When “Believers” Turn Away

How can someone be a Christian and then one day say they’re not?

It’s a difficult question because we don’t know whether they were Christians to start with. Just because someone makes a profession of faith doesn’t mean they’re necessarily a Christian.

But maybe a question like that concerns us because we wonder, “Am I next? Am I going to abandon my faith?”

Here’s the answer: that is entirely up to you.

Let’s remember that one of the signs of the last days is that some will fall away from the faith. The apostle Paul wrote, “Now the Holy Spirit tells us clearly that in the last times some will turn away from the true faith; they will follow deceptive spirits and teachings that come from demons” (1 Timothy 4:1 NLT).

One way you know you’re going in the wrong direction is when you challenge Scripture. It isn’t bad to question Scripture because you will come across passages that don’t make sense to you.

But there’s a difference between questioning Scripture and challenging Scripture. When you come to a verse and say, “Well, I don’t like what that verse says, because I’ve chosen to live this way. I don’t want to do what the Bible says.” That’s a different matter altogether.

Someone once asked me, “If you come to a passage in the Bible that you don’t agree with, what you do?”

I said, “Change your opinion.”

The Bible is the Word of God. So, we don’t adapt the Bible to our lifestyle; we adapt our lifestyle to the Bible and understand that it is God’s inspired word that He has given to us.

True believers may stumble, but they ultimately will return to God. And if they do not return to God, then they never were really true believers to begin with.