Returning to God after backsliding isn’t about shame, it’s about coming home. If you’ve drifted from your faith walk and feel like you can’t find your way back, this is your sign that God is still waiting.

Hello, my name is Minae, and I came to speak life to you.

Today, let’s talk about returning to God. Many of us have experienced drifting away from Him for some time, feeling unsettled and wondering, “What is happening?” It can seem like there’s no way back.

But I want to tell you today: you can, and you will. No matter how far you’ve sunken down, no matter how backslidden, if you return to God, He will return to you.

Before I get into it, let’s go to prayer, and then to the Word.

A Prayer Before We Begin

Father God, we come to You today thanking You and praising You for who You are, giving You glory, honor, and praise. There is none like You, God. How excellent is Your name in all the earth.

I thank You that You are not like man. You do not leave us nor forsake us. You don’t leave us in our weaknesses. You don’t leave us when we mess up.

I thank You right now for the woman, the man, the boy, the girl reading this. Whatever circumstance they find themselves in, nobody is too far below or behind that You cannot save and cannot reach. Your hand is not too short.

You said if we confess our sins to You, You are faithful and just to forgive us. Equip this person, God. Fill them up. Refresh and revive them, because they feel all alone. They feel like they’ve done so much that You’re upset with them, and You’re not like that. You are compassionate.

Grant us understanding according to Your Word, Lord. Move me out of the way and speak through me by Your Holy Spirit. We could feel so unqualified to do what You want us to do, but You love us, Your vessels, Your broken vessels, and You put us back together.

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. Hallelujah.

The Heart of Nehemiah

Let’s look at pretty much the first chapter of Nehemiah, because it paints exactly where his heart was at.

Nehemiah 1:1: The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. It came to pass in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the citadel, that Hanani, one of my brethren, came with men from Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who had survived the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem.

And they said to me, “The survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are there in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire.”

So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days. I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.

Nehemiah goes on to confess, not just the sins of the people, but his own father’s house, and his own sin. He asks God to remember His promise: that even if His people were scattered to the farthest parts of the heavens, if they returned to Him and kept His commandments, He would gather them and bring them back.

That first chapter is so packed. It’s the heart of an intercessor, somebody who knows how to grieve over sin, how to grieve over a condition, how to worship, how to pour out to God, how to confess.

When You’re Free But Still Stuck

Here’s what I wrote down after reading that chapter, thank You, Jesus:

When you get out of what’s been holding you back, the captivity, the things you’ve survived, sometimes you feel exposed to the world, the way those survivors were. They had escaped, but they were left in distress, in ruins, ridiculed. They were already free, but they couldn’t move. They were stuck on what they could see with their natural eyes.

That’s why it took an intercessor, somebody with a prophet’s heart, to come and lead those people, to rebuild, to help them.

So maybe you got out of your mess. A relationship, a divorce, a lost home, a car repossession, an eviction. Maybe you got off drugs, or got your children back out of foster care. Whatever it was, so many of us are still stuck in the residue left behind. There’s a stain behind it. Some of us don’t know how to move forward, the addiction on our name, the “how am I going to get a place to live, how am I going to get a job,” and depression creeps in because that’s all we can see.

Maybe you lost everything. Maybe people laughed at you: you’re supposed to be a Christian, a woman of God, a man of God, and look at you. You were homeless, or living with somebody, or living in your car. You were in jail, in prison. You got left, divorced, broken up with. Your hair’s not done, you don’t have any money, and people throw all those jabs at you.

Those survivors in Nehemiah were free but still bound in their minds. And that’s why sometimes we go backward, because it’s easier to stay stuck. It’s easier to go back to a man or a woman you’re not married to, easier to go back to the drink, the smoke, the old behavior. It’s easier to do those things than to do the right thing, because doing the right thing takes consistency. It takes waking up in the middle of the night when the Lord wakes you, instead of rolling back over. It takes getting up out of that bed.

I’m talking to myself too.

What Broke the Cycle

Here’s what broke it open for me: I started worshiping the Lord. Just start singing to Him and declaring, thank You, Lord, thank You. And when it starts bubbling over, the Holy Spirit starts sifting through you, breaking barriers, and you start crying, the way Nehemiah cried out for his people.

Start crying out, even if it’s the same words every day: Lord, help me. Get me free, Lord.

He said if you return to Him, He will return to you. He has not left you. He has not forsaken you. He has not forgotten about you. He’s just waiting, waiting on us to come to Him, to seek His face while He may be found, to call on Him while He is near. He already knows what we’re doing. We can’t hide from the Lord.

So even if you’re in sin right now, even if you feel like I’m supposed to be a preacher, a teacher, an evangelist, a prophet, and look at me, I’m on drugs, I’m backsliding, I’m too ashamed, Lord, He knows you. He sees you. And He is not like man. He’s not sitting there thinking, oh, what a bad person. He knows us. All we have to do is come to Him and surrender: Lord, forgive me.

Just like Nehemiah said: I and my father’s house have sinned. God, I have fallen short of Your glory. Help me, Lord. Cleanse me and purify me.

You have to be real with God, because He already knows your inside. He knows your end from your beginning. He is the Alpha and the Omega.

You Are Not Forgotten

When you hit rock bottom and it feels like all hope is gone, like God has forgotten about you, remember, we have a Savior, Jesus, sitting at the right hand of the Father, making intercession for us daily. He hasn’t forgotten us. Our names are tattooed on the palms of His hands, and He can never forget us.

Just like Nehemiah’s people, our walls were broken down, but our walls are continually before the Lord. He cares about the things we care about. He is a protector, a provider. He loves us. He cares for us.

That’s what it comes down to. Return to God, no matter what you’re going through. Seek His face while He may be found. Call on Him while He is near. You have not done too much that God cannot forgive you. You just have to ask.

Look at what Nehemiah did: he prayed, he wept, he fasted, he repented, and God moved. If you read through the rest of that book, you’ll see everything God did. He prepared Nehemiah to go and do a work, and He’s going to do the same for you.

You are still who God has called you to be. You’re still the prophet, the evangelist, the pastor, the teacher, the business person, the great mom, the great dad, the husband, the wife, whatever it is. You cannot hide from God, and you cannot trick Him. A hypocrite is somebody who’s just pretending. You don’t have to pretend with God. Just be real with Him. Confess your faults, confess your sins to Him. He loves you.

He is a righteous judge, but He is also a secret keeper. You can tell God the dirtiest thing you’d never tell another human being, the thing you’re afraid would make someone think the lowest of you, and He already knows it, and He loves you anyway. Even the people you think are unlovable, God loves them. Even our enemies, the ones we feel God should judge the hardest, He loves them too. He is a loving God, and He is a just God.

So just seek Him. Don’t give up on God, because He will not give up on you.

If You’ve Never Known Him, or If You’ve Walked Away

If you have never accepted the Lord as your Savior, just seek Him, call on Him, and ask Him: God, come into my heart. Cleanse me, forgive me for my sin.

And if you’ve backslidden, if you’ve been feeling like, Lord, I’m drinking again, I’m doing this again, I keep doing the same thing over and over, I don’t care how many times. Jesus said forgive seventy times seven. Even if you keep falling into it, ask Him: God, help me to not want to do it. Help me.

He is not sitting up there keeping a list of everything we’ve done wrong. He loves you. He is compassionate. He is merciful. That’s why He hasn’t come back yet, because He doesn’t want any of us to be lost. He created us for fellowship with Him. He’s not a big, mean, mad God. Sometimes He does get angry, but even the things we think He’s angry about, He’s really saying, I have mercy on you. I’m your Father. I’m your friend. I’m everything you need. Don’t let the devil rob you of this relationship with Him.

I’ve spent so many years of my life in this back-and-forth place with God, pulling close, pulling away. But He said, draw near to Me, and I will draw near to you. The devil is a liar, and the truth is not in him. The devil wants you to think God is distant, that He doesn’t love you. Sometimes we don’t feel Him because He’s a holy God, a just God, and a gentleman. He’s not going to overpower you when you’re pushing Him away. But He is wooing you.

If you’re reading this right now, God is wooing you.

A Word for the One Who’s Thinking of Giving Up

And if you’ve been thinking about ending your own life, I want you to stop, and I want you to worship God. Cry out to Him until you feel His breaking. He loves you. He wants you to know you have something to live for. You are worth more than you think. You have not done too much that He cannot save you or redeem you. When we leave this earth, we can’t take anything with us anyway, so don’t take yourself out over what you feel like you don’t have, or over someone who left your life.

And if you’re carrying a health status that feels detrimental, God can heal you from that. And even if the healing doesn’t look the way you asked for it to look, spend that time with God and say, God, heal me through it all. We’re going to go through some painful things on this earth. But please don’t take your own life. Ask God for the grace to go through whatever it is. If it’s something that can’t be reversed, ask Him for the grace, for the ease. His healing shows up in different ways, and I can’t say how it’s going to look for you. But I can tell you He loves you. He has not forgotten about you.

He never promised us that every day would be easy, that we wouldn’t go through hard and hurtful times. That’s why Revelation tells us that in the last day, He’s going to wipe away every tear. No more tears, no more suffering, no more sickness. We’re all going to get a new body. So be encouraged. Whatever you’re walking through, He is with you, and the suffering of this present time is not worth comparing to the glory that’s going to be revealed.

Think about Jesus: beaten, torn, spit on, mocked in front of everyone, and He was innocent. He didn’t do anything wrong. And He did it because He loved me. Because He loved you. So we serve a God who can be touched by the feeling of our infirmities. He understands you. He understands what we went through as a child. He understands the one who’s been touched in an inappropriate way. He understands the spirit of perversion and lust that follows us, the shame we feel when we fall short of what we need. But God loves us. He loves us. He loves us.

Return to Him

I love y’all. If you found this page, maybe the Lord sent you here Himself so you could hear this message. I hope you made it to the end, because God is speaking, and He loves you.

I’m coming back strong, because the Lord has commissioned me to do His work. I can’t just go back to being who I used to be.

God bless you. Leave a comment below if you need prayer, just say pray for me, or be as specific as you’d like. You can also reach me through my contact page if you’d rather keep it private.

You guys have a wonderful day, morning, or evening, whenever you’re reading this.

When I speak life to you, I mean it. Return to Him. He’s waiting.