7 Reasons People Don’t Come Back to God! I’m talking about people who have made a profession of faith in Christ Jesus, walked with Him for a time, and then drifted away into the world and never come back to God.

1. They do not believe God really will forgive them.

They do not understand that God has watched their every move and every wrong choice and stands ready to forgive them and take them back with joy. Yes, the Lord is joyful when one of His children returns home. God does not hate you when you fall into sin. He is full of compassion, mercy and love. His grace is sufficient for you. Trust Him to be the Father you never had. Trust Him to be concerned about you. Trust Him to want to receive you back into His care. Jesus paid all your penalty on the cross for your sinful life. Please do not continue taking advantage of His grace by staying away from Him. Your sinfulness made Jesus death a little more painful to Him. How could you not love Him? Run into His arms, weep on His shoulder, sense His loving arms going around you and holding you as His dear child. Nothing is more important to God than your return to loving Him back and returning to a faithful love for His Son.

2. They think that people in the church will look down on them.

That is true. There are carnal people in the church who will look down upon you while you are living in sin. However, many of these same people will embrace you when you come back into fellowship with God’s Son. You see, as believers we are to hate sin and sometimes that hatred for our own sins is unfairly transferred over and used to condemn a person who has lived a sinful life openly. But the joy of your return will bring them joy. Do not stay away from fellowship with other Christians because you believe they will look down on you. Some of that is on you, but they are wrong for not loving you with a Christ-like love and having compassion and a long suffering grace in receiving you back into the fold.

3. They are afraid that when they go to church the sermon will condemn them.

That is also true. Some of it is that you will feel the weight of your own sin but some of it can be that we preachers seem to want to call out people’s sin. Not directly to someone sitting in the pew but preaching a message that condemns sin. Somehow, some of us got the idea that people would fall under conviction if we preach hard on sin and then weep and cry and return to the fold as if we were the ones doing the conviction. The Holy Spirit is the One Who convicts the sinners heart, not we preachers. We need to preach the Word with conviction. That is true. But in the church, we ought to be preaching the Word to edify and build up the hearers. Then the Holy Spirit can use the Word and convict hearts and draw them back into the fold. We have nothing to do with it as preachers. I wish I had learned this years ago when I was a young preacher but I was taught and felt the need to rail hard against sin. Now I know it is the grace and love of God that brings people to Himself.

4. They do not have friends that follow Jesus.

That is so true. People who are away from God gather friends that will not be opposed to their lifestyle and will also be in complete agreement with your sinful choices. Look at your friends. Look at the people you surround yourself with and that will tell you where you stand as a Christian. You see, it is common for us to desire to be around people we feel comfortable with and then we feel we can just be ourselves. However, if you do not have any true and serious followers of Jesus as your friends, you will have a difficult time living for Christ. You need people who love Jesus as your closest friends in order to live in harmony with God. They will encourage you, pray for you, and uphold you through life’s difficult pathways and trust me, life can be very difficult. If your friends are all unsaved people, then you will not be able to walk well with Jesus because it would offend those kinds of friends. Remember, that’s why you chose them. They agreed with your sinful living. It is no big headline that you are not living for Christ. Gather around yourself true followers of Jesus and watch yourself grow in fellowship with God. It’s a natural.

5. They keep themselves busy so they don’t have to think about it.

One of the biggest areas of effort in living as a worldly person and claiming to be a Christian is that you must keep yourself busy so you do not have to think about it. You believe that if you just do not think about your lifestyle, then life will be good to you. However, being busy just prolongs your suffering. Why? Because when you live as a worldly Christian, your heart constantly condemns you. The Holy Spirit will speak to you often, even though you try not to listen. That is the worst way to live because you will not have any peace. Peace is something you cannot buy. You cannot drown it with wine and song. God knows that you will only have peace when you repent, turn from your old ways and determine to live for Jesus.

6. They never pray anymore. They have no relationship with God because they broke it off.

What a sad life when a Christian breaks fellowship with God. They pray very little in a day, if at all. They only pray when there is an urgent situation as if God is at their beckoning call.

Have you every had someone break up with you or divorce you? That pulls on some tender hearts strings! Do you think that God is okay when you break fellowship with Him? It breaks His heart. He loves you and you walked away from Him. How do you think He feels? He wants you back. He wants you to talk to Him in prayer and tell Him how much you really love Him. He wants to shower you with blessings. Yet you still stay away as if you do not love Him anymore.

Can I ask you a question? Who loves you more than God? Your boyfriend? No. Your mother or father? No. Your unsaved friends? No. No one love you as much as God loves you. Won’t you love Him back? Will you not give your heart, all your heart back to Him? What keeps you from loving your One true love? Talk to Him. Make up with Him. He stands waiting at your hearts door.

7. They justify their actions by telling themselves that they are doing the best they can to make it in this world with the only choices they have before them.

“Those who follow the right path fear the Lord; those who take the wrong path despise him.” Proverbs‬ ‭14:2‬ ‭NLT‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

One of the things we humans do is make excuses for the things we do that we know are not good. It is called justifying our actions. We all do it. No, it is not good. One of the first things a person does when they wander away from God is to justify their actions. “I just have to do this.” “I have not other choice.” When we say that, we say it because we feel the guilt of our choice weighing heavily upon our heart. We know it is not what God wants for our life, but we justify it. It is common, but it is not good. What can a person do. Make the right choice even though it is a hard choice and God will see you through. You have to trust Him. If you cannot trust Him, who are you going to trust?

May God help you to make right choices for the future and to correct the wrong choices you have put yourself in, trusting in His goodness and grace, sucking it up, standing tall and living right before your King and in a right relationship with your King.

If you need help, email me.

God bless,

Ken Lewis Th.D.

KenLewisThD@gmail.com