This week’s quote comes from the podcast of the Village Church and their Pastor, Matt Chandler.

“It is the mark of Christian maturity, that when you stumble and fall you run to Him (God) and not from Him (God).”

When you were just a little child, this made sense.  You would fall and hurt yourself, maybe skin your knee or scratch your arm, and you would run to your mom or dad and just a simple kiss or a band-aide would fix it all.  You actually ran TO them when you fell and there was comfort and healing.

Somewhere in our pre-teen and teen years, that was no longer the first response for us.  We were fine to try and pick our selves up and do what we could to fix things on our own.  We no longer ran to our parents, but many times, depending on what happened, we actually ran from them.  Things would have been easier if we had gone to them, but we think we can handle it on our own.

That thinking of handling things on our own permeates our spiritual life as well.  We either try our hardest to keep the law and other man-made rules that we will never be able to keep, or we try and live apart from law and cast off all restraint to live a life of so-called freedom that enslaves us instead of frees us.  We fail to keep the law, we fall and stumble, and then we live with the feelings of defeat and our inability to measure up; or we do whatever we want, living in so-called freedom and end up living with the guilt and heaviness of heart that we are breaking God’s commands and hurting the relationship that we have with Him.

We can find ourselves in a never ending cycle to fix things ourselves when all God wants is for us to run to Him when we fall, not run from Him.  And just as our parents would grab hold of us, love on us, clean us up and make things right, God will show us that same attention.  He will forgive us and set us back on the right path in our relationship with Him.  And even though there will still be consequences to our actions, the healing will have begun and we can take our next steps with Him, instead of away from Him.