Face Down - Good or Bad

 

Have you ever fallen on your spiritual face? Of course you have. We all have. Actually, falling on your face is not always a bad thing.

When you have fallen on your face has it been because you messed up again? If so, did you learn from it? Unfortunately, as human beings, God sometimes has to let us fall on our face in order to get our attention. If we respond properly, when God picks us up and stands us back on our feet we will try not to fall again for the same reason.

When I worked for Coca Cola the boss used to say it was okay to make a mistake, just don’t keep making the same mistake over and over again.

That is the way God is. He doesn’t mind picking us up off our face, but He doesn’t want to have to do it over and over again for the same sin. Not because He is tired of picking us up, but because He sees us just treading water when we could be moving forward in our relationship with Him.

Personally, I have had many spiritual bloody noses, and black eyes from falling in my walk with God. I can tell you, it hurts. But, you probably already know that.

The Bible tells us about King David falling so many times. When he fell he didn’t just stub his toe. When he fell, he really crashed and burned. When God picked him up he immediately fell on his face again. However, that time it would be in tears for what he had done.

Yet, God described David as a man after His own heart. That was because when David fell he would turn back to God. He didn’t just apologize to God. He would sorrowfully repent. There is a world of difference between apologizing and repenting. God sees right through superficial apologies. You cannot fool Him. He looks at our heart.

Falling on our face in front of God is totally different than falling on our face before God. Falling on our face in front of God needs to cause us to fall on our face before God. So you see, falling on our face is not always a bad thing.

My dad was an incredible man of God. He studied his Bible and prayed all the time. He used to talk about when the Philistines took the ark of the covenant into the temple of Dagon, who was their false god. They placed the ark by the statue of Dagon. In the morning they found that the statue of Dagon had fallen on it’s face before the ark. They stood it back up, but the next morning they found it on it’s face before the ark again, and this time it’s head and hands were broken off.

Dad used to say, “I would rather serve a God who can pick me up off my face, than to serve a god who I have to pick up off his face.”

So, if you land on you face in front of God, be sure you also land on your face before God.

Think about it.