling. And ultimately, Moses and his brother, Aaron, went to do what God had called them to do.
Moses and Aaron went into Pharaoh’s court and demanded the release of the Hebrews. They probably were hoping he would say, “No problem! God has been speaking to me about that. God bless you.”
But that isn’t quite how it went. Pharaoh basically said, “Are you kidding? There’s no way that is going to happen.”
This reminds us that being in the will of God doesn’t mean that it always will be green lights, blue skies, and singing birds. Sometimes we think that if God wants us to do something, it will be an easy thing to do.
It will happen, but it will be in His timing. And the devil will oppose us.
We also find an important statement in Exodus 7. God said to Moses and Aaron, “But I will make Pharaoh’s heart stubborn so I can multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in the land of Egypt” (verse 3 NLT).
Why did God harden Pharaoh’s heart? Some would think that Pharaoh had nothing to say about this, that he was simply a chess piece on the board of life. But that isn’t true. Pharaoh had a choice in the matter. He hardened his heart, and the Lord confirmed the decision he had already made.
Pharaoh hardened his heart further, the Bible tells us, when his magicians counterfeited the signs. Then he hardened his heart even more when his magicians could not counterfeit the signs.
The Lord had given Pharaoh more than enough evidence to convince him that the gods of Egypt were false and the God of Israel was the true and living God. He was giving Pharaoh the opportunity to cooperate. But Pharaoh would have none of it.
This reminds us that to turn from the truth is to become more thoroughly entrenched in darkness. If you have heard the truth, know what is right, and don’t respond, then you are in danger of getting a hardened heart.