Go to content

Victory Over Backsliding

Books > Personal Growth

Victory Over Backsliding

Summary

Victory Over Backsliding
Have you Ever Lost Your Way?

Victory Over Backsliding offers hope for anyone who has lost their way on the path of righteousness where they once started out. It is for people who are searching for hope, answers and a way back to God. More than this, it is also for anyone who struggles in their Christian walk with troublesome issues that we are faced with every day.

Filled with Biblical examples and many Scriptures to encourage and teach, it is also a study about backsliding and uncovers how and why we lose our way. Written from personal experience, the book seeks to encourage and draw us closer to the Lord no matter how far we've strayed or where we're presently at. A subject that has been shelved and perhaps seldom brought out into the open, backsliding is a crucial subject for all believers in Christ. For as we begin to uncover many truths about backsliding, we begin to uncover many truths about ourselves. Knowing such truths and then acting on them are the beginning of healing and pave the road for us enabling us to return to the lover of our souls, the Lord Himself.

Sample

Chapter 1 - A Personal Journey

Many years ago, when I was still a small child, I heard preachers talk about backsliding. I understood it to mean that a person was backslidden when they turned away from God even though they had once professed to be a born-again Christian. That’s why throughout most of my teen years, I knew in my heart that even though I was a Christian, I had become a backslidden Christian. I’d like to share some of my story in the hopes that someone feeling discouraged in their own situation will discover that there really is victory over backsliding no matter how far we’ve strayed away from God.

I grew up in a Christian home, so I was introduced to Christianity at an early age and became a Christian when I was only five years old at Daily Vacation Bible School. I remember the young and kind teachers from Bible School holding up a cloth heart with three sides — one was black with sin, the other was red with Jesus blood, and the other was white. I wanted the white heart, so I asked Jesus to forgive me for my sins and make my heart clean and white. When I went home that day, I thought about heaven and all the toys Jesus would have for me there some day. Under my parents care I attended church regularly until I became a teenager. Our home was filled with Bibles, and my dad read us Scripture regularly at meal times. I learned to play hymns and choruses on the piano. I was encouraged to really know my Bible, so through Child Evangelism I won contests and prizes for memorizing Scripture. I took part in plays in Sunday school, participated in other church functions and sang duets and trios with my two older sisters in church. I went to Bible camps every summer until I left home, and was also a part of various youth groups in the town.

Yet, all of this wasn’t enough to keep me from backsliding and turning away from the God of my childhood. It’s interesting that even though I grew up knowing the Bible, most of the truths in it were not real to me. Plus, I had an insatiable curiosity, which is normal and natural, but rather than channel it towards good things, I seemed to be drawn to what was evil and potentially harmful for me. Since I felt that Christianity posed a lot of restrictions, I found it a challenge to seek out trouble and not get caught. For example, we were taught that going to movies, dancing and drinking were all evils to be shunned and avoided at all costs. So of course I wanted to experiment with these things, curious to see what was so evil about them.
The Hippy Culture

One of the things I tried at a young age was recreational drugs. Drug abuse wasn’t a subject taught in school or even a subject openly discussed by parents. Drugs were something everyone seemed to be trying, so there was a definite peer pressure to try and fit in. Along with the drugs came the unsaved friends and then several years of living the party life. Add to this my interest in the hippy culture, and you have a recipe for disaster when it comes to trying to live the Christian life. Some people may not know much about the hippy culture, but I was profoundly affected by the hippy movement. It had been going on for some time when I was awakened to it. Janis Joplin and Jimmi Hendrix were already dead from drug overdoses, with Jim Morrison from the Doors and many others to follow. I came onto the scene as an impressionable adolescent. The early 70s saw bell-bottoms, Sly & the Family Stone, Peace Signs, The Vietnam War, the Patty Hurst kidnaping, long hair & beaded leather jewelry, Jesus Christ Superstar, and bright blue blow-up furniture, to name a few icons and events that marked this strange cultural time-period.

The hippies tried to teach us about love and freedom — freedom from responsibility, sexual freedom, freedom to live a communal life (socialist-communist ideologies), freedom to explore who you are without taking into account how your life may affect countless others, and most deadly of all, freedom to experiment with your mind through various recreational drugs like pot, LSD, mescaline, angel dust, heroine, and the list goes on. They taught freedom, and yet many young people died from drug overdoses. Some, who were fortunate enough to live, tripped one too many times, blew their mind and ended up making paper cut outs in the homes for the mentally challenged. Some never came out of that era, still listen to the same bands, still wear the same clothes (although for some reason this era copy-cats the fashions then); others are still looking for the best “hit.” Many young people never resumed a ‘normal’ life. Some may scoff and laugh at the idea, even make a TV series (That 70s Show), but some of the tragic results of that era live all around us. People think it was funny — the weird hairdos, the heads (people who were stoned all the time), the wacky bright green, yellow and orange flowers, psychedelic clothes, posters and other paraphernalia. But so many lives ended in tragedy. It was an era of death and destruction equal to any other era where war and disease claimed so many young lives. Perhaps this is never seen as such because it was cloaked in so many colorful phrases and jokes. Even television carried it off as just another opportunity to make money and tell jokes about it, such as a show we all watched and enjoyed called, Laugh In.

Truly, the ‘freedom’ the hippies and gurus offered, was a beautiful looking path strewn with flowers, music, and love (conditional at best — as long as you stayed with the movement), but many discovered, like myself, it was really a slippery path of broken promises that led to loneliness, bad trips and a short-change on reality. When I awoke one day to the full realization that I was hooked on drugs and friends were few and far between, I asked myself, “What is so bad about the establishment that it is worth my life, friends, future, happiness and health?” Many times I wondered if there would ever be a way out. Everything in my life was affected by my ill-chosen lifestyle and it would eventually take a heavy toll on my life. I wonder how many well-meaning teenagers fall into the same traps I did, bewitched by the enticement of something new and exciting, that offered adventure and made you feel that you fit in and that you belong?

Wake-Up Call

But I received a major wake-up call when I was only 15. One sunny hot July day, I was involved in a serious car accident in the Whiteshell, an area of the Canadian Shield surrounded by lakes, trees and massive boulders that frame the highway. When two drunk drivers hit my friend’s car head-on, we were knocked unconscious and I thought I was dying. When people are unconscious, everything else continues to function. I remember seeing my life flash before me. I had this incredible feeling of no escape because I knew I couldn’t wake myself up, and believed I was dying and going to hell. It must be terrifying for people who don’t know the Lord to experience this while dying — with no hope of salvation at that point. I prayed that God would let me live and not send me to hell because of the kind of lifestyle I was living. And I was convinced that I was sliding into hell at that moment.

I woke up and me and my girlfriend were sitting in the midst of the car wreck. Our heads had hit the windshield at a speed of 120 miles per hour. The motor of the car sat between us. The front hood was mangled so badly, to see it, you wouldn’t have believed anyone could have lived to tell the story. When we awoke, we screamed and I lunged for the door to try to get out, but someone had to open the door. I was the only one able to give the details of the accident to the police and the hospital staff. Everyone who saw the car wreck said it was a miracle that me and my girlfriend came out alive. Even though I was faced with my own mortality and the possibility of spending eternity without God, still it wasn’t enough to change my heart and my life. For many years I’ve had to live with the after-effects of that accident — both physical problems and emotional problems. In fact, for a long time afterwards, I lived with an unhealthy fear of God and an unhealthy fear of living as well.
College Life

After the accident I tried to live a better life, but without a change of heart, this amounted to circumstantial change only. My spiritual life was at a stand-still. After graduation from high school, I moved to the city to pursue a career in Journalism through Red River College. I soon got right back into the drinking and drug scene I had briefly abandoned after the accident. Out of my loneliness and continuous need to belong, I was drawn once again to the wrong kind of friends. In less than a few months, I moved twice from two separate boarding houses close to the college, and my third move in the winter was with some students who were hippies and involved heavily into the drug scene. These so called friends introduced me to Eastern religions, so out of curiosity I started reading and immersing myself in doctrines of demons (later I would experience the full effects of this) but I didn’t know that I was treading in very dangerous waters at the time. One house that I lived in was the center of a major drug grow-op. One night, my roommates were acting strangely, so I phoned the police and then moved out. They were later charged for drug trafficking and the dealers went after me to get back at me for inadvertently drawing the police to them.
My Darkest Hour

Make no mistake about it, there is no such thing as dabbling in just a little bit of sin. Sin demands a price and it was starting to knock at my door demanding I pay the wages. THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH and I was quickly coming to the end of myself. I moved again for the fourth time that year and by the spring I was so burned out and so fearful from all that had happened, that I experienced a nervous breakdown. Everything had caught up with me and I couldn’t even finish my first year of college. It was then that I began to really seek answers because I just couldn’t go on the way that I was. I started watching TV, lots of it, and Oral Roberts was on. In the depths of my deep depression, I was drawn to Oral Roberts because he was so positive and talked about seed-faith principals. It was what I needed to hear. As well, when the Celebration Singers would sing “Something Good is Going to Happen to you . . . this very day,” it gave me hope and I started to pray and ask God to help me, in spite of my unbelief. I thought He must be so angry with me at this point because I had lived this backslidden life, that He was out to destroy me. I often thought, I’ve backslidden so far, there is no way back. I can’t go back. I wasn’t familiar with the parable of the lost sheep, and the prodigal son, but even if I would have been familiar with them I wouldn’t have taken them personally anyway. But I was really impressed by Oral Roberts positive faith teaching, so I ordered his seed-faith books and started pouring through them as soon as they arrived. I wrote him prayer requests stating that I was a backslidden Christian and could they please pray for me. But God still seemed very far away. I never really believed He’d answer.

A New Direction

I came home to my parents for the summer and had no idea where to go or what to do. I was too burned out to return to school or even get a job. My parents suggested I go to Bible School in Eston, Saskatchewan. My uncle paid my tuition and off I went. But I was one of those stubborn converts — even though I was a mess, I felt an incredible resistance to turn myself over to what I thought was “religion.” But, the students and staff were nothing but kind, forgiving and compassionate people. This intrigued me! I also had serious health problems — borderline diabetes and an ulcer. I was sure I’d have to go back home for medical reasons, but instead, God healed me.

I used to go for walks down a deserted gravel road (there were no trees in Eston. It was during these little walks that the Holy Spirit pursued me. I was so mesmerized by Him, that at first I just listened. During these walks He explained things to me in the most deeply compassionate & understanding way. Later, I would go back to the dorm and open up His Word, hungry to know more about Him. He would verify everything to me in His Word — everything that He was teaching me on these walks. I was also receiving a full menu of correct Bible teaching in classes every day. Eston offered some powerful foundational Biblical truths that even I couldn’t argue with. More than anything, they seemed to stress the great grace and love of God — not that we loved Him, but that He loved us. And they stressed RELATIONSHIP — He wants to have relationship with us!! This was incomprehensible to me. How could God love a sinner like me?? But through the teaching and then seeing how loving the students and staff were, I was becoming convinced that God and the Bible were true and living. And I discovered that God really cared about me and wanted to be my new best Friend.

One Sunday morning I woke up with this indescribable revelation that God loved me personally. It wasn’t just that someone had told me or that I had read it in the Bible. It was as if He had made a special effort to let me know how much He loves me. This has been a turning point in my life — this is where my life and heart started to change after this revelation! One night I responded to an altar call at the church where I believe Jesus met me and forgave my sinful life. Not only did I experience forgiveness, but I felt a depth of love from Him that I had never known. I stood there shaking and witnessed new life as I literally felt Him wipe my slate clean. The heaviness in my heart lifted and I floated out of the church, never the same again. This was my rite of passage into eternity, the most significant and important occurrence in my whole life. Nothing would ever top this experience.

My life changed completely from the inside and out. My thoughts changed, my desires changed. I was a new creature in Christ. ALL THE OLD passed away according to 2 Corinthians 5:17. I saw people differently — no longer a threat, but people to love, that Jesus loved. One morning I woke up and realized I hadn’t done drugs for some time, and had no desire for them. In fact, my life became a testimony to all the students, my family and my friends who had known me all of my backslidden life. For they could see how the love and power of God was able to change a mixed up teenage hippy like I was.

What does it mean to backslide? For me, it meant a deliberate turning away from the God of my childhood and turning to other gods (like drugs). I substituted a cheap imitation of power for the real thing — the power God gives to enable us to live a free and joyful life under His protective love and care. I looked for love in all the wrong places and found instead, a hollow loneliness from promises that no one or no thing could ever deliver. Instead of a paradise, I found myself in a wilderness with no hope of escape except by the loving arms of divine providence reaching down and picking me up and letting me start all over again. Backsliding for me began in my teen years, begun by deep needs to feel loved, accepted and needed. But it can begin at any stage in someone’s life. There are many causes, not the least being a complete lack of understanding of what it means to be a confessing and Bible-believing Christian. So in the next chapter I’d like to talk about some important truths about being a Christian and what it really means.

Buy

Currently this book is sold as an e-book only and there is currently no printed version.  Although this book is sold in multiple different countries, it is currently in English only.
This book is available at the following sites:
Back to content