Backslide

“People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”

One Sunday when he was a young man, Robert Robinson and some buddies went to church…but only to make fun of the Christians gathered in worship. However, the preacher that day was the mighty George Whitefield, and Robinson ended up giving his life to Christ instead!

And that’s just one part of this hymn writer’s amazing spiritual journey.