The Cunningness of Backsliding
We need to be careful of thinking we are standing firm, because that’s when we are more likely to fall. You see, our enemy is cunning. Cunning means sneaky, and backsliding has a way of sneaking up on you. The book of Genesis talks about the cunning or crafty ways of Satan: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made.” (Genesis 3:1 NIV).
Cunning of Backsliding
You remember the story. Adam and Eve were doing fine, close to God, in a good place, standing firm. But the serpent whispered doubts to them. He was crafty, cunning, and got them to doubt, to step away from obedience in a clever, shrewd way.
Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher, said this in a sermon on backsliding: "The Christian life is very much like climbing a hill of ice. You cannot slide up; you have to cut every step with an ice axe. Only with incessant labour in cutting and chipping can you make any progress… Nobody ever slides up, but if great care be not taken they will slide down, slide back, or in other words, backslide. This is very easily done. If you want to know how to backslide, the answer is to leave off going forward, and you will slide backward. Cease going upward, and you will go downward of necessity, for stand still you never can."
Effort in Growth
Have you found that to be true in your Christian life? I have. I don’t slide up or forward. Growth comes through effort. Yes, it comes by God’s grace, but if we don’t seek it, strive for it, grasp at it, we find that we begin to backslide.
How are you doing today? Are you deeply, overwhelmingly, joyfully in love with the God who loves you? Or are you perhaps starting to backslide from Him a little?
Another illustration about backsliding is from Dr Arnot, who pictured a heavy scale loaded with seeds on one side, weighing it down while the other side was high up. One morning you realize the side that was down is now up, and all the seeds are gone. A whole bunch of little insects came and carried them off one by one. You didn’t notice at first, when one seed disappeared or two, three, or ten, but after a while, the balance shifted, and all that weight was gone.
Importance of Vigilance
Cunning! It happens without your realizing it if you are not careful. If you are not carefully keeping your relationship with God vital and real and alive.
So today, perhaps you and I need to awaken before all the seeds are carried away and the weight of our faith has been emptied.
Let me encourage you: Stay deep in the Word. Stay deep in prayer. Stay faithful in coming to church. Stay fixed to Jesus. Stay in a close, close relationship with Him.
If you aren’t going forward, you’re going backwards. And friends, you don’t want to go backwards.
