May 31 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"My people are bent to backsliding from me" (Hos. 11:7 KJV).

Devotional

The divine life dwells in a fallen, fleshly nature. It is surrounded by all the corruptions, weaknesses, infirmities, and assaults of the flesh. There is not a moment that it is not exposed to assaults from within. There is not a natural faculty of the mind or throb of the heart that is favorable to its prosperity. All are contrary to its nature. All are hostile to its advance.

Just as there is nothing internal that is favorable to a state of grace, so there is nothing external that assists it forward. It has its many and violent enemies. Satan is ever on the watch to assault it. The world is ever presenting itself in some new form of fascination and power to weaken it. A thousand temptations are perpetually striving to ensnare it.

Thus its internal and external enemies are allied against it. Is it any wonder then that faith should sometimes tremble, that grace should sometimes decline, and that the pulse of the divine life should often beat faintly and feebly?

The saints in every age have felt and lamented this.

Hence the prayer of David, which is the prayer of all true believers: "Hold me up, that I may be safe" (Ps. 119:117). This implies that the greatest weakness is in himself and his perpetual liability to the greatest falls—hold me up, for only as you uphold me am I safe.

Again he prays "Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me!" (Ps. 19:13). This implies that, left to the tendencies of his fallen nature, a believer might become a prey to the worst sins.

The epistle to the Hebrews seizes the occasion thus to exhort them: "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God" (Heb. 3:12). "To fall away" implies a constant tendency to depart from God.

And what does God himself say of his people? "My people are bent to backsliding from me." And again, "Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding?" (Jer. 8:5).

Yes, it is a perpetual proneness to deterioration. The sun rises only to set. The clock is wound up only to run down. And it is no more natural for them thus to obey the laws that govern them, than for the heart of a child of God to follow the promptings of its corrupt and wayward nature.

My sins, my sins, my Savior!
They take such hold on me,
I am not able to look up,
save only, Christ, on thee;
in thee is all forgiveness,
in thee abundant grace,
my shadow and my sunshine
the brightness of thy face.

My sins, my sins, my Savior!
Their guilt I never knew
till with thee in the desert
I near thy passion drew;
till with thee in the garden
I heard thy pleading pray'r,
and saw the sweat-drops bloody
that told thy sorrow there.

Therefore my songs, my Savior,
e'en in this time of woe,
shall tell of all thy goodness
to suff'ring man below;
thy goodness and thy favor,
whose presence from above
rejoice those hearts, my Savior,
that live in thee and love.

(John S.B. Monsell, 1863)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2025.