Backsliding is something that has been on my mind recently, as I have witnessed a very close friend of mind backslide so far down, that I am beginning to lose hope for her. It's heartbreaking, extremely heartbreaking. I think as Christian we should want to see all the people around us loving and serving God with all of their lives. At least I feel that way. When I am at church and I look around and see the congregation so in tune with God, when I'm at chapel and I hear the amen's and see the look of conviction on people's faces around the room, when I hear people lift God up, talk about the amazing things that He does, the amazing love that He provides, it makes me happy. It brings me joy. So to see someone step off of the right path and continue heading in the wrong direction, it hurts me inside.
At church on Sunday, our pastor talks about the topic of backsliding. He brought a new light to a story in the Bible that I have heard a couple of times, the story of Lot and how his life slowly started heading in the direction of disaster. The title of the message was something along the lines of how we have the ability to spiritually adapt either up or down, meaning we either are going to head spiritually in a godly direction, or down the slippery slope to disaster.
The adapting downward was illustrated with Lot and how he was a righteous man, who slowly began to slide down until he was adapting to the things of this world, and his life was filled with immorality. He started by pitching his tent on the outside of Sodom, an immoral city, then he began living in the city, and finally in Genesis 19:1 we find him sitting in the gateway of Sodom, which in biblical times was the city center. So he slowly went from the outside, to the very deep inside, and thus disaster strikes Lot in the form of his becoming so adapted to the world that he lived in, that he made some very immoral choices concerning his daughters. You can look all the details of this stuff in Genesis 19.
The reality is, this can happen to anyone, no matter how "strong" of a Christian that they may be. It doesn't happen suddenly. You begin sliding away slowly, and you begin with the choices that you make.
Our pastor this morning stressed the importance of the choices that we make, whether they are big or small. And our choices should reflect God. As our pastor said this morning, we need to be constantly working at our walk with God, constantly having a spiritual focus, constantly being concerned with even the small details in our life, constantly asking God for guidance because once we begin to lose our focus and not care, then we start sliding back.
We need to always watch how we are living, The Bible calls us to not let any hint of immorality be in our lives and to not give a foothold for Satan. There is a effort to this, and we need to put forth this effort. We also need to keep ourselves accountable and in check. I know there are definitely times when I get out of going to church or reading my Bible, but I have someone call me out on that, or I call myself out on that, and I stop myself from continuing to slide away from God.
When thinking about this topic, I always think about the topic of having non-Christian friends. I just feel that when we are interacting with people who aren't believers, we need to be careful, we need to watch ourselves even more. I think it is important to reach out to the people in our secular world, but I think we need to guard ourselves and makes sure that we don't start adapting to that world. God calls us to be a light in the world, to be the salt of the earth, to reach out to the unbelievers, but I haven't come across a time where he has said that we need to become a part of the world and start doing the things that they do. In fact, I believe that God calls us to be separate from the world and to be holy. I have witnessed so many people close to me who have been changed by the people in their lives. Because they did not guard themselves, because they lost their focus, because they stopped caring about the little things, and started adapting to the world that their non-Christian friends were a part of, they lost sight of God. We need to watch out for that because it can happen to any of us. It starts so subtly and slowly. When we are with our friends we stop caring that the choices that they are making are wrong. Once we stop caring, we start accepting the choices that they make, and after that acceptance, we start adapting to and doing things that we once rightly thought of as wrong. I know from first hand experience just how this works.
When I was in middle school, my best friends were not the best people to be best friends with, and here's what I mean by that. They were the hooligans, the ones who were foul mouthed, made obscene jokes all of the time. They were the ones who just didn't care much about school and so they didn't put an effort into their schoolwork. They were the ones that did sneaky things behind their parents back. And they were most certainly unbelievers. I started out being the goodies two shoes and I would never partake of any of the things that they were doing. I knew that their lifestyle was wrong, and so I decided I wasn't going to go the same route as them. But as we got closer, my mindset starting changing until finally I was living the exact same way that they were. It started with me accepting what they were doing. I wasn't going to tell dirty jokes myself, but whenever they were around telling them, I would laugh and kind of take the "whatever floats your boat" position on things. And then I started thinking that dirty jokes and dropping the f-bomb in every sentence wasn't wrong at all, but I still didn't want to do it. And then I finally was like oh what the heck, my friends are acting this way and I no longer think that it is wrong, therefore I am just going to join in with them.
I wasn't a Christian then, but I think the concept is the same because I find myself doing the same thing now that I am a Christian. When I am getting to close to my friends who aren't believers, I find myself losing focus and allowing myself to be sucked right back into the world.
I wasn't a Christian then, but I think the concept is the same because I find myself doing the same thing now that I am a Christian. When I am getting to close to my friends who aren't believers, I find myself losing focus and allowing myself to be sucked right back into the world.
So the point that I want to get across with this post tonight is just that we need to make sure that we are constantly walking with God. That means regularly attending church and bible studies, having a devotional time each day, and just doing activities that help strength our walk and help us grow closer to God. It also means checking ourselves and making sure that we pay attention the the choices that we make and the details in our lives.
Now I'm definitely not a theologian, nor can I explain this as well as my pastor did yesterday morning, but I hope that you guys get something out of this.
Love you folks!
Gabs :)
Genesis 19
Ephesians 4:27
27 and do not give the devil a foothold.
Ephesians 5:3
3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.
Matthew 5:13-16
13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
Romans 12:2
1 Peter 2:9
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