You May Be Moving Too Fast

James 4:6-7(NKJV)
“6 But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” 7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” 

Maturity in Christ begs us to consider that a physical fall might be an indication of a spiritual danger—the kind that robs you and hinders your relationship with God.

The psalmist, David, said in Psalm 56:13(NKJV), “For You have delivered my soul from death. Have You not kept my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living?” It is believed that David was as young as thirty-years-old when he wrote this psalm under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Even at such a young age, he had many challenges, and he was confident that God had gotten him through everything he had faced and would face in the future. He knew that God had delivered him from death and kept his feet from falling. This is something all of us must pay close attention to, because many believers are falling in their faith. They are stumbling both physically and spiritually, and both of these are related. 

In a very literal sense, most of us understand what it means to fall. This is why David’s words resonate with us. Not only can falling be harmful to us physically, with broken bones and bruised bodies, but it is often an embarrassing thing as well. So, we associate several attributes to an accidental fall, and this helps to cement our understanding of what a catastrophe it can be to fall spiritually. 

When I was a youngster, we played outside, running and jumping about. Crying to my grandmother over skinned knees and elbows was a common occurrence. She’d often scold us and say, “See, you were going to fast, not paying attention to what you were doing.”  She was right. Her scolding was not to make our fun any less, but to teach us that even when we’re having fun, we must be careful.

Any accidental fall can be a warning sign that we’re not paying attention to our own spirit, and we’ve veered too far from the path we’re destined by God to travel. A literal fall is often a wakeup call that we’re moving too fast; we need to slow down, think about what we’re doing, and make a change. Most people don’t recognize this, and it is because they don’t see that everything has a reason, and this reason is spiritual. We can’t put anything in life in a separate compartment and exclude it from having a spiritual reality. Again, everything, from the smallest to the greatest, is spiritual. If we don’t wake up and smell the coffee, we might fall several times before we recognize that our stumbling is because we haven’t taken steps in the right direction. 

Sometimes a wrong action can accelerate our speed towards something detrimental, and this causes our lives to spiral out of control. Sinful and negative thoughts and behaviors over a long period of time also have the potential to cause both a physical and a spiritual fall. Again, it’s a wakeup call to return to the right path. And we can’t behave as if we’re oblivious. Many of us know the difference between right and wrong. We learned it from our parents, faith community, and even our teachers, but as we become adults, some of us abandon what we know to be right. We think we can be independent from God, and we think our way is right for us.  

Proverbs 14:12 (NLT) tells us, “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death.” Many of us are moving so fast or we’re so into our routines that we can’t see that internally, we’ve changed lanes. The remedy for this is to go to the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ.

We must heed God’s warning and instruction in James 4:6-7, so that the devil doesn’t continue to trip us up! We must not let arrogance cancel the humility that is needed to seek God in all things. We can’t have an attitude that if it looks right, then it must be right! WRONG! A fall is guaranteed if we’re so prideful we can’t see correction or direction. Consider that if you fall physically, it’s a warning that you might be in danger of falling spiritually. You may be moving too fast in the wrong direction. Before it happens again, let humility keep your feet from falling so that you walk before God in the light. ■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NKJV) are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

“You May Be Moving Too Fast”, written by Kim for https://rescuefromdomesticviolence.blogspot.com© 2020. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.