Welcome! This post is the second part of the introduction. If you missed the beginning of this journey, you can read Part 1 of the Introduction here: 👇🏽

https://keziahthinkspress.com/2026/05/16/from-the-pages-of-backsliders-dawn-the-testimony/

Introduction -2

These pages have become more than a record of what I survived. They have become a witness to what God can redeem. They carry the shadows of my past, but they also carry the light that found me there. If this book speaks to anyone, I hope it does so gently, not as a polished answer but as honest companionship for the one trying to find a way back to hope, to truth, and to the steady love of God.

Who, then, is a backslider? I know the answer because I have lived it. There was a season when I still knew all the right words. I could pray in a room full of people and sound like a woman who had just come from the throne room of God. I could quote Scripture, nod along to the sermon, even feel the Holy Spirit move in worship, and then go home in silence, knowing, in the quiet where no one else could hear, that something in me had gone cold and not broken. Not rebellious. Just distant. Like a marriage in which two people still share a house but have stopped truly seeing one another. I knew that distance too well. It had happened in my own marriage.

I did not fall all at once. There was no single moment of betrayal I could point to and say, “There. That is where I lost my way.” It was smaller than that, quieter. My prayers grew shorter. Morning devotion was skipped. Appetites I should have resisted were indulged. Weariness I should have named was left to deepen in silence. Each change, by itself, seemed almost harmless. Together, they carried me slowly from shore.

Scripture and experience have since taught me that this, too, is a form of backsliding, perhaps the most common. Not open rebellion, but a slow cooling. I was still in the sanctuary, yet no longer with the same hunger. Instead of taking my place near the front, I slipped to the back. I often arrived late, just in time for the last “Amen.”

I was still fluent in the language of faith, but no longer living in its fire. I remembered what closeness with God had felt like, yet I was no longer living there. Learning to name that truthfully, without excuse or performance, became the first step of my return.

Backslider’s Dawn was born of a cry I could no longer suppress. It began as private diary entries written in grief, confusion, repentance, and longing. Over time, those pages became this book. My prayer is that they will reach others struggling in their walk with God, reminding them that mercy still calls, that home is not lost, and that even after a long night of wandering, dawn is possible.

Welcome home,

🙌🏽 jjF

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