“For though the righteous
fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity
strikes.” – Proverbs 24:16
The
feeling of being trapped, not able to escape and slowly beginning to believe
that you are a failure – have you ever felt that? I think that this can be a very common
feeling and a common feeling in the church.
I know that I have felt this way many times, but I was too ashamed to
talk about it. When we become saved the
Bible says we die to our flesh and our alive in Him. We are a new creation,
called to be holy, we are called to obey God.
Does that make us Holy as soon as we rise up from the water we are being
baptized in? No, of course not, because it
is a growing process that takes endurance for the rest of our lives.
While
here in Costa Rica we have six books assigned to us as reading material. The book that I am reading now is called “The
Pursuit of Holiness,” and I really like it. It talks about the importance to be
holy, the fact that it is our responsibility (through God’s strength) to run
towards holiness, but also the fact that we will fall. When he talked about this verse in Proverbs,
I was amazed that I never had noticed it before. So often we think that as Christian we won’t
or can’t fall, because people are watching us and we are called to a higher
standard. Yet, at the very same time we
know that we are not perfect and that it is only through the work of the Holy
Spirit that we can overcome our flesh. But
as my teammate’s mom once said, “Who do we think we are, that we could be above
sinning?”
This
hit me hard, right in the face. I had
always felt this pressure, this pressure to make sure everything was right, to
live up to the standard and not fall below status quo. People so often would put me up on this
standard, and “pick on me” for never messing up. I hated it.
The hardest thing about it, was that I knew that I messed up and that I
messed up very often. Like Paul says, “I
do what I don’t want to do and don’t do what I want to do.” Reading this book has been so confirming and
comforting in a way. The righteous fall,
but they get back up. Yes, we all make
mistakes and multiple times, but what do we do about it? Do we get back up and run our race? Do we lay it at the feet of Jesus, asking for
His strength to endure? “The righteous fall
seven times, [but] they rise again.” We
all fall short, that is why we need a savior.
If we magically stopped sinning, then we would no longer need Jesus
Christ our Savior. He calls us to live a
Holy life and that is why we run our race, so that He might mold us into a new creation. He is going to chip away all the dirt and
failure in our lives, we just have to lean on Him and let Him.
