Backsliding

Andrew Murray, the late South African Christian author, teacher and pastor, gave the best definition of backsliding I know. He said, “Backsliding is the result of slack abiding.”  Whenever a person gets slack in their abiding in Christ, the path is always backward. It doesn’t happen suddenly. It’s not a single crisis that sends us backward. It’s a process. Here a little, there a little. No Christian, who is daily walking with Christ just wakes up one morning and decides to backslide. It took Samson a while toying with Delilah before he caved to her temptations and revealed the secret of his strength. 

There are no 90 degree turn off roads on a motorway. You can’t suddenly make a sharp turn and exit a motorway. You go off on a slip road. For a while it seems you are still on the motorway. You are running along parallel with it. But gradually you find yourself going on a different direction. 

It’s hard to know exactly why Demas forsook Paul. He was being mentored by the foremost missionary evangelist that there has ever been. He may have become a great evangelist or apostle himself one day. But Paul writes his spiritual epitaph when he simply said, “Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world.” (2 Tim.4:10) He must have started out with the best intentions to serve God. He probably was full of zeal and chomping at the bit to travel with Paul and do exploits for Christ. But along the way, little by little, bit by bit, something about the world attracted him and he kept thinking about it. He didn’t deal with the issue and it gradually became the dominant thought in his mind, until it consumed him. 

Mike Yaconelli said, “I live in a small, rural community. There are lots of cattle ranches around here, and, every once in a while, a cow wanders off and gets lost…Ask a rancher how a cow gets lost, and chances are he will reply, ‘Well, the cow starts nibbling on a tuft of green grass, and when it finishes, it looks ahead to the next tuft of green grass and starts nibbling on that one, and then nibbles on a tuft of grass right next to a hole in the fence. It then sees another tuft of green grass on the other side of the fence, so it nibbles on that one and then goes to the next tuft. The next thing you know, the cow has nibbled itself into being lost.’”

That’s the way it is with most folk. It’s not that they deliberately set out to backslide, it’s just they follow their desires and passions, from one patch of grass to the next, until they have wandered off and lost their way. 

Hebrews 2:1 “Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away.”

When a boat has no anchor, it will drift with every tide. 

The famous old hymn says it well,

Will your anchor hold in the storms of life,

When the clouds unfold their wings of strife?

When the strong tides lift, and the cables strain,

Will you anchor drift, or firm remain?

We have an anchor that keeps the soul

Steadfast and sure while the billows roll, 

Fastened to the Rock which cannot move,

Grounded firm and deep in the Saviour’s love.

- Priscilla Jane Owens

- Pastor David Goudy