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Bishop Colin Nyathi Open Heavens
NATURALLY, things or objects left on their own and unattended tend to disintegrate in shape and form. They gravitate towards a state of chaos. Fervency and vitality in the Christian life is not an automatic process. Becoming and remaining a Christian requires effort. There are constant forces working to neutralise and if possible, completely paralyse your Christianity.

Our enemy, Satan, has two main objectives. The first one is to try and prevent people from getting saved.The other objective is to ensure that, as a Christian, you are weak, defeated and completely ineffective in your Christian life. He delights in making sure that you are cold, complacent and lethargic towards the things of God.

What I am about to describe is a common experience among Christians. As time goes by, the zeal, fire and commitment you had for God begins to cool off. The desire for prayer, Bible study and spiritual fellowship diminishes. The Christian life is no longer exciting. At this point you literally drag yourself along to church programmes afflicted by a disease called “twelve o’clockitis”.

This spiritual illness causes the victim to be more conscious of time than the presence of God. The service must end at twelve on the dot; otherwise you will storm out in protest! (Of course I am not advocating for irresponsible time management often exercised in the name of the Holy Spirit).

Long worship and extended prayer sessions begin to irritate you. Fiery brethren with long, exciting testimonies laced with memorised scripture and accounts of the latest personal encounters with God, begin to offend you. In fact you make every effort to avoid such “fanatics” because they will cool off — so you think! Given a choice between a lukewarm person and a fanatic, a brother preferred to hang around the latter. Pressed to explain his reason for his preference, he quipped that it is easier to cool a fanatic than to warm up a corpse!

Are you spiritually upbeat? Let us examine the situation further.

● You have stopped fasting the way you used to.

● You usually feel tired and slow in the spirit.

● You desperately and quietly ask within yourself — is there anything more in being saved than what I am experiencing?

● Is this all there is in being a Christian? If these questions and other related ones have flashed through your mind, then you are in good company.

We are living in days where people “enjoy” and “play” church — as usual. However, many of them, deep down in their hearts, are screaming for reality and a life-changing encounter with God. Since it has become fashionable to be a Christian, a lot of people speak and behave saved but the reality of a divine experience in their lives is a myth. There is bankruptcy of God’s power. To put it in plain terms, there is a lot of backsliding.

Backsliding is turning back to your old way of life.

● It is turning away from the Lord. It is defecting, changing.

● It means faithlessness, apostasy (leaving the faith), disloyalty to the Lord and His statues.

● Backsliding is reverting to former ways and things.

The reason why you don’t think you have backslidden is because you view it strictly in terms of being extremely ungodly and committing the three-letter word “SIN”! Much of the rhetoric and embarrassing scenes we are witnessing in the church today amount to backsliding despite our frenzied religious activity.

What are some of the indicators of a backslidden life? The earliest sign of backsliding is the loss of the first love for God. Every believer who has had a genuine encounter with Jesus Christ knows the first love. It is an experience that consumes a person and compels them to be totally sold out to God. With the passage of time, this love begins to grow cold. An uncanny disinterest in the things of God begins to set in. One church mentioned in the Bible seems to have fallen victim of this sad situation. Jesus rebuked the Church of Ephesus for being loveless.

“Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left (neglected, forsaken, left alone) your first love” (Revelation 2:4).

Jesus didn’t mince His words. I can imagine what He would say to a church in the twenty first century. “Yes, your works are good and you labour tirelessly. Your patience overshadows that of a crocodile! Oh, indeed you can’t withstand evil people. Your discernment is super (and even when you can’t discern, at least you are suspicious)! You are very zealous. But you have neglected your first love.”

Remember therefore from where you have fallen (backslidden!); repent and do the first works, or else . . .” (Revelation 2:5). God values your first love more than anything else you want to give Him. God had this same frustration with the children of Israel. Jeremiah 2:2 says “. . . I remember you, the kindness of your youth, the love of your betrothal; when you went after Me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.”

You see, first love makes you totally possessed and captured by the one you love. Nothing else can replace the first love. Anyone who has ever been involved in courtship has a good idea of what God was feeling as a result of Israel’s cold love towards Him. This scene is played over and again in many married couples’ lives. Countless wives are crying for their first love. They have everything else they need — a car, clothes, a home, money, etc, but the man is no longer available. He is impatient and doesn’t attend to small courtesies anymore! The man they see now is not the one who would wait in the rain for two hours under the influence of the first love! He has lost it.

First love is powerful. There is nothing like it. Let me ask you a question:

● Do you still have the fire of God in you?

● Where is that first love?

● Do you still love the Lord?

Another indicator for backsliddenness is that your general love for God and people waxes (gradually grows, becomes) cold. In these last days, there is a reduction of love toward God and fellow men. Jesus prophetically warned, “And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow (wax) cold” (Matthew 24:12).

Little or no interest for God and others is a sign of backsliding. Although you are still religious and going to church, God and His people have little or no place in your heart.Thirdly, you are self-directed, self-governed and full of your own ways. Backsliding causes you to remove your trust from God. The Bible says in Proverbs 14:14, “The backslider in his heart will be filled with his own ways. . .” The more you take control of your own life, the further away you move from God.

Fourthly, you are fainting, tired and weary. By divine design, the spirit of a man is supposed to control the soul and body. More often than not, when the spirit is weak, the vitality of the soul and the body is compromised. A tired, irritable and complaining Christian is often suffering from spiritual fatigue and exhaustion. Isaiah 40:30 tells us that “Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall.” If you take time to rest and after a long holiday you are still tired and exhausted, conduct a thorough check-up on your spiritual state! Chances are that you are spiritually drained.

Fifthly, you are satisfied and happy with the way you are (status-quo). There is always room for improvement and getting into a higher dimension of spiritual vitality. Any time you stop growing, you don’t plateau, you start dying! You are either growing or dying! The Laodicean church was extremely happy about her status-quo “. . . I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing. . .” (Revelation 3:17). This church was totally oblivious of her condition because of settling down and not wanting to move on into higher levels of glory. Jesus gave her a scathing rebuke! “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot, I could wish you were cold or hot. So, then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth” (Revelation 3:15-16). Watch out! What you regard as the greatest experience of your Christianity could be a close relative of vomit! My friend, where has the fire gone? How long has it been gone? Are you getting uncomfortable?