You know you are getting OLD if you are living in the PAST.

We are either moving forward or backward. When we stop making progress, we’re backsliding. The signs of life are principally manifested by motion, action: There must be change, movement. Just so, to stay alive spiritually, we must have movement. In our lives with the Lord, there are only two directions we can move; there is no standing still. We can age without getting old.

Every Christian, every church, every fellowship, every movement of God has to have constant change, revitalization, movement, and action in order to stay alive. Some people think that because Christianity has spread throughout the world, that there is nothing more to do.

The reason some Christians stop making progress is simply because they have lost their vision. And when they lose the vision, they lose faith. And when they lose faith they no longer have any initiative to do anything.

Backsliding is the reverse of going forward, or pioneering. When you stop pioneering you start backsliding. They have lost the vision, and “where there is no vision, the people perish” (Pro 29:18).They backslide and sink into spiritual oblivion.

When people stop making progress, it shows that they have lost the initiative. Any army that ceases to attack, loses the initiative. Attacking initiative is what wins a war. The minute an army stops attacking and settles down, it will be defeated, because either the enemy will then launch a counterattack, or the army’s very immobility and lack of vision and initiative will cause it to lose faith in its cause and give up without a fight!

This is one of the devil’s favorite tactics with Christians. He can never win outright, because Jesus has already defeated him by dying on the cross. So the only way the devil can get the victory is to persuade us to give up, by telling us that we have a hopeless cause. “It’s no use,” he says, “so you might as well surrender and leave the field to me.”

The only way we Christians can ever be conquered is if we give up, stop attacking, and stop having the faith to take the initiative to do something for the Lord–win converts, train workers, develop new ministries and methods of outreach, and reach new fields. If that happens, we will be doomed to defeat. We will have already lost.

People with this attitude are already beaten, because they have lost the battle of the spirit. They have given up and fainted in their minds (Hebrews 12:3).What makes a pioneer? First of all, they have a vision, a goal. Because they have a vision, they have faith. Then that faith gives them courage to take the initiative, and they pioneer and make progress. So when people stop progressing, that shows they have lost faith and courage because they have lost the vision.

How do people lose the vision? Somewhere there’s been a break in the contact with the source of power. It’s like turning off a TV: Push the button that cuts off the power, and the picture disappears. So why do people lose their faith and drive to do something for the Lord? Why do they backslide? Because they have lost touch with God–direct personal contact, intimate contact with God, that direct personal hotline to God.

The trouble with some Christians is that they’ve gone as far as they want to go. They’re stuck in a rut and are often not really interested in reaching the souls near them, much less the rest of the world. They’re satisfied with what they’ve got, so they stop. But there’s no such thing as stopping! Anyone who doesn’t have the vision, faith, and courage to take the initiative to win new souls and train new workers needs to watch out, because there is no such thing as standing still!

If any Christian workers or missionaries have lost the “pioneering spirit,” if they’re not going forward to establish the Kingdom of God on earth, if they’re content short of that goal, if they’re satisfied with what they already have and are not interested in progressing until they see righteousness covering the earth “as the waters cover the seas” (Isaiah 11:9; Habakkuk 2:14), then they’re backsliding.

Jesus gave His life and got His followers started, and as long as they and the other early Christians had the vision and kept in close contact with the Lord, they were sweeping the world. Eventually they even overthrew the Roman Empire with the good news of the Gospel. But then they got to the point where they thought they had arrived and overthrown the temporal power of Rome, so that now it rested in their hands; the Church ruled Rome.

They had arrived and were satisfied. They had power, wealth, and glory.

They now ruled all the world that they knew, or all of the world that they felt was important. Then they more or less sat down and stopped really progressing. The minute people come to the conclusion that they have arrived and are satisfied and have come as far as they want to, watch out!

Some Christians just twiddle their thumbs, waiting for Jesus to come and solve all their problems. The apostle Paul said he’d “fought a good fight” and finished his course–his earthly course (2 Timothy 4:7-8 KJV). Some Christians gave up long ago and have no desire to go any further. They’re fully satisfied with where they are. They like it like it was. They love the old, dislike the new, resist change, and have solidified.

They have lost their love for the Lord and for winning souls, training new workers, and opening new fields.

They think that when they give up, they are going to keep what they’ve got, but God’s law of progress is: If you don’t keep on getting more, you’ll lose what you’ve got! Jesus said, “For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away” (Mat 25:29).

When you stop moving, you die. Try it. There is no in-between! We cannot stop! It’s like breathing: We don’t dare stop or we’re dead. We have to keep doing more every day and progressing. We need to sit down at the end of the day and keep books with our soul. We need to weigh up the accounts and say, “Now what did I do today that I won’t have to do tomorrow? What progress, what accomplishment, what more have I done than the usual things I always have to do each day?”

If we come to the point where we’re just going through the motions by habit, just coasting along on former momentum. Do you know how to recognize when you’re getting old? It’s when you start living in the past, and that’s all you talk about.

We Christians today don’t even have to be limited by the way the early church did things. We are not the early church! We’re the latter church, the latest church, and the pattern God wants us to live by today is not exactly the pattern they lived by two thousand years ago. “Greater works than these shall you do” (Jn 14:22).

There is a saying, “All things change, but Jesus never.” God Himself never changes, but He does change some of His tactics and messages and methods, depending on what suits His purpose and the situation. Paul said, “I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor 9:22).

If we as Christians are not going to constantly keep changing our tactics and methods and modes of operation, just like God does, according to what He knows will work and what won’t with each new day and new situation and new people, then we’re going to become “has-beens”. If we’re not flexible, pliable, able to stretch or shrink or bulge or bend to accommodate the Lord’s new wine–whatever new thing He has for us–then we’re going to burst and lose even what we’ve got, and He won’t be able to give us any more (Lk 5:37-38).

But as long as we have and love Jesus and lost souls, as long as we seek Him and desire to do His will, as long as we go to His Word daily for fresh vision and inspiration, we have nothing to worry about. He will continually renew us in body, mind, and spirit (Romans 12:1-2), and we’ll do more than stay alive. We’ll really go places and accomplish a lot for the Lord!

From notes from David Brandt