Backsliding In Heart!

1. It does not consist in the subsidence of highly excited religious
emotions. The subsidence of religious feeling may be an evidence of a
backslidden heart, but it does not consist in the cooling off of
religious feeling.
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1. It consists in taking back that consecration to God and His service,
that constitutes true conversion.

2. It is the leaving, by a Christian, of his first love.

3. It consists in the Christian withdrawing himself from that state of
entire and universal devotion to God, which constitutes true religion,
and coming again under the control of a self-pleasing spirit.

4. The text implies that there may be a backslidden heart, when the
forms of religion and obedience to God are maintained. As we know from
consciousness that men perform the same, or similar, acts from widely
different, and often from opposite, motives, we are certain that men
may keep up all the outward forms and appearances of religion, when in
fact, they are backslidden in heart. No doubt the most intense
selfishness often takes on a religious type, and there are many
considerations that might lead a backslider in heart to keep up the
forms, while he had lost the power of godliness in his soul.

HOW TO RECOVER FROM THIS STATE
1. Remember whence you are fallen. Take up the question at once, and
deliberately contrast your present state with that in which you walked
with God.

2. Take home the conviction of your true position. No longer delay to
understand the exact situation between God and your soul.

3. Repent at once, and do your first works over again.

4. Do not attempt to get back, by reforming your mere outside conduct.
Begin with your heart, and at once set yourself right with God.

5. Do not act like a more convicted sinner, and attempt to recommend
yourself to God by any impenitent works or prayers.

Do not think that you must "reform, and make yourself better" before
you can come to Christ, but understand distinctly, that coming to
Christ, alone, can make you better. However much distressed you may
feel, know for a certainty that until you repent and accept His will,
unconditionally, you are no better, but are constantly growing worse.
Until you throw yourself upon His sovereign mercy, and thus return to
God, He will accept nothing at your hands.

6. Do not imagine yourself to be in a justified state, for you know you
are not. Your conscience condemns you, and you know that God ought to
condemn you, and if He justified you in your present state, your
conscience could not justify Him. Come, then, to Christ at once, like a
guilty, condemned sinner, as you are; own up, and take all the shame
and blame to yourself, and believe that notwithstanding all your
wanderings from God, He loves you still--that He has loved you with an
everlasting love, and, therefore, with lovingkindness is drawing you.

Charles G. Finney