Pleasing God, Making Disciples of Jesus Christ

It Never Just Happens

Deuteronomy 4:9 – Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children.

THEME OF THE DAY: IT NEVER JUST HAPPENS. It is like slowly boiling water. It starts out looking like nothing. Put a pan of water on a stove and it is as calm as a body of water with no ripples. Then, the heat starts to do its work. Slowly, but surely, bubbles start to percolate and soon, a boiling pot of water results. This illustration describes the process of becoming a lukewarm Christian or backslider. It doesn’t just happen. It is a process that may be easily traced. The first step is described in today’s scripture – only take care and keep your soul diligently. With that as the launching point, let’s define the two-step process a Christian goes through leading to the sad condition of being backslidden.

First, the “slow spiritual boil” leading to becoming a Christ-dishonoring backslider is spiritual neglect. And it usually begins with absence from church. Start missing Lord’s Day and spiritual sensitivity begins to depart the soul. Again this is very slow, but certain. God has ordained the Christian life is to be lived out in community with other believers; a community known as His church and comprised of local assemblies. The word ‘church’ appears 114 times in the New Testament with 106 of those times, or ninety-six percent, referring to local visible congregations. It is a Biblical truth that a sacrificial commitment to a local church is God’s design for His people and necessary for individual spiritual growth. Allow worldliness and lack of self-discipline to cut into our faithful attendance to church, and the first step to backsliding is now in place. What will follow is the spiritual neglect of Bible reading, meditation, prayer, and fellowship for spiritual growth with other believers. The heart begins to chill toward the things of God. Spiritual privileges now become spiritual burdens easily given up or substituted with worldly pleasures and desires.

The next step toward becoming a backslider is sinful self-justification. Our now cooling hearts will justify our spiritual neglect of church, the Bible, prayer, and fellowship due to “life” getting in the way. Busyness, worldly activities, even fatigue, will become justified excuses for absenting ourselves from spiritual responsibilities and obedience to known commands of God. What is so dangerous about self-justification keeping us from God’s Word and His church is we grow accustomed to the habit; even thinking it is okay; even thinking we can maintain a vibrant walk with the Lord. Friends, beware of self-justification of disobedience to known commands. We simply cannot walk in the joy of the Lord with the Lord of joy if known and allowed patterns of disobedience exist in our lives. So, when spiritual neglect leads to sinful self-justification of disobedience, we arrive to the sad condition of being a backslider. Before we describe the heart of a backslider, pause and consider how easy it is to get there. It only takes two steps. Really one. Allow spiritual neglect and we are on our way. Now what does a backslider look like? This is sad, but true. I know it by personal experience, encounter it in counseling others, and observe it Christians.

A person through spiritual neglect leading to sinful self-justification of disobedience will first have a heart that is indifferent to the things of the Lord; actually in opposition to them. They won’t want to hear correction; preaching that convicts, prayer times of exposure or in fellowship with believers who are growing in the Lord. Another heart-breaking attitude in the backslider is the quick spirits of criticism and complaining about anything and anyone – in the church and in the world. They will simply be negative, critical, and self-absorbed people. But, praise God, He restores backsliders. The path back will be hard. Painful confession and repentance will be required, but God loves His people and restores them, even His backslidden people. May He help us not to go there and remember the warning; backsliding doesn’t just happen. It begins with what might seem harmless spiritual neglect which is anything but harmless.

PRAYER: “Lord, keep me close to You that when the signs of spiritual drift start, I can discern it.”

QUOTE: “Backsliding never just happens. It begins slowly with spiritual neglect”