Quote:
Originally Posted by Steadfast
What about the mistake of learning how to turn God 'on' and 'off' to fit your situation. Some are convicted in the move of God and then learn how to 'override' that conviction when other things come calling...
Surely that's a mistake many backsliders make. The reason it's so dangerous, outside of playing with God, is that you learn to use God to appease your conscience instead of returning to Him with your whole heart.
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Very true. God gave me a thought several years ago that became a message I preached to the youth group I was privileged to lead at the time, a thought about becoming 'Spiritual Samsons'. See, Samson came to a point in his life where he took the presence of God for granted, and, instead of fleeing from Delilah when it should have been painfully obvious that she was out to destroy him (after all, she did try everything he teased her with about the source of his great strength), he kept playing around. Here is the verse that I believe is so sad in the whole story:
And she said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And
he wist not that the LORD was departed from him.
Judges 16:20
Samson had messed around enough that he could no longer tell when God was no longer with him. I have had friends and peers in the church who made the same mistake of messing around with things that they had no business messing with, all with the mistaken idea that they could come back to church and 'pray through' whenever they wished. They sadly thought that, because God in His great mercy would respond to them in an altar service and they would 'get a good blessing', they could go out and mess around some more but be able to come back and 'pray through' again. Those individuals were spiritual Samsons.
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