There is a difference between having a formal and a living creed. In the one we mentally acquiesce to a theory – based on study and revelation, and in the other we actually transfer its teaching into action. In other words, we do what we say we believe. We live in the words we speak and become “doers of the word, and not hearers only.” (James 1:22-23). We only believe what we actually do!
Backsliding is sliding away from known truth we once lived in. All Christians can go astray like the sheep or be lost like a coin, and can move so far away from God that, like the prodigal son, they become cold of heart. Once we fail to walk in known truth we are on a precarious path downwards away from God. It is not only holding a formal creed but also living in the living creed. Most formal creeds state that “where two or three are gathered together there He is in the midst.” Many Christians agree, but don’t meet together, especially in prayer meetings, because they either don’t want to meet God, or they don’t really believe it!
This leads me to a time in Patricia’s life where she fell away from God, and the circumstances in which she found herself led to that situation. The cause of this backsliding was due to a visit from a leading Anglican Minister with a healing ministry who turned up at my house with his entourage whilst I was at work, and praying for her pronounced her healed. It was not his normal custom to visit people in their homes, but he responded to a request from the wife of the principal of Birmingham Bible Institute who knew us well, and such was the passion of the request, he felt constrained to do it; in other words, it was right in God’s will so to do. However, within a few days Patricia was admitted to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford where she had a trachi inserted because her breathing had deteriorated rapidly. She retained it for many years.
This was the last straw in her sad physical decline, she already had a gastrostomy tube through which she could feed herself. She was often wheelchair bound, and now a breathing tube. Life was becoming worse by the year. She stopped reading the Bible and praying and turned away from God. She could not cope with it any more, her faith was rocked to its foundations. I being a minister couldn’t explain it, so I guarded and loved her to bits. That’s all I could do. One day after many months in this state she was in the kitchen of our home, and I was at work. She suddenly turned because she felt someone was with her in the room, and she realised it was God, He said “I’ll never leave you or forsake you.” A few weeks after that it happened again as she dusted the hallway. She just sat on the bottom step, and spoke “I suppose you’d better come in again, you’re certainly not going to leave me alone “and with that she regained her faith, passion and love for God.
That night as we were in bed I noticed her Bible again on her bedside table and when I remarked on it she told me what had happened, I wept and I weep now in my memory of that crisis of faith. I had purposefully refrained from remonstrating with her as her pastor, on her failure to pursue God, for not praying and reading her Bible, but simply committed her to God and loved her back into life. I was patient with her impatience – I believed for her lack of faith. I could do no more, she was in God’s good hands, and they drop nothing!
There is no knowing the depth to which she sank, only God knows. She was abandoned at the age of three, had six homes by the time she was eleven, and found God as her father at thirteen, here was someone she could trust at last. When she had her trachi, he had, in her estimation also deserted her. What would you say? I think of Joseph who went from a pit to Potiphar’s house and then to prison with declining prospects, but in one day he was delivered; so was Patricia. As she grew older she could look back on the unfortunate episode and she learnt that God never lets go and dogs our footsteps through life. “What can separate us from the love of God” nothing, for it is vested in Christ Jesus and we are engraved on the palms of His hands.
