If you’ve watched TV at all, you have surely seen the countless commercials that never seem to end. Many of them are very creative and many of them are pretty silly, but if you are like me, I love watching commercials. There is one commercial that I am sure you have seen many times over and it is the one which shows a helpless lady who has somehow fallen and is unable to get up. The commercial shows how desperate one can be if no one is there to help them. The line in this commercial that many us can quote by heart is: “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”

This commercial came to my mind the other day as I was helping one of our close friends move into a home they just bought. My job that day was to switch out all the old light switches with new ones and that called for me to go back and forth to the power box to flip the breaker to a certain switch I was working on. As I was going back to flip another switch, I somehow did not see a piece of wood that was sticking out from a bush and my left foot caught it and I took a huge fall. It was probably one of the hardest falls I have taken in a while and as I laid on the ground in much pain and embarrassment, I realized I had banged myself up pretty good. For a short moment I felt like that helpless lady in the commercial and I wondered if I would be able to get up. I slowly began to move my arms and legs to make sure they weren’t broken and as I stood, I saw all the scrapes and embedded rocks in my knees, arms and hands. I had to dress all my scrapes with medicine but the worse pain was that I had thrown my back out of alignment. So the next few days I had to visit my wonderful friend and chiropractor so he could align my back again to where it supposed to be.

As I was leaving my Chiropractor and I thought back on my recent fall, the Holy Spirit began to show me this is how many of us are when we “fall into sin.” The first thing we need to understand is that we have an adversary who is doing all he can to help you and I stumble and fall into sin, and from time to time, he is very successful in doing that. Hebrews 12:1a “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the ‘sin’ that so easily entangles.” Paul writes in Romans 7:21 “So I find this law at work: When I want to do good evil is right there with me.” We all have secret sins in our lives that seem to flare up from time to time and we need to make every effort to get rid of every obstacle that would cause us to fall back into those secret sins. T.L. Cuyler writes: “A Christian is never safe, never strong, never true to Christ, unless he is ‘collaring’ every sinful and selfish passion, and forcing it into unconditional surrender.”  1 John 1:8 “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The other day someone said she didn’t have a bad past as many of us do when she came to the Lord but the Lord showed her that He saved her from the sin of ‘goodness.’

As I laid on the ground that day after I took such huge fall, one of the first thoughts that came to my mind was, ‘I hope no one saw me fall down.’ Often we worry more about the embarrassment of being found out because of our sinful actions than we are that we have offended the Lord. After his fall into sin with Bathsheba, David declared to the Lord in Psalm 51:3-4 “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against You (Lord), You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight so that You are proved right when You speak and justified when You judge.”

The day I took my fall, for a quick moment I wondered if I had broken any bones and because I was at the side of the home and everyone one else was in the home, I wondered how I would let them know to come and get me if that were the case; “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” Often because of the shame and  embarrassment and regret we feel because of the sin we may have fallen into, many of us fail to get up because we feel there is no hope left for us. 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, He (Lord) is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” As I said earlier, I went to see my Chiropractor friend the next day and so he could adjust my back to get it back into alignment. Sin breaks fellowship; intimacy with our Lord and only His forgiveness and His purification can restore that fellowship; that intimacy again, in other words get us back into spiritual alignment with the Lord. No amount of good works or anything else can accomplish that.

Maybe my friend, you have recently taken such a huge fall into sin that you feel you can’t get up. Go to the Lord and confess you sin to Him so that He can forgive you of your sin and purify your heart once again!! After confessing how hopeless he felt as he tried in vain to do good, Paul writes in Romans 7:24-25a “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord!” If you’ve sadly fallen into sin my friend, go to the Lord and get rescued so you can be resorted back to Him; Get up my dear brother, my dear sister!!!!!!