It doesn’t take much to trip you up and put you out of commission for a while. One little accident or illness, and you could be laid up for a long time. In my son’s case, all it took was one misstep on his roller blades. He made a jump trying to perform a trick and didn’t quite complete it. Just like that, he lost his balance. He put his arm down to break his fall, but he broke his arm instead. That was in May. He spent most of that summer with his arm immobilized. He was finally able to take it out of the sling in mid-August. By then the muscles in his arm had atrophied, and it looked like a little chicken wing.
As I mentioned earlier, it doesn’t take much to knock you for a loop physically. However, it takes a tremendous amount of hard work to return to normal. After Jay got rid of his sling, he was told to exercise his arm regularly. He thought it was a stupid idea. The exercises seemed ridiculously simple – until he tried them. Then he found out how much strength he had lost. He tried to play baseball that fall, but when he began at the end of August he couldn’t swing properly because it hurt too much. It wasn’t until the end of the season, around Halloween, that he was finally able to swing pain free. For a long time, when I looked at Jay’s arms, I could tell which one he broke. One forearm was smaller than the other. It’s not real noticeable anymore. It’s been a long time since the break, and Jay has done a lot of physical labor since then, but I know what happened and I can still tell.
These same principles are true when it comes to our spiritual life. It doesn’t take much to trip us up. A suggestion from a friend, a cleverly worded magazine article, a weak moment in the face of temptation; and the next thing you know, we’re in a spiritual wasteland. Once we’re there, it takes an incredible amount of hard work to make things right again. We have to go through the process of confession and repentance, and then we have to seek God’s forgiveness. And, as we all know, it’s never easy to admit that we’ve messed up. God’s forgiveness may be free, but it isn’t cheap. It’s a very humbling experience to acknowledge that we need it, and not everyone is willing to take that step.
That’s why in the book of Proverbs we’re told to “guard our hearts.” Because God knows how easily we can be tripped up. He warns us to protect ourselves, to avoid putting ourselves into situations where there might be spiritual danger or temptation. Have you been paying attention to your heart? Have you been monitoring your spiritual health? Have you been guarding your heart from the danger lurking outside your door? I hope so, because the process of restoration is long, and hard, and an incredible struggle…