Never doubt in the darkness what God has told you in the light. Or in the world of long distance hikers they say, never quit your hike on a bad day.
When I was a new convert backsliding simply meant going back to the sins that the Lord Jesus had delivered you from in salvation. For us it meant drugs and dope and sex outside of marriage. Pretty simple to see and to understand. But as we get older and wiser backsliding tends to get more complicated.
Backsliding today could simply mean forsaking your faith to believe something new or something different. Leaving our church to become a Buddhist for example. Backsliding could mean just not coming to church anymore.
History has many examples of people who began in the faith but in a crisis of life they turned away from Christ. Some become enemies of the cross. Some flaunt their freedom from faith by debauchery and carousing. But their common denominator is that in a time of doubt or while having a bad day they quit.
Like we have heard so often, it is not what happens to you that hurts you, it's how you process what happens that can hurt you. My wife Kathy until the day that she died never gave up on Jesus. Bridget until the day that she died never stopped trusting and believing. Others who felt like their prayers were not answered or that God was unfair quit and they go into eternity twice dead.
There is only one way to lose in the Christian life and that is to quit.
"A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoking flax He will not quench..." Isaiah 42:3
You can stick it out for one more day.
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