Falling with Style

I think it’s safe to say most of us don’t like to fall down. We don’t like the skinned knees, the bruising or the pain that results from the impact with whatever we fall into or onto. We also don’t like the recovery that results from it. Sometimes the recovery feels like we’re starting over, everything we accomplished up to that point gone. Obviously, I’m no longer referring to an actual physical fall. Sometimes the emotional, mental or spiritual “falls” are even more painful and difficult to recover from. If you have followed any of my posts over the past year or so, you know that this is a common theme or source of contemplation for me. It’s been a season of recovery for our family.

That being said, we have “hit the ground” a lot. Some of it due to our own poor choices, some of it due to the choices of others (both good and bad), and some of it just because bad things happen to good people. Difficulties are sometimes unavoidable. And, sometimes, they drastically alter our trajectory, the course we had ourselves on. That’s why James, the brother of Jesus and the leader of the church in Jerusalem, writes this in James 1:2 (NKJV), “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”

This morning I caught something when reading this passage. James connects “falling into various trials” with “the testing of your faith”. In this passage they are one in the same. Falling tests you. It’s a refiners fire. A place where the junk in your life comes to the top and THE Refiner scoops it off and you become something better…more like Him.

It’s significant that he uses the word “fall” because there is the implication that the situation you find yourself in may not be a result of your own decisions or actions. Sometimes, many times, we just “fall” into a difficult situation. But here is the meat of the conversation: God uses all of our trials, even the ones we didn’t cause, to test our faith – to build perseverance, patience (long-suffering). The Greek word translated “patience” in this passage is “hypomone”, it means cheerful endurance, steadfastness, sustaining perseverance. It is a “digging in” to His faithfulness – staying the course. Immovable.

Here’s the kicker: it’s all learned by falling down.

BUT, as he writes in verse 4, we have to “let patience have its perfect work….” In other words, we may not choose the circumstances that we’ve fallen into, but we do choose how we will respond. Will we respond by allowing, “letting”, cheerful endurance have its complete work in us or will we cut it short because it’s too painful? The recovery to long and difficult?

The truth is we are not built to make those decisions alone. That’s why our heavenly Father puts us in community. Michelle and I would not be where we are today without an amazing community around us. We would be a wreck if we had to make these decisions on our own. Community is essential to our survival and ability to thrive. Solomon writes in Proverbs 11:14, “Where there is no counsel, the people fall; but in the multitude of counselors there is safety.”

There’s that word “fall” again. We can’t avoid all the failures, mistakes and “falls” in life. However when we have community, we can navigate those times of life and “let” the resulting trials and tests have their complete work in us – perfecting us and completing us that we might lack nothing.

We will fall. However, we can learn to fall well – fall with style. It’s all part of learning to walk a complete and perfected life. So let it.