Deeper Life #170

I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him.

—Hosea 14:4

GOD IS FORGIVING, GRACIOUS, AND merciful to the backslider. Let me take as an illustration the fifteenth chapter of Luke. I know that parable is used in ever so many ways; but I want to use it as a picture of the backslider. It might be called the Parable of Two Sons.

One went away and spent his substance in riotous living, and the other stayed at home. Each of them is as bad as the other; in fact, the spirit of the stay-at-home was every bit as bad as the wild rioting of the younger boy who went away.

Did the father send any message to the boy in the far country? There is no record of any message being sent. But what did that boy have to do? Exactly what was recorded in Hosea 14, ages before that parable was spoken by our Lord: He had to return!

The backslider had to get up, leave the pigs and what pigs eat, and go back from whence he came. Was help granted him? None whatever. Messages from the home country? Not one. Were there tender touches of God’s grace on his life? Not one.

Is there a backslider reading this? Then rouse yourself and go back to God. Are you tempted to say, “But I feel no drawing”? You will feel none, dear friend. I do not find one instance in the Bible in which God drew a backslider in the same way that He draws a sinner. The word to the backslider is, “Return unto the LORD thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity” (Hosea 14:1).

Prayer Thought: God, I pray for the backsliders. Help them, like the prodigal son, to confess their sins and return to their Father.

SUGGESTED READING: Hosea 14:1–9