One of things I pray for every morning is for the Lord to keep me from sinful backsliding. When we hear the word backslide, we may think about falling back into our old sin filled life. While backsliding certainly includes that, it is not necessarily limited to it.

Backsliding is not just falling backward, but it is also failing to go forward spiritually. In the Christian life, there is no standing still.

We all have choices no matter how far we backslide. We can let the devil pile on or, we can learn from it and get back to Jesus as quickly as possible. If we catch ourselves backsliding, we just need to separate ourselves from our sin and slide our way back to God.

• backsliding