Banishing Backsliding

Solomon was the wisest man that ever lived. When he became king, God said He would give him anything he wished for, and Solomon asked for wisdom, so that he could be a good ruler to his people. For the first half of his life, he did some great things for the Lord. He built an incredible temple for Him, he judged his people righteously and prudently. But the end of his life, he had completely turned away from the Lord and was serving other gods.

I think this happens to a lot of people. They will be following after God and living good lives, and later in life, have completely turned their backs on Him. I’ve seen it in many people I know that are close to me, and have heard lots more stories of others. What causes someone who falls away from the Lord to do that?

It’s called backsliding.

It’s what the Israelites did all through the Old Testament. They would be following God and keeping His commandments for a while, and then pretty soon, they were going to the idols in other countries and totally living in sin. Jeremiah talks about this a lot, and he’s the one who calls it backsliding, which God portrays as being very serious. He quite often makes known His displeasure in the way they have completely forsaken Him by proclaiming harsh judgments on them.

But you see, backsliding, as horrible as it is, is not just something that we see in the Israelites or the people that have turned their backs on God. It’s something that all of us do (whether we want to admit it or not). I’d like to ask the question: How did Solomon end up the way he did? I mean, he couldn’t have just woke up one morning and decided he didn’t want to walk with God anymore! He started by marrying wives from different countries—something God had told him absolutely NOT to do. So he started going away from the Lord by not following the commandments God made. He kept making little decisions (I’ll just marry this girl from Egypt, and build this other girl a temple for her god, and I’ll just worship this idol a tiny bit…) every day.

And if we’re not careful, that same thing can happen to us. If we decide to skip reading our Bibles for a few days, or stop praying so often, pretty soon our Bible reading will become more and more infrequent and we will lose any interest in prayer or fellowship. Sometimes I look back at my life and remember how a few months or years ago, I had felt really passionate or convicted about various things, and I realize that as time has gone by, I’ve forgotten about them, and they don’t matter to me anymore. Doing things like this can either weaken our relationship with God, or, if it goes on for too long, they can destroy it.

But just like God pleads with the Israelites saying, “Return, you backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings,” (Jeremiah 3:22), He’s pleading with you to repent of your own backsliding (maybe you’ve gotten lazy about your relationship with someone and need to spend more time with them, or have been getting angry a lot, or have been lazy about doing things you need to get done, or have watched movies you didn’t used to let yourself watch) and use the strength He promises to give you in order to change and get back on track.

Now don’t get discouraged when you see an area you need to improve on, decide to change, and then several days or weeks go by, and you still find yourself struggling with it. That happened to the Israelites too. There are several verses throughout Jeremiah where either Jeremiah or the people are asking God to forgive their backslidings, and help them to do better. One of them is in chapter 14. It says:
“O Lord, though our iniquities testify against us, do it for Your name’s sake; for our backslidings are many; we have sinned against You.”
This verse shows that they had obviously tried and failed several times too, but the key thing is to go to God every time you find yourself failing or backsliding, and re-make that commitment to do better.