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bigmike

"Demas Hath Forsaken Me"
Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me: For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry. And Tychicus have I sent to Ephesus. The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments.
2 Timothy 4:9-13
We are not told how long Demas worked with the Apostle Paul, but we find him listed as a co-worker in the ministry in the letters Paul wrote to the Colossians and to Philemon. Those letters were written when Paul was in prison in Rome. So we know that Demas was willing to take the risk of being openly identified with the apostle and the gospel ministry at a time when the threats and danger were very real. Yet when Paul wrote his final letter to Timothy a few years later, he sadly revealed that his once faithful helper had deserted the cause.
All of us know people who once served God faithfully but then stopped. We are told that Demas left because he loved the world too much, but there are many reasons people leave God's work. F. B. Meyer wrote, "The causes of backsliding are many. We have pretended to be living a more devoted life than was actually the case; we neglected to watch unto prayer; we allowed secret sin to eat out the heart of our piety.or we yielded to temptation.or we yielded to the fear of man, and drifted with the multitude to do evil; or we became prosperous, and trusted only in our wealth; or poor, and succumbed to covetousness and the bitterness of despair." The fact that we have been faithful for many years and through many trials does not protect us against the temptation to let down our guard and stop following God with our whole heart.
If we do not keep our love for God first, we will find it impossible to resist the allures of sin and the world.
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