For one more devotional, we will keep with the analogy of life’s journey. At first glance it might seem that today’s Scripture contradicts the warnings about the dangers the believer will encounter in this devil infested world we read about yesterday. And Scripture is very clear about the fact that even the elect can be deceived and led astray.
So what does David mean when he claims that even if “good men… fall, it isn’t fatal?” The first thing that stands out is that this promise is made to “good men,” those whose lives delight the Lord. Such marvelous promises are simply not made to half-hearted or worldly-minded Christians. Nominal (i.e., “in name only”) believers are very susceptible to being led astray through the way they live their lives. It is right that such people live in some degree of fear about the enemy’s attempts to destroy them. They very well might fall—and fall fatally.
We often tell the men in our Residential Program, “If you want to be kept, God will keep you.” If a man makes decisions in his daily life that prove that he is uncommitted to the Lord, he has no right to expect God to keep him from heading back into a life of habitual sin.
However, if a person is sincerely trying to live a consecrated and obedient life, in other words, if his life is one in which the Lord would be delighted, then he has every right to expect the Lord to protect him from apostasy.
He will occasionally “fall,” of course. The best of souls have hearts that are “prone to wander.” Every believer fails at times. But, as someone once said, “Failure is not falling down, it is staying down.”
Take Abraham, for instance. The Lord had told him to dwell in Canaan, but when a famine ravaged the land, he decided he needed to take the situation into his own hands and led his family down to Egypt. If it weren’t for the Lord’s merciful oversight in his life, he could have lost his beloved wife to the Pharaoh’s harem. Yes, Abraham experienced a lapse in his trust in the Lord—a fall, if you will. But God was holding him by the hand. His grace covered his mistake and provided a way out of the crisis.
Every believer will make his mistakes, have his failures and even commit outright sins. But those who are sincerely doing their utmost to please the Lord in the way they conduct themselves in life, will find that He will be there when they fall, will pick them up and set them back on the right track.