February 5, 2021 – Click here to listen
A friend of mine is a talented artist and I have bought a few of his renderings in the last couple of years. When I was living in the Florida Keys, I took him fishing several times and ended up witnessing to him on these occasions. He’d been an alcoholic for many years and that problem combined with his non-Christian lifestyle, had pretty much devastated his life.
He lost his family and much of his fortune to the bottle and he confided in me that he’d reached a very low point in his life. On one of our fishing trips he told me that he’d heard about my life and knew I was a Christian and seemed very happy and he wanted to talk about it.
He listened intently as I told him what God had done for me. He told me that he knew that he needed to do something similar, or he was going to die. He was drinking constantly and it was taking its toll. However, no matter how hard I tried to convince him, he would never go to church with me. One day he left to go back to Maui where he lives part of the year and we kind of lost touch.
He spent about three months there and got in with some Christian friends and before he knew it, he’d turned his heart and life over to the Lord. When he got back down to the Florida Keys he excitedly called me and was just beaming about how happy he was and what a difference God had made in his life. He’d quit drinking entirely and had gotten his life back in order.
I was elated to hear the good news. I went to see him and he didn’t even look like the same person. He looked healthy and fit and his face literally beamed with enthusiasm. He was all smiles and could not say enough about his love for God and what He had done for him. It was a dramatic turnaround and I welcomed him as my new brother in Christ.
Some months passed and I received a call from him. Unfortunately, he didn’t even sound like the same person. He was dejected and depressed and it was back to “woe is me”.
Why the sudden turnaround?
He told me that he guessed that maybe getting away from his Christian support group on Maui had a bigger impact on him than he thought. He felt like he was on a ship taking on water in a huge storm and he was sinking fast.
I told him the story of my brother who called me in desperation one day and was crying and sobbing and telling me that he’d reached the end of the line. His life was a wreck from drinking, drugging, multiple divorces, and so forth. His latest wife was getting ready to leave him and he couldn’t handle it anymore.
I convinced him to come to Atlanta and he met with my pastor and me and turned his life over to Jesus. When he returned to New Orleans he was a new person. He reconciled with his wife, and they and their young son were all baptized together in a local church that he had begun attending. His life was miraculously transformed and everything started going his way. He stopped all of the non-Christian nonsense that was going on in his life and started going to church, studying his Bible and his hobbies became hunting, fishing, and wood sculpture. I had never seen him happier.
I wish the story ended there. As time wore on over the next two years I would call him and he told me he had not been going to church or studying his Bible, but he knew that he needed to do so and would try. He continued to drift away from God in spite of my repeated attempts of getting him to get back in church et al.
Then one exceedingly stormy night at an airport in Chicago when I was trying to get the last plane out, my wife called me and told me that my beloved brother Jim had just committed suicide.
It is clear that Satan did not ever give up on my brother even after he turned his life over to Christ. While Jim was safely walking with the Lord, reading his Bible, praying, and in church with other God fearing Christians, he was able to withstand demonic efforts to win him back, but when he started backsliding and quit going to church and studying his Bible he slipped right back into the trap.
The story never ends with accepting Christ as your Savior. Actually that is just the first step. According to the Bible we are engaged in spiritual warfare and if we try to fight Satan alone, we will lose. It tells us the only way that we can survive this warfare is to put on the full armor of God; faith, constant prayer, Bible study, and fellowship with other Christians.
Satan is not to be toyed with. He is powerful and cunning and he does not want to lose one soul and will viciously fight for each of us. I still feel Satan working hard to ruin my life every day. He would win me back if it were not for my donning the full armor of God. I try my utmost to avoid temptation, but he seems to know my weaknesses better than I. That is why I begin each day in prayer asking for divine protection and I read the Holy Word of God.
I do have good news that my artist friend renewed his love for the Lord and to this day is staying strong in the Lord. Halleluiah!
How about you? Are you backsliding lately? Then get your butt back in church as fast you can just like the devil himself is chasing you down like a lion closing in on a gazelle.
Eph. 10:6
Finally brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.
Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand
against the wiles of the devil.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age,
against spiritual hosts of wickedness in high places.
Have a great weekend and go to church this Sunday!