Lecture XXI. Backslider in Heart (4)

V. How to recover from a state of backsliding.

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 427longer delay to understand the exact situation between God and your soul.

3. Repent at once, and do your first work 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 mere 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 loving kindness is drawing you.