Words of Grace 9/30

By Rev. Mahlon Nevel

There is a man in the Bible who falls seven times, and rises up again. (Proverbs 24:16) He was down, but he didn’t stay down.

A football coach wanted to teach his team a lesson. He got two of his players to step out onto the field. One of them was to be the tackler and the other the tackled.

The one instructed to do the tackling took down his opponent immediately. When the opponent got up he was knocked down again. As fast as he could get up, the bigger, stronger boy would knock him down.

After a while, he could hardly pick himself off the ground, but he kept on getting up. When the coach finally stopped the two players he said to the team, “now, that’s the way I want you to be.”

One young man asked, “You mean like Bill who kept tackling Jim time and time again?”

“No,” the coach answered, “I want you to be like Jim. Keep getting up no matter how many times you get knocked down.”

We have an enemy who wants to knock us down and out. Our adversary the devil is like a roaring lion, seeking to devour yes. (I Peter 5:8)

Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. used to say that the test of our character is what it takes to stop us.
Keep getting up.