Tuesday, July 2, 2024
Wayward Hearts
“My wayward children,” says the Lord, “come back to me, and I will heal your wayward hearts.” (Jeremiah 3:22 NLT)
When we hear the word backslider, we tend to think of those who have completely abandoned their faith and turned their backs on God. And certainly they could be classified as backsliders. But there are also Christians who are backsliding and aren’t even aware of it.
No one plans on backsliding. It often happens gradually. It happens subtly—so subtly, in fact, that you may not even know it is happening. The Bible warns us about backsliding and says that one of the signs of the end times is that people will fall away from the faith.
So, what should we do if we have backslidden? God tells us that we should return to Him. Speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, God said, “My wayward children, . . . come back to me, and I will heal your wayward hearts” (Jeremiah 3:22 NLT).
God also warned, “Your wickedness will bring its own punishment. Your turning from me will shame you. You will see what an evil, bitter thing it is to abandon the Lord your God and not to fear him” (Jeremiah 2:19 NLT).
And Jesus said to the church of Ephesus, “Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first” (Revelation 2:5 NLT).
We might say, “I would never fall in this area” or “I would never, in a million years, commit that sin!” But we need to be careful. That could be the very area in which we fall into sin.
We don’t know how wicked our hearts really are. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” (NLT).
We all have the propensity for doing the wrong thing. Like the hymn says, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.” So, don’t ever say you would never do this or that, because the fact is that you’re fully capable of that and more. An unguarded strength is a double weakness.
When Peter denied Jesus, his first step down was self-confidence. He said to the Lord, “Even if everyone else deserts you, I will never desert you” (Matthew 26:33 NLT).
What moved Peter to say this was Jesus’ revelation that Judas was a traitor. Peter effectively was saying, “Look, I don’t know about James and John, the so-called Sons of Thunder. And I’m not sure about Matthew and some of the others. But I’m going to tell You this: I will never let You down.”
It was self-confidence. The Bible says, “Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18 NLT).
Are you in a fallen state? Are you in the process of backsliding? You are going either forward in Christ or backward. You are either progressing spiritually, or you are regressing. But the moment you put your spiritual growth into neutral, you will find yourself going in the wrong direction.
Don’t rest on your laurels. Don’t live in the past. We need to be constantly growing as followers of Jesus.
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