Diary of a Backslider

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You remember it like yesterday. After years of struggling to find peace you finally recognized your need for something or someone outside of yourself to accomplish the task. Maybe you’d spent all you life on the streets of one of America’s cities plagued with loneliness and acceptance finding only a meager belonging in the low ranks of a gang; or maybe you’d been raised going to church learning Sunday school songs and joining Bible clubs.

Nevertheless, the time came when you recognized that you were a fake. After years of pretending to be tough and participating in every questionable activity imaginable; after years of quoting scripture and dating the preacher’s daughter; after years of wearing the right attire and blending with the crowd you had to admit, never had you experienced for yourself this genuine acceptance and peace that others claimed. Not even once had your life felt like it was less than out of control.

Then came the day you’ll never forget. You wrote the date in the front of your Bible and forever the details are etched into your memory. You remind the devil of that day on a regular basis as you mock his attempt to pull you back into your old habits and attitudes. Was it during the solitude of a nature walk? Was it at the altar in a revival meeting? Was it in a private discussion with another individual? Was it in response to a gospel message or tract? Was it a street preacher, a parent, a friend, a sibling, a child, a lover? Regardless of who it was or what the events you finally felt full acceptance from God.

Never before in your life had you been so honest about yourself. Much of what you confessed no one knew and yet you felt so clean, so free, so alive! How could this God who you had feared all your life even want to accept you after He knew all you’d done? Not knowing all the answers to these questions you accepted them and reveled in your new found spiritual and emotional freedom.

Each day found you experiencing new and deeper truths from the Bible. Each week found you eager to attend church and connect with other believers. Strangely, it almost seemed you were family. Week after week, month after month you maintained a zeal for others to know and experience what had happened to you. You spoke freely of your Savior unashamed of who may hear and what they may think. Often you would sit late at night, or rise early in the morning just to listen to the solitude so that His voice wouldn’t be drowned out by life’s noises.

Your hunger for His word was insatiable and you carried your Bible everywhere you went. Every conversation with your fellow believers soon found itself to be a discussion of God and His love, mercy and grace. You’d rise early to attend prayer breakfasts. You’d stay late to bask in the acceptance you felt at evening worship sessions. Simply put, you couldn’t get enough of Jesus.

As a meager attempt to assist in the distribution of this message you joined various ministries. Soon you were obligated to quit attending the evening worship sessions in order to organize the next outreach effort. These kept you late into the evening and you fell into bed exhausted from a full days work followed with a full evening of administration. Prayer breakfasts were replaced with a few more minutes of sleep. Seldom can you find the time, much less the energy, to spend entire nights in prayer and intercession anymore. You can hardly remember the last time you experienced solitude and you’re not sure you even remember what His voice sounds like.

Life comes at you full steam ahead and between raising children, full time employment and multiple ministry opportunities, not to mention Sunday morning church services, Wednesday evening Bible study and Friday evening youth group gathering you live just over spent. All that you do and everywhere you go is for, about or because of Jesus, and yet you hardly know who He is anymore. You find yourself asking…

Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I knew the Lord
Where is the soul refreshing view
Of Jesus and His word?

Just a few short years ago you laughed at the devils attempts to draw you back into your old, carnal, sinful lifestyle. Now it seems the devil’s laughing at you because you’re there. Once again you find yourself dabbling with old habits. Old attitudes are flaring and your responses are less than noble at times. The strength you once had to resist the ‘firey darts of satan’ now seems to be gone and in its place nothing but a weak, half-hearted praise song.

How did it happen? When did it happen? Why did it happen? No one knows, but this is sure, you have backslidden! Life has overtaken you and you have succumbed. Do this, knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep; for now salvation is nearer than when we believed. The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.
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