"Backslidden, in the CHURCH!"

In my last blog I shared with you some of my trials that brought me to the realization that salvation, is not solidified or defined by attire. In that article I mentioned that I always thought you could not miss sin you have never participated in and I said quote “that’s another story…”
Well this time I want to tell you “that other story.”
I dedicated my life to the Lord at the “ripe old age” of thirteen. Some may say that’s too young to call yourself saved anyway, with that I beg to differ. I was mature enough to know when I was in sin; I had been in church partially all my life. My mother had been saved as long as I had known her, from my birth. I was in church back when your skirt had to at least touch your ankle or you were dressing like Jezebel, when red lipstick screamed harlot and going to the movies could wreck your salvation altogether.
So there I was thirteen years old and I was saved, sanctified and filled with the holy ghost contained in a burning fire with a mind to run on and see what the end was gone be! We had youth service, youth church and enough revivals to ensure everybody would be right there at church the moment Jesus cracked the sky.
Church was my life with little room for much else, and I loved it (still do). Several of my teenage peers were right there with me, I had plenty of support, not to mention a long time boyfriend who was also saved. By time I was nineteen I was married. I have been with the same guy from age thirteen, and was still a virgin. I have always been proud of the fact that, at my age when it was becoming normal to see girls thirteen to nineteen pregnant that I wasn’t one of them. So at nineteen my boyfriend and I decided it would be better to marry than to burn. Don’t get me wrong, I did love him very much. I wanted, as well as, felt that I was ready to be married. Looking back now, I know that I wasn’t.
We got married, bought our first home and were both still saved and serving the Lord faithfully in the church, it was around year two that things begin to change. (it’s a long story that I will reserve for another time, maybe) By the time year three rolled around we were both miserable and trying to make things work, by now I was pregnant with our child, hoping having a baby would help mend some of the broken places in our marriage. We loved our baby and things got better for a while but with the combination of financial and emotional difficulties, not to mention compatibility issues we faced, things began to decline again. (Again let me fast forward and spare you some of the details I’ll share one day) By the time I was twenty nine I was still serving the Lord but some of my unhappiness at home started to become more than I wanted to bear, notice I did not say it was more but more than I wanted to bear.
The temptations I was experiencing grew great, and I couldn’t blame anyone but myself. (Ref. James 1:12-16)
Soon I found myself at church, operating in ministry with sinful desires in my heart. I made friends that weren’t even thinking about salvation, being unequally yoked with them opened me up to desires I had never faced before. (Ref. I Corthinans 6:14-17 if you are battling with having friends who are not of the same mind as you when it comes to relationship and walk with Christ.)Often times we call ourselves on a “crusade” to win the lost, and all along they are winning us. I began to long to hang out with them, party and club…now these were things I had never done; remember I had been saved since I was thirteen. I’d be at church on Sunday morning singing after a night of clubbing, visits to the strip club and other things that I knew weren’t right. To make it even worse I became a big influence on some of my saved friends who like me just wanted to have “fun”. (Pause: Don’t’ think church is not or was not fun, but when you open yourself up to the temptations of the world, it will feel just that way.) They made their own choices to join me, but let’s be real, we know how to influence our friends to take our side in our wrong, or to join us in sin. Unless they are strong enough to turn away and pray for us, they may succumb to the same sins we are partaking in, and some of mine did.
I made excuses like “Well I been saved forever, it ain’t gone hurt to do this…as long as I repent tonight and make it to church tomorrow.” Church became a routine for me. It became just a place I went to save face. I thought as long as I continued to go to church and serve in ministry that I was alright. I often said “Singing on the praise team is my weapon; it’s my way of letting satan know that he doesn’t have me…totally”. But he did. Since my Sheppard was and is a real man of God you know the word coming across the pulpit was sharp. I knew it was right and I was wrong, yet I continued to let my desires to “have fun” outweigh what I knew was righteous to do. This is when RELIGION is not enough, and having a RELATIONSHIP is a must.
Here’s that happened that really rattled me. I am a writer; God has placed this gift in me to share with the world, and to witness to the world through it, I have known this since I was sixteen. I was rudely awakened when one day I sat down to write a play for church and nothing would come to me, I couldn’t hear the voice of the Lord and I realized all along He had been calling me, sparing me and I had ignored Him. I realized then that I had stopped serving God, my worship belonged to my “friend”. And when the “friend” I was now serving, looked me in my face as my marriage was coming to an end and told me that they had to leave me, when they were the one I thought would always be there for me, I was really looking crazy. The entire story of my “friend” would be way too much for you to handle in this article, trust me. But I needed deliverance, from that “friend”, from my lustful and fleshly desires, most of all I needed deliverance from myself. I had backslidden, right there in the church.
I sought God one day riding in my car and cried out to Him to give me another chance to serve Him, making sincere promises to Him that I would serve Him and Him ALONE, not just faithfully but truthfully. Because I had been serving Him faithfully all the time I was backslidden in the church, but what good did my faithfulness to ministry do when I was a horrible example, a hypocritical leader and not living the life I was singing and writing about. The bible says “Faith without works is dead” so what if you are working faithfully yet living the life of a sinner simultaneously, does God honor that work? Surely not. My so called “Dedicated” service had turned to pure “Lip Service” because my heart was far from the Lord. Matthew 7:21 says "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. SO are you a true servant of the Lord, in every area of your life. Is your walk with Christ built on a relationship with Him, or are you a lip serving backslidden church member? Think about it.

Published in WOW Magazine 2010