If You Fall, Get Back Up – Repent & Move Forward In Faith!

Word-Of-The-Day: ‘For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.’ (Galatians 5:17)

Why is it that we often see Christians do non-Christian things?  There was a news story a year ago that I glanced over that stated (yet) another Christian performer put out in a press release that he no longer is a believer in Christ.  (If he doesn’t believe now, he never believed in the first place.) There are Christians, from famous pastors to the layman sitting in the pew, who unfortunately fall into drugs, adultery, and other areas of ill-repute.  

These do happen and are not rare, but fortunately for myself the personal examples of such, at least in my circles of friends and acquaintances, are few.  For all of us who are Christian, however, there are the daily battles many of us face; I occasionally battle breaches of decorum myself, like my oft-used example of getting my gas-powered chainsaw to start.  (If chainsaw-tossing was an Olympic sport, I’d be the gold-medalist.) Why do we do these things when we’re supposed to have the Holy Spirit within us?

Paul writes of this in Galatians 5:17, that we are in battle with ourselves.  We humans are of this world, while the Holy Spirit is of Heaven.  There are traits we have learned throughout our lives, especially as children, and we carry those throughout our time here on Earth.  There are good traits we pick up; I have my Dad’s tenacity and work ethic, I have the discipline I learned in the Army, and the ‘street education’ from growing up in the Pittsburgh area. 

These are traits I’m glad I have and want to keep and have helped me throughout my life, my career, and my relationships.  There are also bad traits as well that I want to get rid of, how I react in certain situations, annoying mannerisms and speech, and others.  These have hindered me in life as much as the good traits have helped. 

Remember we put away our former selves, but there is nothing in the Bible to indicate we kill that former self completely off when we accept Christ. It is not until we graduate to Eternity that the sinful nature is completely separated and stripped away.

This is why it is so important to be into the Word, to pray, and to fellowship with other Christians.  If the traits we have are good, God will use them and build them up in us to use to do His will.  Bad traits He may suppress immediately but some He may not; with Paul’s ‘thorn-in-the-side’, many believe it could have been a physical ailment but some speculate it may have been a moral failing.  Paul prayed to have it removed, but God told him “My Grace is sufficient”, or for Paul to use his Faith to overcome the obstacle. 

There are Christians who have dealt or are dealing with the disease of alcoholism. God does not remove the desire of alcohol from many alcoholics but He has them use their Faith in Him and to stay focused in the Word to suppress the desire, and overcome their addiction.  An alcoholic may slip and relapse, but once focus on God is regained, they ‘get back on wagon’.  We ‘fall off the wagon’ and sometimes go back into using bad traits; it’s important not to dwell on your relapse but to instead focus on God and to fix the mistake.

My mother used to say ‘getting cockroaches in your house isn’t shameful, keeping them is’.  In other words, we all have sin that can creep in, but the true shame in the sin is if we don’t repent and get rid of it as soon as possible.  At the same time, do not let the sin of someone diminish their accomplishments in performing the work of Christ. Do not let the sin that you may commit diminish your performance of the work of the Great Commission. Repent and move forward in Faith!

The Holy Spirit can guide us and protect us as we battle daily Satan, the world, and our old selves.  We have our Lord on our side and though we fight powerful enemies, our God math tells us that with God we will overcome.  We will lose the occasional battle, but with Christ we have already won the war.