Keeping Our Spiritual Balance

It is said that the great physicist, Albert Einstein, once gave the following piece of wisdom to his son: "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving." The wisdom that Einstein passed on to his son, is wise and practical for us as well.

As followers of Christ, we understand that by faith in the Lord, we can keep moving ahead, even through sometimes painful and trying circumstances (Philippians 4:12-13). However, sometimes when we experience a personal moral failure, we lose our balance and fall. Our regret and feeling of unworthiness of God's forgiveness, may keep us down, no longer desiring to move ahead in our spiritual walk.

The Bible gives us many examples of folks who experienced serious personal moral failure. For example, the Scriptures tell us that Abraham lied to Pharaoh about his wife Sarah (Genesis 12:11-17). Jacob deceived his father to acquire Esau's blessing (Genesis 27:18-29), and Moses disobeyed God by "striking" the rock instead of "speaking" to it (Numbers 20:7-12).

However, despite all of their failures, God's word tells us that, "all these .... obtained a good testimony through faith" (Hebrews 11:39).

The above biblical characters are provided for us as examples, because after they fell, they got up, dusted themselves off, and began to follow God again by doing His will (Matthew 7:21). Have we lost our spiritual balance through a sinful choice, which is keeping us down?

Dear reader, let us regain and keep our spiritual balance by sincerely repenting (2 Corinthians 7:8-11), asking God to forgive us (1 John 1:9), and then keep on following the God of second chances (James 1:19-25).

 —Mike Riley, Gospel Snippets