The Happy Backslider
As a pastor who enjoys staying in touch with people through Facebook it is always sad to see backsliders living their lives without God. However, I’ve noticed that the ones that grieve me the most are not those who seem to be in a “struggle” because I know they usually will come back to God soon. The ones that truly burden my heart are those who seem to be enjoying life with the approval of their peers because they generally have a much harder time repenting and coming back to God. This blog is written as a “letter” to them in hopes that they will come back to their spiritual senses.
Just Because Someone is “Happy” Doesn’t Mean They are “Right with God”
I am not deeply concerned for the backslider who has a miserable life today because I know that his suffering will help expose his folly. Like with the prodigal son losing everything he had and becoming desperate for change while dining in the pig’s pen. It was then that he was finally willing to hear the inner voice of the Father calling him back to his senses.
However, I am seriously grieved for the compromised saint who has a good life now and says in his or her conscience, “God must approve of my actions because things are going so well and many people support me.” This is the one I truly fear may be lost forever because they have traded God’s goodness for humanity’s evil and know not that God has actually left them.
Like when Samson kept breaking his Nazarite vows not to drink from the vine, touch dead things, and have sexual relations with foreign women; however, he kept living a good life in the lap of Delilah. Thus, when he finally cut his hair and readied himself to fight victoriously as he had done before he knew not that the Spirit of the Lord had left him.
Dear Happy Backslider
Dear happy backslider, please hear this plea from me today. If you are not living in compliance with the Word of God you are in danger of hell itself. Just because you have successfully suppressed the conviction of the Holy Spirit and have found temporary pleasure in this world doesn’t mean God has changed His laws. All the approval of society, your inner justification & reason, the laws of men, and success in this world will not rescue you from the wrath of God coming upon you.
You ought to cease now whatever you are doing that is against God’s commands and plead for the Lord to restore the conviction of the Holy Spirit to your conscience once again. Beg for God to renew your spiritual senses and biblical reason so that you might truly repent and be saved. God will not show you mercy on the day you die in your rebellious sins, but rather He will cast you into outer darkness for eternal destruction.
I pray you hear the words of Peter in Acts and apply them to yourself as soon as possible; for your eternal soul is at stake.
Acts 3:19, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.”