ARE YOU BACKSLIDDEN?

"Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Thy Word." (Psalm 119:67)

The old nature with its blind hostility to G-d's word must often suffer to cease from sin. Even after a believer has come to faith, he or she can grow dull of hearing. Then G-d sometimes allows trouble to chase us back to our Bibles. Especially when we begin to grow listless with boredom and indifference to spiritual things, impatiently closing the Bible and gazing around in the flesh, wanting to vent anger and other lusts, pushing the Bible aside. Little do we realize at such times that our most worrisome enemy is within. The very one, just a short time ago hardened and accursed, now again wants G-d's volume turned down so that it can better hear the blaring of its own carnal thoughts. What a fallen soul is man! As far as "the sin that dwells in me" is concerned, "I do not know what I do." The heart is desperately wicked, who CAN know it? This why the Scripture warns:

"Trust in the L-rd with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths."

Direct your paths? Where are we going? The Word of G-d says that life is a pilgrimage and that each of us is a sojourner on earth, and as such we are temporary residents soon on the move. The Bible says

"Thy laws have been my song in the house of my pilgrimage." (Psalm 119:54)

We have no abiding resting place in this world. At every crossroad we need G-d to direct our steps. Like a driver stopping to ask directions at gasoline stations, so the words of the Scriptures are like the friendly gasoline station attendants giving directions. The Bible is the roadmap to heaven; we'd be lost without it. But like a famished vehicle driving on empty, we open our "mouth and pant because we long for Thy commandments." (Psalm 119:131).

There are drivers so insecure with their own sense of direction, that they spread out the roadmap on their steering wheels, and take incessant quick glances at the map as much as they do the road itself or the speedometer. If you think of the Bible as a roadmap to heaven ("from childhood you have known the Scriptures which are able to make you wise unto salvation"), and if you think of the believer as a driver on that road, then, when you actually inspect the Bible of such a believer, the worn pages and urgent notes in the margins show you that here indeed is a well-worn heavenly roadmap.

An actor knows that a script is not just a dull piece of paper. It is the life of everything that is going on onstage. It is not a mere blog but the living journal logging every moment of what transpires. Your Bible is your life. Every promise is there to inspire you onward. You are to eat the scroll and nourish your soul. G-d is faithful to perform His Word and, if you keep your nose in the book and take heed to the warnings, you will see miracles come to pass in your own life. In this sense you will jump into the Book and your life will become a fellow-traveler with the heaven-bound Biblical characters. Look what happened when a Bible reader fell down the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole of Scripture to begin a wonderful adventure in sharing the faith onstage and off.

When you look at a believer's Bible carefully and try to decipher his or her notes, you can often discern different periods and phases of their lives...the Elijah period when "Ahabs" and "Jezebels" had to be avoided in order to meet G-d on the mountain of some dramatic appointment...or the Demas period when some betrayal or defection has occurred that is almost a blow too hard to shake off...or the Job period when loneliness and rejection comes with a thorn that is like a message from Satan...

With such various attacks and troubles, divine help is needed just to find the part of the Bible that contains the "codes" to hack one's way out of the jungle of the moment. Go back and study Psalm 119. The author of that Psalm is also a reader of the Bible like you. But he is not like you in that he is more intensely engaged with the Scriptures. You will see that this Psalm is the place to take one's pulse to see if one is backslidden. The relationship one has with the Bible is a telling indicator.

Some people think that backsliding is a minor problem. But 1John 3:3 doesn't know anything about that. If you hope in Yeshua, if you hope to be like Him, if you hope to be unashamed when He appears, you have to be very intensely concerned about not backsliding. How can we be like Him, if we are backsliding? To decide to backslide is to decide to abandon hope in Him. Above all guard your heart from backsliding because only the pure in heart will see G-d and without holiness no one will. Let's stop here and test your Moshiach literacy.