God is righteous and He does not judge us by His Divine standards only but also as per the comparative scales of this world. Even in this also when we stumble and fall, He does not abandon us but as a loving Father, who is teaching His toddler son how to walk, picks us up. Then in His love He encourages us to continue and move forward in our walk of faith. No one loses a battle through falling but in not getting up after a fall. Beginning afresh after every fall is the way to victory.
Our role in restarting after a fall – After the sin of Adam and Eve, the deterioration in the moral standards was fast. Their firstborn son Cain killed his brother Abel and only Cain’s genealogy continued. After 130 years of being created, a son was born to Adam, ‘in his own likeness, after his image’ (Genesis 5:3). The image and likeness of God was replaced by man’s likeness, and he was named Seth. Seth also had a son, named Enosh and then, ‘men began to call on the name of the LORD’ (Genesis 4:26). It took 235 years for mankind to realise the truth and turn to the LORD God.
This marks the beginning of efforts for a more intentional and close relationship with the Lord. Enosh’s name means ‘mortal or frail man’ but with him, Sovereignty of God was established in people and His worship and prayer started. We accept our weaknesses and get encouraged to reach out to God for strength, guidance and salvation. The tragic loss of Garden of Eden was replaced with hope and with grace filled restart for mankind. Genesis 5 brings birth with God’s faithfulness but ends with sin’s consequences with the words, ‘and he died’. Sin and death came in the world, but the plan of God kept moving at His pace and time. Satan also was active and Nimrod, a mighty hunter of man, as his agent set up the kingdom in Babel or Babylon and other places (Genesis 10:9-10). From individual control to setting up of principalities and powers by the devil then started.
With this an act of open defiance of God’s authority was also attempted by mankind by creating ‘a tower whose top is in the mountains’ (Genesis 11:4-9). To counter the efforts of mankind to get united, God confused their language, so that people could not understand each other and were scattered all over the earth. God did this to help mankind from undue suffering that comes due to togetherness in sin, where the society itself has no checks.
God was, is and will always be in total control over everything in the universe, though at times it may seem otherwise, especially when we see evil everywhere. Prophet Jeremiah is known as the ‘Weeping Prophet’, for he was deeply grieved at the way people kept on rejecting his warnings to turn to God. He could still vouch for God’s love, ‘Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness’ (Lamentations 3:22-23). God has an eternal view of everything and from His end it all looks very good and perfect. But from our limited view from life on earth, we perceive it all differently. God provided us prayer as a way to present our view to Him for helping us in removing and moving through what is negative. With that, He also sends much more that is good so that His plan moves on in a way that starts looking to us also the same.
The Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt and about to go into the Promised Land, in fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham. Moses could encourage them, ‘For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth’ (Deuteronomy 7:8). They could start afresh with new dreams in a new place with abundance of God’s blessings. God chose to dwell in their midst and everyone could present his offerings and himself to the Lord in the Tabernacle.
Samson was a mighty man, blessed by God but due to his sin, was captured by the Philistines, blinded and mocked. The Philistines brought out Samson into the temple of their god Dagon ‘to perform for them’ (Judges 16:25-30). Samson was placed between the pillars that supported the temple and he could touch these pillars. He prayed, ‘O LORD God, remember me, I pray! Strengthen me, I pray, just this once, O God, that I may with one blow take vengeance on the Philistines for my two eyes’. This was his final act, for he prayed to die with the Philistines. And in this manner, ‘the dead he killed at his death were more than he had killed in his life’. The All-Knowing God gives a chance to everyone, not once but many times to turn and glorify Him through a fresh attempt. All of humanity has been given a new beginning to turn to and glorify God through believing and receiving His Son as their Saviour and Redeemer!
Why do we fail in starting afresh? I was presented the Holy Bible in June, 1979 by a Pastor in a remote district of Nagaland during my posting there. I am very fond of reading but I never tried to read the Scripture. Lord Jesus has said, ‘You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you’ (John 15:16). Despite my evil ways, God in His mercy did not desert me and saved my life on various occasions, when there was no chance that I could have escaped death. He finally turned my evil also into something good for His glory. The gospel message of salvation is neither clear nor received by those, ‘whose minds the god of this age (the devil) has blinded, lest the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them’ (2 Corinthians 4:3-4).
King David not only sinned with Bathsheba, but also had her husband exposed in battle before the enemy, to die (2 Samuel 12:13-14). But when confronted by Nathan, the Prophet, he realised his sin to say, ‘I have sinned against the LORD’. Though God forgave his sin, he had to suffer for, because of his ‘deed you have a great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme’. We miss out on following the Lord, when we see great religious leaders and preachers do evil, for we presume their message also to be a lie. David’s confession and repentance was real, from deep within him, and that changed him completely. He prayed, ‘Against You, You only, have I sinned and done this evil in Your sight – that You may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge’ (Psalm 51:4). In repentance, he acknowledged the blot that he had brought on the holy name of the LORD.
Absalom, his son rebelled against him and he had to flee Jerusalem. But when Zadok, the High-Priest, tried to carry the Ark of God’s covenant with him, out of Jerusalem, he could stop him. He told Zadok to carry the Ark back to Jerusalem, in faith, that God would bring him back to His dwelling place. But he accepted God’s decision, ‘but if He (God) says thus, ‘I have no delight in you,’ here I am, let Him do to me as seems good to Him’ (2 Samuel 15:26). Do we submit to the will of God for us like David? – We not only question God’s decision but rather start getting angry with Him. God is never obliged to do anything for us and all His gifts, including life itself, are His blessings of mercy and love.
Life is like being in the ‘No man’s land’, where on the opposite end is the enemy, ‘roaring like a lion, seeking whom he may devour’ (1 Peter 5:8). On our side is the Lord our Good Shepherd, and we daily battle with the dragons, both within us of our doubts, while trying to look unto the Lord and not on the factual world, for I have to ‘walk by faith and not by sight’ (2 Corinthians 5:7). David and his four hundred men, having lost everything, were going after the Amalekites and two hundred could not move forward due to extreme physical exhaustion (1 Samuel 30). With only two hundred they moved and God provided an Egyptian, the servant of an Amalekite, who was abandoned to die of hunger. He led them to their camp and David and his men could recover all that they had lost and much more that he could send gifts to leaders of Judah.
Like David, we must rediscover our faith when we are tested to the limits, to find God in the darkness of our sufferings. King David had faced trials all his life, yet he could say, in faith, ‘His anger is but for a moment, His favour is for life; weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning’ (Psalm 30:5). Most of the Jewish people who escaped alive from the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, had lost almost everyone in their families. They had witnessed death from close quarters and that too of the most brutal kind. The ghosts of such tragedy haunt a person for a long time, but all of them turned to the Lord, sought strength and made a new beginning and excelled.
Saul was on his way to Damascus to persecute the believers, in faith that he was serving God. He was touched by the Saviour Lord, transformed and retreated to Arabia for three years (Galatians 1:17). He was taught by Gamaliel, a great teacher of that time but then learnt from God the Holy Spirit, the reality of the Scripture concerning the Son of God. Prophet Jeremiah, the disciples and many others were chosen by God, not for what they had achieved but what God would do through their lives. We, as believers have been chosen despite our sinful past and given a new chance to start life afresh in His righteousness. We did not earn it but have received it by faith. The promise of Lord Jesus to give life and that too abundantly, is about turning towards God and starting afresh in every area of our lives. He opens the doors for us, leads us on and strengthens us to succeed.
Overcoming being branded after repeated failures God who makes a way in the sea has commanded, ‘Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old’ (Isaiah 43:18). In His love, He desires us to forget about the past failures that we faced in our own strength and wisdom. A believer is blessed with the indwelling Holy Spirit to teach us all things and remind us of the Word of Lord Jesus (John 14:26). Our heavenly Teacher from within starts showing us the right paths that lead to submission and success. It is not that He will place us in a room full of earthly treasures but we start living right. Then God promises, ‘If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land’ (Isaiah 1:19). He takes us into the ‘good land’ first by opening new opportunities and then gives us wisdom to select the right one and succeed. But, filled with doubts, we tend to ignore and continue in our old ways.
The battle strategy for any battle is, ‘do not reinforce failure’ and God leads us on new paths and reinforces us to face all forces, both spiritual and the worldly. Joseph was sold as a slave but remained faithful to the teachings of his father Jacob about righteous living. Alone and with no one to check him, he could have agreed to Potiphar’s wife’s proposal. But he could say to her, ‘There is no one greater in this house than I, nor has he (Potiphar) kept back anything from me but you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?’ (Genesis 39:9). His concern was to follow the way of God in such difficult circumstances also.
The LORD God after completion of the creation process declared everything ‘very good’, but noticed a flaw in the loneliness of Adam (Genesis 2:18). For that, the woman was created as his equal partner in everything. But the degradation of a woman’s status has reached a state where marriage is not considered a necessity but a burden. Apostle Peter first quoted the submission of Sarah to Abraham, but then warned the husbands to give ‘honour to the wife, as to the weaker vessel’ (1 Peter 3:6-7). This weakness is not spiritual or mental but physical only. He gives the reason for this honour, ‘as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered’. Husband and wife being one, are ‘heirs together’ of salvation and new life in Lord Jesus. Any husband who desires to work everything alone by himself without taking his wife into confidence, does not give honour to his wife. As a result, his prayers will find no answer from God. In like manner, the custom of Holy Communion started by Lord Jesus is to draw strength from each other through prayer and worship.
The Prophet first confessed the uniqueness of the LORD God in forgiving sins. Then we are assured that God ‘does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in mercy’ (Micah 7:18). God being love looks for those who seek Him in repentance, but we, like Adam, try to hide from Him in fear and give a chance to the forces of evil to dominate in our lives. King David praised God in this Psalm to say, ‘The LORD upholds all who fall, and raises up all who are bowed down’ (Psalm 145:14). He was the one, like us, who kept falling many times, but repented, turned to the Lord, sought forgiveness and cleansing to praise and serve God with absolute commitment. His desire to construct a grand Temple for God in Jerusalem was denied by God and his son was to do this. This did not stop him from collecting materials, gathering and briefing the right and capable people to execute the great task.
A failure is never defeat but an opportunity to try the work in a different manner. Only God is infallible while we are distracted by our sinful nature. Apostle Peter walked on water but was filled with fear when he shifted his focus from the Saviour to look at the storm and went under water (Matthew 14:29-32). He cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ The response from the Lord was immediate to reach out His hand to catch him. The LORD ensured inclusion of great failures of such great men of faith in the Holy Bible to encourage, learn and be strengthened. These are not just stories to entertain but a way to live and the more we turn to Him, the closer we draw and are blessed.
How can God, the loving Father, tolerate His children, for whom He made the greatest sacrifice possible, remain in a fallen state after a failure. The coming of our Saviour Lord as a Man was to give a new beginning to the fallen humanity. In faith, when we shift our focus from our failures to Him, He readily reaches out to us to lead us forward in His strength.
