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Returning to God
Even the most zealous Christians can find that their love for God has cooled if they are not careful. This drift away from the Lord can be so subtle that you fail to recognize the loss until it has become severe.
There is a pattern in Scripture of how God’s people experience revival. The following six characteristics generally occur when people fall away and then return to God:
- God is on mission to redeem a world that does not know Him and is lost in its sin (Romans 5:8). God pursues us (Hosea 11:7-11).
- God is the One who initiates a love relationship with us that is real and personal (John 1:12).
- Because of sin, our hearts tend to depart from this intimate relationship. This departure is devastating and will lead to spiritual death if it is not corrected (Jeremiah 3:20-22).
- Whenever we stray from God to any degree, He disciplines us in increasing measure until we return. This decision is either repent and return to God, or to perish in judgment (Isaiah 59:1-20).
- We cry out to God in our distress and return to Him. Scripture promises that “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Christians often speak of “rededicating” their lives to God. But we must recognize that God does not call us to rededicate ourselves; He calls us to repent our sin. God’s prescription for restored fellowship with Him is humility, prayer, seeking His face, and repentance. He promises to hear, forgive sin, and bring healing.
- When we return to God (and not merely to religious activity), He returns to us in a fresh, close relationship and begins once again to fulfill His purposes for us (Zechariah 1:3; 2 Chronicles 15:1-3). The joy of your salvation, the power of God, and His holy cleansing of your life will not occur until you sincerely return to God.
How do we lose intimacy with God? There are three parables of Jesus in Luke 15 that describe how this can happen:
- Lost Sheep (Luke 15:3-7): Sheep typically get lost from the shepherd when they turn aside to distractions. They don’t consciously choose to wander from the rest of the flock. They simply follow whatever catches their interest at the moment. Like a sheep, you can focus on the world and the things of the world, on pleasures and activities, or on other people and relationships. You lose your focus on the Lord, and before long you can drift far away.
- Lost Coin (Luke 15:78-10): Generally, valuables are lost through By not taking precautions, we can misplace even the most valuable possessions. Like the carelessness that lost a valuable coin, you may fail to guard your heart and mind. In the busyness of life, we forget to pray and we cut short our times with the Lord. Then one day, He seems far from us. When temptations come, your ability to resist is weak. Then sin robs you of your intimacy by breaking fellowship with the Lord.
- Lost Son (Luke 15:11-32): In this story, the prodigal son deliberately chose to leave to indulge in a wasteful lifestyle that dishonored his father. Tragically, there are those who deliberately abandon their fellowship with Christ. Perhaps they decide they want to pursue worldly pleasures or they refuse to obey what God has clearly commanded. Like the prodigal son, you may intentionally resist the Father’s will through disobedience and the pursuit of sinful behaviors and activities.
There are at least four ways you can discern if you have drawn apart from God:
- You no longer hear from God (Deuteronomy 30:17).
- You lose your joy (John 15:9-14).
- Your life does not produce spiritual fruit (John 15:1-8).
- You no longer experience spiritual victory in your life (Deuteronomy 28:25).
Confessing and returning to the Lord are good, but prevention is even better. Scripture gives much helpful counsel for keeping your heart from departing from the Lord:
Proverbs 11:14 advises, “Where there is no counsel, the people fall; but in the multitude of counselors, there is safety.” Surround yourself with godly counselors, who will encourage you and warn you if they see your heart is beginning to shift.
That should be the gauge for your Christian life. Periodically meditate on your love for God. Ask, “Am I loving the Lord my God with all my heart, or have other affections begun crowding out my devotion to Him?”
Jesus also said, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matthew 7:24). Loving God is a choice we make. Adopt a lifestyle of obedience.
Here’s a quick summary:
- Guard your heart
- Listen to Godly counselors
- Love God
- Obey God
Reflect on your walk with God. Is it more vibrant and powerful now than it ever has been? Or has something been lost?
Experiencing God as Couples
Henry Blackaby explained, “When God intended to use an ordinary life like mine for His purposes, He chose in His great wisdom to match me up with the partner perfectly suited to me and to God’s direction for my life.”
Both his and his wife’s families were active in their local churches. Both of their fathers were deacons. As he explained, “Having grown up in such homes, we both surrendered our lives when we were young to do whatever our Lord commanded and to go wherever He told us to go. Early on, we grew to love the local church and to have a heart for missions.”
If you have not done this recently, take time to list the various ways you know God directed you to be joined with your spouse. At times during the busyness of daily life, we forget that God gave us a husband or wife as an expression of His love for us.
One Flesh
Marriage is joining together a man and a woman to create a union through which He can accomplish His purposes and be glorified. Marriage is not merely a human contract or agreement. It is a divine creation. God has a special purpose for each couple He unites. He is so committed to the sanctity of marriage that He hates divorce (see Malachi 2:16).
What does it mean to be one flesh? It implies that your life is not your own.
Being one with your spouse is critical to your ability to hear from God. That is why the apostle Paul warned believers not to marry unbelievers (2 Corinthians 6:14). The spiritual intimacy you have with your spouse will affect your walk with God. The apostle Peter said a husband who mistreats his wife will find that his prayers are hindered (1 Peter 3:7). That is also why it is wise never to allow your anger or a damaged relationship to remain unresolved (Ephesians 4:26).
When God has a plan for the wife, it means God’s activity will affect the husband too. Because you are one flesh, you need to adjust your life to a word God speaks to your partner.
Once couples come to understand God’s purpose for their marriages, they discover a new and exciting dimension to their lives together.
Joining God’s Activity in Your Spouse’s Life
One of the most exciting things you can do is to look to see where God is working in your spouse’s life and join Him by:
1. Regularly Praying For & With Your Spouse
Praying regularly for your spouse enables you to gain God’s perspective. As you pray, God can alert you that you need to take a specific action, such as offering a word of encouragement or giving a note or gift.
2. Regularly Asking Your Spouse Spiritual Questions
Some Christian couples never speak to each other about God’s activity. They assume God is working, but they never talk about it. Ask each other questions like “What has God been showing your in your quiet times lately? Has God placed a particular burden on your heart as you have prayed? You seemed very intent during the sermon today. What was God saying to you?”
3. Reviewing Your Spiritual Markers as a Couple
As God leads couples in their marriage, they will experience key moments when God clearly, unmistakably speaks. It is important to regularly recall these times together. Identify these spiritual markers and periodically review them as a couple.
4. Ministering Together as a Couple
God led you to your spouse for a reason. If couples look for God’s activity together, they will discover that there are ways God wants to work uniquely through them together to accomplish His kingdom purposes.
5. Giving Together
Many Christian couples faithfully put their checks in the offering plate as it is passed each Sunday, but they have never tapped into the joy of giving together. God is at work in the world around you. He wants you to become involved both personally and financially.
God has called all of us to be on mission with Him. One of the first places we must seek His activity is in the life of the person we are most intimately related to. If God has given you a life partner, you will want to be involved in the great work God intends to do in his or her life.
Joining God’s Activity in Your Children’s Lives
Psalm 127:3-5a
Children are a heritage from the Lord,
offspring a reward from Him.
Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
Are children born in one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
Whose quiver is full of them.
Not everyone will be married or have children. For those to whom God entrusts them, children are a special assignment as well as a reward from the Lord. If parents neglect their own walk with God, their children will be imperiled. The greatest thing you can do for your children is to support and encourage your spouse’s walk with God.
Wise parents understand that God has a special purpose for each child that He gives to them, and they should carefully watch to see where God is at work in their lives.
In fact, our greatest single contribution to God’s kingdom is teaching our children to watch to see where God is at work around them and then join Him.
God has a unique purpose for each life. As He did for the psalmist (Psalm 139:13-17), God determines that purpose before we are born.
God’s eternal purpose for each of your children is that they be conformed to the image of Christ. God will draw each of your children into a unique love relationship with Him. He will speak to your children and will use the circumstances in their lives to fashion them into Christlikeness. Your influence as a parent is extremely significant. There are several ways you can join in God’s activity in your children’s lives:
1. Pray with and for your children.
Prayer is not primarily for us to tell God what we want Him to do for our children. It is for God to adjust our lives so we can be God’s instrument in their lives. As much as we love our children, we can’t begin to imagine all God has in His heart for them.
God may allow various degrees of discomfort in your child’s life to help him or her grow and learn. If God is seeking to bring maturity and Chris-likeness to our children through hardship, then it is counterproductive to pray away every difficult circumstance God allows in their lives.
2. Talk with your children about God’s activity.
Deuteronomy 6:6-9 and 20-25 instructs parents to regularly talk with their children about God’s activity. Parents ought to recount to their children how they met Christ personally, how God led them to be married, how God guided them in their careers, how God led them to their church, and how God has walked with them through the years. Parents should point out God’s ongoing work in their own lives so the family learns to recognize God’s activity.
3. Minister with your children.
Ask your children God-centered questions. Instead of “What would you like to be when you grow up?” ask, “What do you sense that God wants you to do?” When Blackaby’s children came to him with a question, they learned to expect him to point them to God: “What do you think God wants you to do?” Blackaby wanted his kids to learn to put their trust in God, not their parents.
God created the family and intends that children grow to know and love Him. Parents must be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s activity in their children’s lives.
Experiencing God in the Marketplace
For too long Christians have assumed God’s activity generally occurs at a church building on weekends. In reality, throughout Scripture God was continually at work in the marketplace.
When God launched His great work to bring salvation to humanity, He called:
- Abraham, one of the most successful businessmen of his day (Genesis 24:35)
- Abraham’s son, Isaac, who also prospered in the marketplace (Genesis 26:12-14)
- Isaac’s son Jacob, who became wealthy through his business acumen (Genesis 30:43)
- Joseph, who served God not as a preacher or missionary but as a grain administrator (Genesis 41:37-57)
- Moses, who had a profound encounter with God while at work (Exodus 3:1-6)
- Elisha, who was invited to join God’s activity while plowing a field (1 Kings 19:19-21)
- Amos, who declared he was not a prophet or the son of a prophet but a sheep breeder and a tender of sycamore trees (Amos 7:14)
- Daniel, who served God as a government official.
Jesus was trained as a carpenter. When He called the 12 people who would walk with Him as His disciples, He called fishermen (Mark 1:16-20), a tax collector (Mark 2:14), and other career people. Businesspeople are not intimidated by the world.
Why was so much of God’s activity accomplished in the marketplace? Because that is where people lived throughout the week. The same is true for believers today.
The marketplace—not the church building—is where people spend most of their time. God does not wait to encounter them when they enter His house on Sundays. He goes to where people are and encounters them during their everyday lives.
Blackaby believes churches ought to have commissioning services for those who go into the marketplace every Monday morning in the same way we pray over missionaries who travel to other countries to share the gospel.
God is at work among businesspeople around the world.
Other businesspeople have discovered that God has granted them prosperity so they can invest their wealth in the kingdom of God. Suddenly, rather than being absorbed in their work, these men and women have found that a new world of God’s activity in His kingdom has opened to them.
Jesus commanded those who would be His followers, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you” (Matthew 6:33). This command is not just for people in full-time Christian ministry. Jesus expects every disciple to make his or her first priority to be the building of God’s kingdom.
Throughout history, when God sought to accomplish a great work, He often did it through a businessperson. He wants to work through Christian businesspeople in the marketplace to bring others into a saving relationship with Him. Christians must be alert to what God intends to do through their lives each day as they go to work.
Continuing to Experience God
Two persons were walking together on their way to Emmaus, a town roughly seven miles from Jerusalem (Luke 24:13-35). They were discouraged. They had chosen to follow Jesus, and were excited about all He was doing and teaching. Then Jesus had been cruelly taken from them. Now they were bewildered, not knowing what to do next. Suddenly a stranger joined them and asked what they were talking about. They explained what had happened and that they could no longer follow Jesus as they had intended. Over the next few miles, the stranger explained to them that the events surrounding Jesus’ death were not the end but the beginning of an exciting new opportunity to walk daily with the Son of God. Rather than being taken from them, Jesus was now closer to them than they could have imagined!
Consider adopting a few practices that will help you continue to grow deeper with your Lord:
1. Stay regularly immersed in God’s Word.
Remember God’s instruction to Joshua –
Make it a habit to be in God’s Word daily.
2. Remain intimately involved with a church family that will love and nurture you.
Hebrews urges us: “not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching” (Hebrews 10:25). God made believers interdependent. You cannot experience all God has for you apart from the rest of the body of Christ.
3. Pray regularly.
Daniel made it a habit to pray three times daily (Daniel 6:10). As a result, he had a powerful prayer life in which God answered him in the moment he began to speak (Daniel 9:23).
4. Strive to keep your vows to God.
Ecclesiastes warns, “When you make a vow to God, don’t delay in fulfilling it, because he does not delight in fools. Fulfill what you vow. Better that you do not vow than that you vow and not fulfill it” (Ecclesiastes 5:4-5).
5. Take time to process what God has said to you or done in your life through the Experiencing God study.
Allow God to explain and apply all He has said to you. It is not enough to agree with what God said in your mind. You must also apply God’s word in your heart and life. This involves action. Don’t treat God’s truth as merely a doctrine to be believed but as a reality that must be lived and experienced.
Take a moment to write a separate prayer of commitment to the Lord. Tell Him how you intend, with His help, to walk with Him in the coming days. Sign and date your prayer so you can return to it in years to come.