Backsliding God Will Take You Back

One of the most frequently asked questions we get coming through our site is whether or not God will take you back if you have really backslid from Him to any appreciable degree in this life.

We have many people who were saved earlier on in their lives, and then over the years grew further and further away from God as a result of chasing after their own fleshly pursuits and/or falling into various types of sins they knew were going against the will and ways of God.

Now many of them are at the end of their ropes. They have no where else to go and no one else to turn to. They know the ways they were following in this life were not the ways of God. They had made some serious mistakes with the way they were running and handling their own personal lives.

They know now that they should have turned the reigns of their lives over to the Lord the minute they got saved and from there, should have followed the leadings of the Holy Spirit on a daily basis so God could have led them into the perfect divine plan that He had already set up for their lives.

Now they look back and see how they have really blown it. Many of these people’s lives are now in total shambles, with many of them now being flat broke, along with all of their marriages ending up in divorce.

Some of them are now in deep pits of despair and depression, feeling that there is no more hope for any of them due to the desperate straits they now found themselves in.

God seems so far and so distant to many of them, that they feel there is no way that He would ever take any of them back again because they have simply pushed the envelope too far with Him with how they have handled and run their lives over the years.

In this article, I am going to give you three very powerful things that will prove to you, without any shadow of a doubt, that God will take all of you fully back if you will only reach out to Him and fully commit your entire life back to Him.

Now I want to give you three very powerful things that you will really need to grab a hold of if you want to get God back in your life.

The first one is on the story of the prodigal son. Here is the passage from our Bible giving you the complete details as to what had occurred between a father and a son after he had left his father many years before. This story will apply to many of you right now who have backslid from the Lord over the years.

1. The Story of the Prodigal Son

Here is a very powerful story that you really need to grab a hold of so you can see how God the Father will do the exact same thing with each one of you – no matter how far you have backslid from Him, no matter how many bad sins you have committed against Him, and no matter how many years you have been completely away from Him. This passage is titled “The Parable of the Lost Son.”

“Then he said: “A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’ So he divided to them his livelihood.

And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living. But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want.

Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. and he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything.

But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!

I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”

And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry.

Now his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.’

But he was angry and would not go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him. So he answered and said to his father, ‘Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this son of yours came, who devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.’

And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.'” (Luke 15:11-32)

Again, this is an extremely powerful story that you will all need to grab a hold of if you have backslid from the Lord to any appreciable degree in this life. God the Father made sure this specific story was put in the Bible so as to let everyone know that He will take you back if you have fallen away from Him for any length of time in this life.

Notice what got the younger son back into the good graces of his father – it was his truly repentant heart.

He knew that he had did wrong and that he had sinned against both his father and God Almighty Himself and was not afraid to admit it directly to him.

He was coming back to his father with a truly broken, remorseful, and repentant heart, as he had found out the hard way that he had been living his life in all of the wrong ways with the blessings that his father had initially given to him.

If the father in this story was willing to take his son fully back into his good graces as a result of the son admitting his sins and transgressions against him, then God the Father can do the exact same thing with each one of you – if you will only be willing to admit that you have done wrong in His sight and that you have followed the wrong path in this life.

This parable dramatically shows you the mercy and love that God is capable of showing you if you will only humble yourself before Him, confess out your sins and transgressions before Him, and then ask Him to take you back.

2. God Will Forgive All of Your Sins

The next thing you will really need to get a hold of is that God can fully forgive all of the sins you have ever committed against Him, especially the sins you have committed against Him while you have been in this backslidden state with Him.

Again, there is no sin so bad, so evil, and so vile that cannot be fully forgiven and fully washed away by the blood of Jesus Christ.

No matter how many marriages you have been through, no matter how many people you have fornicated with, no matter how many drugs you have taken or experimented with, no matter how many criminal enterprises you have been involved in, God can still fully forgive you of all of your personal sins, no matter how bad and how extreme some of them may have been.

Here are some of the most powerful verses in the Bible showing you that the blood of Jesus Christ can fully wash away every single one of your personal sins:

• “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16)
• “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28)
• “Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.” (Psalm 55:22)
• “My little children, these things I write to you, that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” (1 John 2:1)
• “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
• “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” (Acts 3:19)
• “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins. Put Me in remembrance; let us contend together; state your case, that you may be acquitted.” (Isaiah 43:25-26)
• “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus …” (Romans 8:1)
• “Come now and let us reason together,” says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” (Isaiah 1:18)
• “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
• “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:12)
• “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.” (Ephesians 1:7)

All of these verses mean exactly what they are saying. Notice some of the extreme wording that God is using when it comes to His ability to be able to fully forgive you of all of your personal sins under the shed blood of His Son Jesus.

First of all, that His throne is a throne of grace and mercy. The word “grace” in this verse means the “unmerited mercy and favor of God.” In other words, God will have mercy on you, take you back, and fully forgive you of all of your sins if you will just make the effort to come back to Him with a humble, contrite, and repentant heart.

In the second verse, Jesus is calling out to all of those who are in a very heavy laden state. Many of you who are in this backslidden state are now under a very heavy yoke of bondage and fear due to the desperate straits you now find yourself in.

Jesus is now offering every single one of you a way out. He is telling you in this verse that His yoke is easy, that your burden can once again be made light, and that you can find real rest and peace for your souls if you will just come back to Him right as you are now and fully submit yourself back to Him.

Notice also that if you fully confess your sins before God, that He will be faithful and just to fully forgive you of all of your sins and clean you up from all of the unrighteousness that has occurred from those sins.

In other words, you can be made completely whole and clean again if you will just come before the Lord and personally confess out all of your sins to Him. All of the slime that you now have on you from your past sins can be completely washed off you by the blood of Jesus if you will just take the full forgiveness that He is now offering you.

To really drive home the point that God can fully forgive all of your sins, He uses some additional extreme wording in the above verses such as that all of your sins can be “blotted out,” that He will “not remember” your sins, that your sheets will be made as “white as snow,” and that your sins will now be removed from Him as far as “the east is from the west.”

The last verse really says it all – that we simply have full forgiveness for all of our sins through the blood that Jesus has already shed for all of us on the cross. As a result of being able to have all of our sins fully forgiven with the Lord, the Bible tells us that we are now all “new creations” in Jesus, and that all of the old things from our past have now “passed away.”

Again, to any of you who have backslid to any appreciable degree in this life, you can now have your very first love Jesus Christ come back to you if you will just do your part and reach out to Him. Jesus is right there waiting for you to come back to Him. He can take you back right now, right where you are standing at, and start all over again with each one of you, no matter how bad things may be in your life right now.

3. The Love and Mercy of God

To add the icing on the above cake, here are some more verses that will show you how loving and merciful both God the Father and Jesus Christ really are. These verses should be meditated on and grounded on, as they are all giving us very powerful revelation into the nature and personality of God Himself.

If you feel God is simply too far away from you and that there is no way He would ever take you back – again, study these next set of verses very carefully and then add them into the ones just listed above on forgiveness.

Put both of these kinds of verses together and the Bible is telling you loud and clear, that God will take you back if you will just make the effort on your end to reach out to Him.

It really is that simple and that easy. You reach out to God and then He will start to do the rest. He will help you get your life back in order and put you on the perfect divine path that He already had set up for your life before you were even born into your mother’s womb.

• “… But You are God, ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in kindness …” (Nehemiah 9:17)
• “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy.” (Psalm 103:8)
• “But You, O Lord, are a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth.” (Psalm 86:15)
• “Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness …” (Joel 2:13)
• “The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy. The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works.” (Psalm 145:8)
• “The Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting …” (Psalm 100:5)
• “For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him … But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him.” (Psalm 103:11,17)

These verses are all very strong and powerful verses. These verses are giving us an incredible glimpse into the mind and personality of both God the Father and Jesus Christ. Notice the words “mercy” or “merciful” are in every single one of these verses.

If you are in a backslidden state with the Lord, then you will need both the love and mercy of God on both you and your life. The mercy of God will allow Him to take you back and start working with you all over again.

And all of these verses are not only telling you that our God is very merciful, but they are also telling you that He is “abundant” in this mercy. In other words, God is full of love and mercy and He wants to fully extend it to you if you will only do your part and recommit your life back to Him.

According to some of my Bible Dictionaries and Commentaries, the word “mercy” means the following:

• Compassion or forbearance shown to an offender
• Kindness, loving kindness, unfailing love, tenderness, faithfulness
• To feel or show compassion, to love deeply, to show pity, to tenderly regard someone, to tenderly love
• A divine quality by which God faithfully keeps His promises and maintains His covenant relationship with His chosen people despite their unworthiness and unfaithfulness
• The compassionate disposition to forgive offenders or adversaries and to help or spare them in their sorry plight

These definitions perfectly spell out what the mercy of God is all about. Again, to any of of you who are in this backslidden state with the Lord, meditate on these verses and definitions on the mercy of God, and realize that God will take you back and give you a full second chance if you will just make the effort on your end to reach out to Him.

How to Get Back on Track With the Lord

Again, I want to reiterate, no matter how far you feel you are from God, no matter how many years you have been away from Him, and no matter how many bad and evil sins you have committed against Him, God can still fully take you back at anytime and start to work with you all over again just like the father did with the prodigal son in the above parable!

It is never too late to try and get the show going back with the Lord. Moses was 80 years old when God called him out of the desert to embark on and complete one of the greatest deliverance missions of all times.

Moses worked for God on this deliverance mission with the children of Israel from the ages of 80 years old to 120 years old.

So it is never too late to recommit your life back to the Lord to see what He can still do with it with what little time you still have left down here.

To those of you who feel like you have been in a backslidden state with the Lord for quite a number of years, and would like to recommit your life back to the Him and enter into His perfect plan and destiny for your life, here are the steps we recommend that you take to get yourself back on track with the Lord.

1. The Full Surrender

As we have said over and over again in many of our articles, the very first step you will need to take is to make a full and complete surrender of your entire life over to the Lord.

You have been running your life over all of these years and now your life is in a state of total shambles as result of trying to do everything out of your own intelligence levels and out of your own flesh.

You will now need to turn the reigns of your life back over to the Lord and let Him run your life from here on in, not you or anyone else in your life.

We ask that you go to our article titled, “The Full Surrender” in the Bible Basics section of our site. Read this article in its complete entirety and then do the full surrender prayer that is in there if you are in complete agreement that the Lord should be the One who should be running your life from here on in.

Once you make that full surrender to the Lord as explained in that article, then God will start to move to help clean up your life and get you back into the perfect plan that He has set up for your life. But your first part will be to make that full surrender to Him. It’s your all for His all.

2. Confess All of Your Known Sins to the Lord

The next step we would recommend you take is to take a piece of paper, go back in memory lane, and write down every single sin you can think of that you have committed against the Lord over all of those backslidden years.

After you have all of them written down, then humbly go before the Lord in prayer and confess out each one of these known sins directly to Him and ask Him to fully forgive you and wash you clean from all of these sins by the blood that Jesus has already shed for you on the cross.

Tell God that you are really sorry for rebelling against Him over all of these years and that you now want to do things His way, not your way – and that you now fully realize that He should have been the One running your life over all of these years, not you or anyone else in your life.

Have a good, heart-to-heart talk with the Lord, pouring yourself out to Him with everything that has occurred to you in all of those backslidden years. Also, be open and sensitive to any specific sins the Holy Spirit may bring back up to your remembrance that will need to be confessed.

Bare your soul, bare your heart, and bare your emotions with the Lord. Do not be afraid to let it all out with the Lord.

This type of deep, heart-to-heart talk with God could last for several days, if not several weeks. Stay with it as long as you feel like you want to so you can get everything off your chest that needs to be said between you and the Lord.

The Holy Spirit will also be helping to guide you through this kind of emotional talk and discourse with the Lord.

3. Re-establish Your Personal Relationship With the Lord and Start Growing in Him

After you have made a full and complete surrender of your entire life over to the Lord and have fully confessed out all of your known sins to Him, then let it go, take your life one day at a time, and start to re-establish your personal relationship with the Lord and start growing back in Him. This will not all happen overnight, but over time.

Here are some suggestions to get all of this going again with the Lord:

1.  Start reading your Bible on a regular basis so you can start growing in the Lord again.

2.  Join a good, Spirit-filled church so you can get back into the flow and start fellowshipping with other believers.

3.  Keep the communication lines between you and the Lord always open and pray and talk to Him as much as you want. We have a very good article on seeking after the Lord.

The title of this article is, “Seeking after the Lord With All of Your Heart.” This article will show you how you can start to establish a closer and much more intimate personal relationship with the Lord.

4.  Use this website, as we have many articles covering all of the main basic areas of the Christian walk. These articles will help get you up and running in no time in the knowledge and ways of our Lord.

5.  Be very open and sensitive to any specific leadings you will receive from the Holy Spirit. You may need God’s help in cleaning up some of the wreckage that may have occurred in your life. God will start to guide you as to what to do and how to do it so you can get your life back in order.

God will also be setting you up and guiding you into whatever His perfect plan will be for you in this life.

It is the job of the Holy Spirit to lead you in this life, and He will now be the One to take complete charge of your life and guide you as to where He will want you to go and what He will want you to do so you can fully accomplish everything that God will want you to do for Him in this life.

Conclusion

Again, we cannot state this strongly enough – if any of you out there have fallen into some real hard times as a result of trying to do everything on your own, and you have seriously backslid from the Lord over all of these years, there is still hope and a brand new life waiting for you.

And that brand new life and hope will be found in your very first love, Jesus Christ, who you left years ago.

Jesus Christ is still your first Love and Savior, and also your Lord if you will just allow Him to take the reigns of your life and start over again.

You may have left your first Love, but Jesus has never left you. Jesus will fully take you back if you will just humble yourself before Him, admit your wrongdoings and sins before Him, and then ask Him to take full and complete control of your entire life from here on in. Your new life can immediately begin the second you fully surrender your body, your soul, your spirit, and your entire life back into God’s hands.

Now you will start producing the real fruit that you should have been producing in the Lord years ago. Now you will find who your true soul mate is going to be if you are not married yet and if it is in God’s perfect will that you get married in this life.

Now you will find the job or jobs that God will be wanting you to work at. Now you will be finding out what your true calling and purpose is going to be in this life, since God will now be leading you into your true divine destiny with Him.

One of the best verses in the Bible that perfectly sums up what the big picture is really all about is the following verse:

“Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.” (Psalm 127:1)

Bottom line – unless God is the One who is building up your life in the direction that He will want it to go in, you will end up laboring in vain when it is all finally said and done.

Sooner or later the house you are attempting to build in this life operating out of your own efforts and wisdom will come crashing down on you.

And when it does, you will have absolutely nothing to show for it as far as the Lord is concerned, since you did it operating out of your own will instead of His will – and you will thus end up wasting your one and only opportunity down here to accomplish whatever God’s perfect best would have been for your life.

You only have one shot, one window, and one golden opportunity to leave your mark in this world, and that can only be done by operating in God’s perfect will for your life, not your will.

To those of you who have already learned this lesson the hard way, you can still get back on board with the Lord at anytime and start a brand new life with Him.

God can still do big and great things for you and through you with whatever time you still have left, but He has to be the One to run your life, not you or anyone else.

One of the greatest heroes in the Bible, Joshua, said to choose this day who you will serve. He chose God and as a result, he ended up becoming one of the greatest heroes in the Bible.

Let God do the same thing for you. It is never too late to step into your true divine destiny with the Lord – no matter what your age or what your current situation is!