Prone to Wander

by Natalie Brand

  One of the most perceptive and influential books I have ever read, Prone to Wander touches on the innermost conflicts of the Christian life. But Natalie Brand does more. She comes along side us, pointing out that we are not alone in the battle and that there is a ‘way of escape’ giving us hope and renewed confidence in the power of the cross.

  Faith Cook

  Author of several books, including Troubled Journey and Sound of Trumpets

  Natalie’s gospel-filled warnings mix clarity with compassion. I hope many will be kept from shipwreck by the earthy wisdom of this book.

  Joel Virgo

  Senior Pastor, Emmanuel Church, Brighton

  Our sinful hearts incline us to turn away from the Lord, and we find ourselves spiritually in the wastelands. This little book is a winsome word to believers who struggle or stray, to return to Christ the friend of sinners. Help is given in diagnosing our spiritual need, pointing us to Christ, and taking practical steps for a more constant walk with the Lord. Warmly commended!

  Bill James

  Principal of London Seminary

  The drum-beat of Prone to Wander is: God pursues His children. Natalie makes it clear that backsliding is the result of sin, but lifts God up as compassionate to sinners. She uses helpful biblical and contemporary illustrations to explain why we slide and gives gospel comfort and practical tips to end the descent. Are you running from God like Jonah? Are you weighed down with sorrow and suffering like Job? Are you, like David, desperate because of your own sin? Pick up this book and find help for your soul.

  Keri Folmar

  Pastor’s wife, United Christian Church of Dubai, and author of The Good Portion: Scripture

  Natalie writes as a friend talking to a friend, balancing personal honesty and sympathy with the wisdom and challenge of Biblical truth. This book did my soul good. As one who is ‘prone to wander’ it engaged my mind, warmed my heart, and redirected my steps towards the God I love.

  Jane McNabb

  Conference speaker and Chair of London Women’s Convention

  Pastors and counselors who routinely seek to restore wandering Christians would do well to keep copies of this book as handy as a box of Kleenex. Christians seeking to restore a wandering brother or sister should get and give this book to their friend as quickly as they’d perform the Heimlich on a choking diner. And the rest of us? Well, I can’t speak for you, but, now that I think about it, Prone to Wander is a pretty good description of me…

  C. L. Chase

  Author of Grace-Focused Optimism

  We are all prone to wander, but what does that mean for the life of faith? In this wonderful work, Natalie Brand carefully explores the Christian’s tendency toward unbelief and spiritual distraction. Drawing from scripture, she offers a perspective on how we should respond to such a tendency, and she does it in a way that is biblical, practical, and sensitive to actual human experience.

  Scott Redd

  President and Associate Professor of Old Testament, Washington, D.C. campus of Reformed Theological Seminary

  Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2011.

  Copyright © Natalie Brand 2018

  paperback ISBN 978-1-5271-0208-8

  epub ISBN 978-1-5271-0247-7

  mobi ISBN 978-1-5271-0248-4

  First published in 2018

  by

  Christian Focus Publications Ltd,

  Geanies House, Fearn, Ross-shire,

  IV20 1TW, Scotland

  www.christianfocus.com

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Cover design by Paul Lewis

  eBook production

  by Oxford eBooks Ltd.

  www.oxford-ebooks.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the U.K. such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London, EC1 8TS. www.cla.co.uk

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Preface

  Introduction: Prone to Wander

  Part One: Why We Stray

  1. Running Like Jonah

  2. Drifting to Pleasure Island

  3. The Easy Ride

  4. Despising God in Lust

  5. Job’s Naked Worship

  Part Two: Gospel Comfort

  6. Embracing Lukewarm Weakness

  7. The Shepherd’s Joy

  8. I Can’t Pray

  9. Hunted to the Cross

  10. I’m Not Dead!

  Part Three: Practical Self-Care

  11. Physical and Spiritual Burnout

  12. The Best Preacher in Town

  13. Godly Crampons

  14. Fear and Trembling

  15. Am I Actually a Christian?

  For my Bundle — Hope in a dark place.

  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to the Rev. Dr D. Eryl Davies (Dr D) for offering pastoral and theological guidance. Your comments are always so full of wisdom. Also to the gorgeous Sarah Allen for her hard work on the manuscript and encouragement — I wish I had your command of the English language.

  Thanks to Angela Brand for her proofreading, and also to my dear friends Rhona Black and Lorna Bradley for helpfully sharing their thoughts. My gratitude and love also to Ken and Beryl Gaines for so willingly babysitting at the last minute. And many thanks to the truly talented Jenny Bright for her beautiful and unique illustrations, and to Rosanna Burton at Christian Focus for faithfully working this project through to completion.

  I am indebted to Thomas most of all: for your endless support, personal sacrifices and trawling through my manuscript multiple times. I love that Nicholas is right; you can’t put a cigarette paper between us theologically. Thank you also to Georgiana, Beatrice and Arabella who put up with Mummy going off to the hotel to write, and welcomed me back with excited screams and kisses.

  Preface

  We owe a debt of gratitude to Natalie Brand for tackling an urgent pastoral issue that threatens not only the well-being of God’s people individually but the progress of His gospel at a challenging time — our propensity to wander away from the Lord Jesus, our good and kind shepherd. How welcome is the restoration of ‘grace’ into our thinking and into our vocabulary. Less welcome is the mistaken loss of spiritual responsibility that has sometimes accompanied it. As Natalie helpfully reminds us, grace doesn’t mean that sin doesn’t matter. Far from it.

  With delightful directness and a ruthless willingness to be both deeply personal and painfully honest, Natalie stops us in our tracks through a series of short chapters. Employing the profiles of some of the Bible’s biggest names, she charts the reasons for our willingness to wander, offers us helpful remedies when we find ourselves far from the Lord we love and finally makes some practical suggestions that will help us curb our wander-lust. Unsurprisingly, we discover that all we need is the gospel. But if the Lord Jesus’ heart is to give himself to us, our responsibility is to grab him and never let go.

  Richard Underwood

  Retired Pastoral Ministries Director of FIEC

  April 2018

  Introduction: Prone to Wander

  I can’t pray! My tongue feels spiritually tied and guilt churns in my stomach as I glimpse my dust-ridden Bible, untouched for weeks. I find no strength in my arm to lift it; I have no desire, yet feel some longing and mourning for the things of God. I am in a la
nd as dry as Ezekiel’s valley; the parched earth is as cracked as my lips. I know I should turn around and trudge back up to the cool mountain springs. But I am robbed of muscle and passion. I am just a wandering pile of dry, lifeless bones.

  Yet I am hunted … hunted by the grace that saved me.

  Straying from God

  As Christians, many of us experience times when we struggle in our faith. Times when we get distracted, like dumb sheep, and stray away from the safety of the fold and our faithful Shepherd. Some of us wander for months or even years, backsliding into unbelief and serious sin. Others of us fall into spiritual apathy where our passion for Christ cools and we can’t pray or pick up our Bibles.

  Whether we are lukewarm or backsliding, no matter how far we roam away from God, it is a painful and horrible place to be. We grow unnaturally numb to the goodness of God, the gospel loses its punch, and our sin fails to repulse us.

  Honest to God

  Robert Robinson was a man who was honest about his tendency to drift from the Lord. In his hymn ‘Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing’, Robinson confesses that he isn’t just at risk of straying away from God … he is susceptible to it.

  Prone to wander, Lord I feel it.

  Prone to leave the God I love.1

  Robinson’s words have always resonated with me. I too feel this stupid inclination inside me. Not a week goes by when I don’t wrestle with a distracted or cold heart towards God. Sure, this is because I am just human. But it is mostly because I am a sinner.

  As we shall see, sometimes we are lukewarm because life has knocked us down, and we are dry and burnt out. Other times it is because we are deliberately wandering away: choosing sin. For ‘All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned — every one — to his own way’ (Isa. 53:6, emphasis added). As believers in Christ we are saved by grace but our sin can still drive us away from our loving God.

  Luke Warm

  Meet Mr Luke Warm. After every church service Luke would always stand with his arms crossed, resting against the wall of the church bookshop, looking sharp in his faded jeans and designer sunglasses. About a year or so ago Luke started to leave his Bible at church during the week. ‘So I know it’s here when I need it,’ he would say. Although he helped with the chairs every week and hosted Christianity Explored in his apartment, Luke never prayed publicly anymore. And he talked about sermons in the same way he talked about Michael McIntyre. Luke had just become too cool to burn passionately for Christ … so he carried on spiritually tepid.

  In the book of Revelation Christ rebukes the Christians in Laodicea because their faith had turned lukewarm and flat; like a bottle of Coke left out in the sun too long. Although they looked the same on the outside, they had shrivelled up on the inside and lost their fire for Jesus (Rev. 3:14-22). Their problem was their materialism and comfort (v. 17), and this can be our pitfall too.

  Life Pressures

  Some time ago my love for Christ cooled into a pool of disgusting complacency. I suddenly found it hard to make personal sense of the gospel, and uninvited doubts about the existence of God or whether I was really a Christian would pop into my head. Most of all, my prayer life resembled road-kill.

  A host of things contributed to this: as a family we were burnt out in the ministry, dog-tired from broken sleep with our new-born baby and witnessing the end of a family marriage. These were my triggers but they were not my pitfalls. Such triggers can knock us but they never make us sin. We sin because we choose to. Like the church in Laodicea, my comfort was my stumbling block. Things were hard going and so I looked for the easy ride. I became mentally preoccupied with physical and material ease instead of the comfort given by Jesus Christ.

  But grace saved me from my lukewarm Christianity. You’ve met grace too … when you first came to Christ.

  Rescuing the Backslider

  We also wander away from God because we fall into serious sin. This is frequently described as ‘backsliding’ — a term that suggests a slippery slope and someone sliding down it backwards. Perhaps you are a ‘backslidden’ Christian. You once were a believer in Christ but now you are in the habit of deliberately choosing sin instead of running from it. Maybe you have even denounced your faith and walked away from the church, or committed adultery, or got stuck into some heavy-duty sin that is crushing you. You know you are lost and you need God to rescue you. Don’t be discouraged! God told Ezekiel: ‘I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed’ (Ezek. 34:16, emphasis added). Even when we are stuck in a mess of rebellion and unbelief, if we belong to Christ He will rescue us by the grace of His cross.

  That Same Grace

  So here is hope! The fact you have this book in your hands is a sign that you want out of your apathy and backsliding. Hope lies in the fact that the same grace that first brought you to Christ is available to you now. The grace of the Lord Jesus carries us through the Christian life; it doesn’t just dump us at the door and leave the rest to us. Grace is ready for you in Christ … grab it!

  Am I a Christian?

  ‘That’s all fair enough … But I’ve been backsliding for a long time now and I don’t know whether I was really ever saved.’ The point is, whether you are a lukewarm Christian, a backsliding believer, or a wayward prodigal who learnt of God’s grace in his younger years but has lived many without it, we all need the gospel. In this book we are not going to get caught up in the past and questions of ‘when was I saved?’ We are going to focus on the gospel and taking hold of Christ now.

  This Book

  So, whether you would describe yourself as sliding, straying, running, or drifting from God; if you are spiritually cold, lukewarm, dry, thirsty or just plain worn out — whatever the metaphor — this book has been written to give you gospel comfort and practical counsel to help you move Godward.

  In three parts, we will explore why as Christians we stray from God, offer comfort in your time of lukewarmness or apathy, and unpack some practical essentials that safeguard us from stumbling in the future. If you are in a place of deep spiritual pain and wrestling then I recommend reading part two first. There are also optional activities to encourage you to take further action and again take hold of King Jesus.

  * * *

  1 ‘Come thou fount of every blessing’, Robert Robinson, 1758.

  Part One: Why We Stray

  There is only one reason we stray from God and it is our sin. Here are five biblical profiles to help us understand why at times we leave the God we love.

  1. Running Like Jonah

  Jonah’s wandering away from God is somewhat legendary … and a little fishy. He didn’t just stray from God; he ran. And he ran from God because he was disobeying Him.

  As a prophet of God, Jonah was supposed to be one of God’s elite. Yet when God sends him off to be a street preacher in what is modern day Iraq, to a people who are Jonah’s equivalent of the Islamic State, Jonah hauls off in the other direction (Jonah 1:3). And who can blame him? A holiday in the Mediterranean sounds a lot more appealing.

  Lost in a Dark Place

  So, this fickle and disobedient prophet runs away ‘from the presence of the Lord’ (Jonah 1:3). And while Jonah sleeps soundly in his getaway ship, God stirs up a wild storm (vv. 4-6). This stops him in his mutinous tracks, waking him up both physically and spiritually, and he admits to the ship’s captain that he is running away from his God, ‘the God of heaven, who made the sea’ (v. 9). Jonah knows that if he doesn’t surrender himself to the waves, he will drag these unbelieving sailors to an early death with him. His disobedience has very quickly turned lethal. But God’s grace wastes no time: as the waves envelop him, Jonah is graciously gobbled up by a humongous fish (v. 17).

  We sanitise Jonah’s story when in reality his backsliding led him to a pretty grim place. It is very probable that Jonah wasn’t on his knees praying angelically with only a string of soggy seaweed wrapped around his toes. He spent many long and traumatising hours inside a fish. Jonah describes himself drowning in the �
�belly of Sheol’ which is a Hebrew term for a place of death (Jonah 2:2). Imagine yourself buried alive inside a flooding coffin; that was Jonah’s experience. It would have been pitch black, smelly, and airless. He would have had to fight for breath, especially if he was immersed in water … hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and fighting his own thoughts to give up and allow himself to drown.

  Straying away from God is miserable. Perhaps you know all too well that what starts out as a fun distraction quickly turns ugly and spiritually toxic.

  Grace in the Storm

  But Jonah was not abandoned … and neither are you. If you have been backsliding head-first into sin or if you are dry and feel spiritually dead, remember the promise that He ‘will seek the lost’ and ‘bring back the strayed’ (Ezek. 34:16, emphasis added). God’s grace is unmistakable in Jonah’s story. God’s grace was in the storm: He could have just left Jonah to run away. God’s grace was in the fish: He could have left Jonah to drown, but instead sends an unconventional ark to rescue him.

  Jesus was your rescuer and ark when you first became a Christian. And He is still your ark today; the safe vessel to bring you out of the lifeless depths and back home to God. You see, even when we run like Jonah, God ‘delights in steadfast love’ (Micah 7:18). Our Heavenly Father ‘will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea’ (Micah 7:19).

  What Jonah Does

  What does Jonah do when the reality of his rebellion against the Lord hits him like a face full of krill? We read in chapter two that Jonah calls out to God for help; he prays. In Jonah’s case and in our own, God’s grace works together with our responsibility to call upon Him. When we call upon the Lord He listens.