Kept and Helped

Does anyone other than me ever feel like they were chosen to just keep making the same mistakes? Keep doing the same old stuff you'd promised yourself you'd not do again? Keep tripping up on the same things you tripped up on before? I think we all go through these cycles in life - doing well for a while and then 'tripping up' on something we didn't think could trip us up again. We have to remember these things are not experienced by us alone - there are hundreds, if not thousands of others who trip up at just about the same point! Obedience is really a series of trips and rising again!

Keep me far from every wrong; help me, undeserving as I am, to obey your laws, for I have chosen to do right. (Psalm 119:30 TLB)

We forget about the 'rising again' part of this! We are chosen to do right, not wrong. That doesn't negate our free-will (our ability to make a choice). Sometimes our choices just get the best of us! We aren't really deserving of God's grace, but it is ours nonetheless - chosen by him to live obedient and trusting lives in his presence. We sometimes forget our position in Christ - focusing more on our downward fall than on our upward climb back into his arms. Fortunately, at the same time we are climbing back into them, he is openly embracing us within those arms!

King David didn't have his life all together, either. He didn't avoid the occasionally 'fall' or 'stumble'. In fact, scripture is riddled with examples of his 'wrong choices'. It isn't to point out his faults as much as to show us he always found a pair of waiting arms and the grace he found there was sufficient to restore him each and every time. His please is to be kept and helped. He cannot keep himself from falling - he needs God's help. We find ourselves in the same predicament. We cannot (or will not) keep ourselves from falling - we need God's help to avoid hitting bottom!

We are just not strong enough to be all the things we are supposed to be in this lifetime. We don't have all this walk figured out to the nth-degree. We might think we have a good handle on things until something comes that reveals our weakness. At that moment, we can count on the fact he is more than we need to learn obedience in that situation. We might not resist perfectly - but when we are in danger of falling is not the only time we should be asking for his keeping power and grace to learn obedience! We should be crawling into those arms often enough when we are making right choices - not just when we are making the wrong ones! When we learn to do this, we will learn what it is to be "kept" and "helped" in an amazing way! Just sayin!