I don’t hear much about the danger of “backsliding” these days. It seems that was something my friends and I were concerned about 20 years ago. We talked about it, prayed against it, and sought to keep Jesus always before us as our greatest hope and satisfaction. It wasn’t like we were about to fall right off the spiritual map by denying Jesus and jumping into scandalous sin, but we knew that we do in fact have hearts that are, as the hymn says, “prone to wander.” And I am no better today.
If there is one consideration more humbling than another to a spiritually-minded believer, it is, after all God has done for him,–after all the rich displays of his grace, the patience and tenderness of his instructions, the repeated discipline of his covenant, the tokens of love received, and the lessons of experience learned, there should still exist in the heart a principle, the tendency which is to secret, perpetual, and alarming departure from God. - Octavius Winslow, Personal Declension‘But even if we acknowledge that we remain sinners and can find ourselves in a dangerous spiritual state, do we know what such a state really looks like? I’m not so sure. Some liken it to big public failure, and this leaves them thinking they are safe when in fact they may be in a very bad way. In the classic Vital Godliness, William Plumer said, “Many are kept from owning their backslidings, because they are mercifully restrained from open sins. Had they publicly fallen into overt iniquity, they would blush, and be ashamed; they would bewail their wickedness before God and men. But as yet all is secret. They are merely backsliders in heart.” Read more
Read also:
Recovery from Backsliding
The Cure for Backsliding
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