All of us will stumble due to our decisions or others’ opposition, but how we respond speaks volumes. If you feel you have been knocked down, get back up again.
I know you feel like you have messed up royally. I’m just like you. All of us are. But do you believe you have sinned so often that God will no longer extend His grace to you?
Many of us struggle to follow God because of our previous shortcomings. You mishandle your past when you fail to deal with it. Even though it is painful to go back through failures and frustrations, you must address yesterday’s hurts to experience tomorrow’s joys.
If you fail to deal with the past, you will dangerously misinterpret current experiences.
You overreact to the situation at hand because of backlogged pain. All of this will lead to a misdirected future because of the frantic pace you swerve through life, trying to avoid any remembrance of what made you who you are today. You can’t renew your present if you fail to redeem your past.
The problem with our pasts is that they are broken. For those of us who have experienced relatively easy lives compared to others, we still have moments and experiences that have changed who we are. Hits along the way have knocked us down repeatedly.
Sometimes we are jostled by others, and sometimes we stumbled because of our mistakes. All of those events in the past have altered how we operate today. So if those problems of the past have knocked us down repeatedly, how are we supposed to respond?
For the righteous falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in times of calamity (Prov. 24:16).
I would assume God’s Word would equate someone who falls seven times as unrighteous, but this proverb teaches the complete opposite. Righteous people aren’t those who are never unrighteous. Righteous people get back up after unrighteousness.
God considers this person as righteous due to one simple truth – the resolve to rise after falling.
The wicked keep stumbling and can’t establish themselves on their feet. The righteous keep stumbling but continue to rise each time. Do you feel as if you have fallen numerous times? That’s to be expected.
But have you gotten back up? Are you refusing to stay in the sinful mire? Do you hate where your sin causes you to land so that you get back up again?
Don’t shortchange God’s grace by assuming your sin is so grievous that He wants you to stay down. He wants you to rise again.
God is not as concerned with how many times you fall but how many times you get back up.
Travis Agnew serves as the Lead Pastor of Rocky Creek Church in Greenville, SC. His most recent book is Just (About) Married.