Dear backsliding Christian

Do you remember?

Do you remember when you were as - John Flavel put it - "restless and impatient… in His absence!" 

O you could bear anything but that. Sickness you could bear. Pain and temporal losses you could

endure.  But His absence was unbearable. You couldn't stand to go on without the sense of His dear

smile. You longed to walk and live and breathe in the light of His countenance.

Do you remember when “Divine withdrawments were to you as the hell of hell (Flavel).” 

Those seasons when God seemed to hide His face from you, when He was distant, and there

wasn't that familiar communion and fellowship in the prayer closet were to you as hell.  You wept

and you groaned and you cried for His return. You stirred yourself to take hold of God (Isaiah 6:7),

you wrestled with Him as you told Him you would not let Him go.

Do you remember when the world was a burden to you?  Do you remember a time when if it

weren't for your sense of duty you would have gladly and willing let everything else alone (you

would have neglected a whole world) if only to enjoy uninterrupted communion with Jesus? 

This was your one thing: to dwell in the house of your God and behold His beauty (Psalm 27). 

How you loved to sit at the feet of Jesus.

Do you remember when you woke in the night and you could say, "the darkness [was] enlightened

by the heavenly glimpses of the countenance of my God upon me?  How did His company shorten

those hours… (Flavel)."  You could say with the psalmist (63), that you remembered Him upon your

bed, you meditated on Him in the night watches.  His lovingkindness was better than life, your soul

was satisfied as with marrow and fatness, your mouth praised Him with joyful lips and you rejoiced

in the shadow of His wings.

But now it is not so.  You are living at a distance from your beloved.   How sad to think that you have

been content to remain hidden from Him.  Though He watches you with love and urges you to speak

and tells you how He loves to hear the sound of your voice in the prayer closet (Song of Solomon 2),

your voice is not heard, your prayer closet lies empty.   You have become fascinated with the world's

toys. You have grown weary of God; and He comes to you asking, "have I been a wilderness to you

(Jeremiah 2:31)?" Has he been a land of darkness? How can this be that a bride would forget her

Groom and that a people redeemed at the price of His blood should so soon forget their love?  Has

he been so unkind to you that you should treat Him like this? Is this how to requite the Lamb slain

from the foundation of the world?

John Flavel wrote a poem to express these very thoughts.  Read these words prayerfully...

Thou art the Husbandman, and I
A worthless plot of husbandry,
Whom special love did, n'ertheless,
Divide from nature's wilderness.
Then did the sun-shine of thy face,
And sweet lapses of thy grace,
Like April show'rs, and warming gleams,
Distil its dews, reflect its beams.
My dead affections then were green,
And hopeful buds on them were seen;
These into duties soon were turn'd,
In which my heart within me burn'd.
O halcyon days!  Thrice happy state!
What sweet discourse, what heav'nly talk,
Whilst with thee I did daily walk!
Mine eyes o'erflow, my heart doth sink,
As oft as on those days I think.
For strangeness now is got between
My God and me, as may be seen
By what is now, and what was then:
Tis just as if I were two men.

Dear backsliding Christian, isn't it time to cry mightily to the Lord for quickening?  Why not get

down on your knees right now and say to Him, "O God I miss you."

Flavel writes, "he will not despise your cry.  The moans of a distressed child work upon the bowels

of a tender father…”

[The article was originally posted on our church blog February 13, 2018]