It’s easy to rant against a backslidden culture.  It’s too easy for most people to trash the church with its shortcomings, failures, and in many cases, a backslidden state. When it’s our friends and family that have walked away from the Lord, then it’s heart breaking. Hosea knew the burden of having backslidden loved ones, and he gives us a great guideline in how to pray for them to return home.  If you have backslidden loved ones, then pray this prayer with me.

Prayer

Lord, I pray for my backslidden friends though You’ve healed them of their sin time and time again.  They have strayed far from You and Your ways once again.  Their diagnosis is pure passion for sin, fitting in with the world and relying on everything but You. The outcome of this sin indisposition is their strength is bled out. They’re afraid and feckless. They clumsily fly through life.   Lord, You love them more than I do.  You want them to repent so take action on their behalf.  Let your Spirit work in them, draw their heart toward You.  I pray they will cry out from the deep parts of their heart.  I pray they will repent with tears upon their beds because if they don’t repent, their sin will consume them. Bring them home in Jesus name, amen.

Hosea 7:1-16

Whenever I would heal Israel, the sins of Ephraim are exposed and the crimes of Samaria revealed. They practice deceit, thieves break into houses, bandits rob in the streets; but they do not realize that I remember all their evil deeds. Their sins engulf them; they are always before me. “They delight the king with their wickedness, the princes with their lies. They are all adulterers, burning like an oven whose fire the baker need not stir from the kneading of the dough till it rises. On the day of the festival of our king the princes become inflamed with wine, and he joins hands with the mockers. Their hearts are like an oven;  they approach him with intrigue. Their passion smolders all night; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire. All of them are hot as an oven; they devour their rulers. All their kings fall, and none of them calls on me. “Ephraim mixes with the nations; Ephraim is a flat loaf not turned over. Foreigners sap his strength, but he does not realize it. His hair is sprinkled with gray, but he does not notice. Israel’s arrogance testifies against him, but despite all this he does not return to the Lord his God or search for him. “Ephraim is like a dove, easily deceived and senseless— now calling to Egypt, now turning to Assyria. When they go, I will throw my net over them; I will pull them down like the birds in the sky. When I hear them flocking together, I will catch them. Woe to them, because they have strayed from me! Destruction to them, because they have rebelled against me! I long to redeem them but they speak about me falsely. They do not cry out to me from their hearts but wail on their beds. They slash themselves, appealing to their gods for grain and new wine, but they turn away from me.  I trained them and strengthened their arms, but they plot evil against me. They do not turn to the Most High;  they are like a faulty bow. Their leaders will fall by the sword because of their insolent words. For this they will be ridiculed in the land of Egypt.

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Most people don’t know where to start growing spiritually. I can assure you the starting point is prayer and Bible reading. Still most people don’t know how or where to start.  Royal Perspectives is a great place to start.  My desire is to connect people to God by connecting them to the scriptures and prayer.  When one prays the Bible, they pray the perfect will of God. Praying the scriptures consistently will produce spiritual growth.

As people pray the written prayers, they catch prayer in their spirit.  When this happens people discover the God that saved them.

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