2 Corinthians 4:16-18: ¹⁶ “Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, ¹⁸ while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

Proverbs 24:16: “For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked shall fall by calamity.”

Proverbs 37:24: “Though he falls, he shall not be utterly cast down; for the Lord upholds him with His hand.

I am sure that if you have been a Christian for any length of time you have probably read Romans 7:14-25. In this passage, Paul talks about the battle with the flesh. How he longs to do good, but evil is there all the time. The evil, of course, is in us, in me, in you as we deal with the flesh that we are bound in until we meet Jesus.

I have a good friend, a brother in the Lord, who uses his skateboarding talents to minister to young people all over the world. He is currently raising the funds to begin a mission point in New York City. I happened to be watching a video about skateboarding, and the man, a Christian, pointed out that skateboarders have to learn how to fall. It is an essential part of the culture. They ALL fall, even the seasoned professionals. The issue is that one cannot ever master a trick move unless one falls often, fails often, and gets back up and tries again. The only way to succeed is to fail and to learn how to fail the right way.

In the passages above, we are told that God will help us to get up after we fail, as often as we fall. We are two persons living in a symbiotic relationship: the inner man that cannot fail, and the outer man that fails all the time. One part of us never has to learn how to fall; the other does.

Albert Einstein was quoted as saying, “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” We are an old, broken, sinful body trying to learn to walk and live with the new perfect man inside of us, and as such, we will fall often. True learning is learning how to fall, get up, and try again.

I have watched my son skateboard or try to do tricks on his BMX bike; he falls and fails time after time; sometimes the falls really hurt, but as soon as he is healed, and often before he is healed, he is back at it, determined to do the trick.

We need to have the same mentality when we fall and when we get back up, even when it hurts, and try again. Keep trying, never stop trying, and even if you never land the trick, you will get better at it or closer to it.

Many seasoned veterans miss tricks in skateboarding, surfing, and all kinds of other disciplines. The same is true with our relationship with the Lord; keep trying. Get up, don’t stay down, don’t give up, don’t give in. Like skateboarding, falling is a part of it. It is important that we learn how to land.

In 1 John 1:8-9, we are told the first part of how to land. These verses are not about salvation; John is writing to saved people here, and he encourages us to confess our sins. Consider what you did wrong, and get right with God; this is the first step to falling the right way. The second is your mindset. Paul says in Romans 7:21 that even though evil is present, he WILLS to do good. We have to want to succeed at the living for the Lord, or we will stop trying. We will stop getting up.

Many of us know of brothers and sisters in the Lord who simply stopped trying. They gave up and determined that it was too hard. They attend church, and they seem to be consistent, but their hearts are not in it. We all have things we wanted to do, but they got too hard; and we have the guitar, the piano, the old skateboard, the art set, the whatever in the basement, and it just reminds us that we failed.

Paul, in Romans 7:24-25, says, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Jesus is the one who can help us and free us from the body of death that is attached to us. We will not ever be perfect in this body, in this life, but unlike skateboarding for most of us, if we truly keep trying, if we truly keep putting our bodies into submission, we will be able to get better and see some success. BUT we are to remember that all of our successes belong to Jesus. It is He who helps us get up, He who helps us try again, He who forgives our failures and He who rejoices alongside us when we succeed. No one cheers louder for us than Jesus.

One of the things that helps to keep us going is that feeling of accomplishment when we land a trick, solve a problem, or finish a puzzle. Relish the successes and let that feeling of obeying and pleasing the Lord goad us on to trying again and again until falling and trying again becomes a normal part of our life. We never stop trying, never give in, and never give up. In addition, we begin to encourage those that we see trying and failing as well. We cheer them on and encourage them to get up over and over again. We find ourselves going over and picking them up, dusting them off, and giving them a ‘let’s try again’ chat.

What if we became adept at picking our brothers and sisters up instead of laughing at them when they fell? The Lord’s churches would be so different and so vibrant with people who were willing to try, and try, and try because they were not afraid to fail. Soon, we would have more succeeding, more encouragers, and fewer people quitting.

Let us fail, let us heal, and let us try again together until Jesus comes to get us; and then, we will never fail or fall again.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church

How To Connect With Us

In-person: every Sunday (10:30 am) at Bethany Baptist Church 70 Victoria Street, Elora, ON

Online: https://mmbchurch.ca/

Email: seangooding@mmbchurch.ca

Join us on Zoom every Sunday (10:30 am) for Sunday Service AND every Tuesday at 8:00 pm for Bible Study: Meeting ID: 700 794 460 Passcode: 032661; https://us02web.zoom.us/j/700794460?pwd=M3NFRG91ZW5Sa2Z3amVyWkFnYXd6QT09

Genesis 11:1-6

“Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. ² And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. ³ Then they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. ⁴ And they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’ ⁵ But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. ⁶ And the Lord said, ‘Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.'”

As we get closer and closer to the US elections, there is a lot of talk from the left about the collective; they have an agenda that destroys families, that will eradicate ownership, individualism, and even true Christianity, and make way only for the collective agreed-upon thinking. There is a saying that it ‘takes a village’ to raise a child, but the left has now taken that even further; now the child belongs to the village, and the parents have no power or authority over their kids.

When we read the passage in the text, it does not seem that there is evil in the actions of the people. They have not too long ago come through the flood, and it would seem prudent to stay close together and work together. But this was in direct defiance of God’s command. In Genesis 9:1, God commands the sons of Noah to ‘be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth.’ These folks in Genesis 11 did the fruitful and multiply part, but they did not fill the whole earth. In defiance of God, they stayed close together and agreed to build the tower at Babel.

One of the hardest things to learn and to teach is that partial obedience is still rebellion. These folks understood the wrath of God. They knew God. It is possible that they were still able to see and visit the remains of the Ark. They understood that God was not a god who tolerated rebellion for long, and yet they did just that: rebelled. We know what God did here; He confused their languages and forced them to split all around the world. But for the past 4,500 years, the spiritual powers behind these types of rebellions have been working to bring the world back together. We are almost there.

The EU parliament is built to picture an unfinished building like the Tower of Babel. Since we do not have actual pictures of the Tower, we do not know what it looked like. The unfinished look of the building is being observed here. In the foyer, there used to be a painting by Pieter Brueghel that depicted the Tower of Babel, and the motto is Europe: “Many tongues one voice,” is in defiance of the Lord’s confusion of the languages.

Due to many protests, the painting has been removed. These folks know what they are doing; there is no ignorance here. The same spirits are working in the US and, yes, here in Canada, too. The blatant defiance of God is no longer hidden under wraps. Sadly, there is such an ignorance of the Bible and such a coordinated attack on the veracity of the Scriptures that many do not know the story of the Tower of Babel, and those that do dismiss it as mere myth.

Those of us who take the Bible as the Word of God understand that there is a rebellion amongst us that is active and powerful. The people in leadership positions are not ignorant of who God is. They are just as sold out to evil as we who trust in Jesus should be sold out for good.

In Genesis 6:5, God says this: “Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

These modern-day folks pushing the collective all suffer from the same thinking problems; all of their thoughts are evil. From the attacks on the family unit that weaken the place of fathers, to the attacks on our education system to remove all positive mention of God or His word, to the promotion of sexuality in and amongst the youth making our girls and boys have to face the demands of sex way too early, and the attacks on the women, trying to convince them that they are just like men and vice-versa, thus smudging the very clear differences that God created and all for the purpose of creating the mindset for a collective that will defy God and all that is good.

They have succeeded in creating an army of uneducated, rebellious, and carnal people who have no room for God and truthfully don’t want anything to do with God, even if they did know Him. In the meantime, the people promoting the people pushing the narrative actually believe in God. The Pharisees knew who Jesus was; they simply did not want to submit to Him. They killed the Messiah, and they knew exactly what they were doing. The leaders of today are no different; they defy God out of knowledge of who He is, and there is no claim of ignorance on their part.

How many politicians who support abortion rights also claim some kind of religious affiliation? How many professing ‘Christians’ also vote for leaders that promote abortion, promote the demise of the family, promote the transgender agenda, and openly hate Israel? Why would someone who did not know who God was hate Israel? The only reason they hate Israel is because God loves her.

This collective mindset is worldwide; look at what happened in COVID; people from all over the world, of all creeds and all languages, and from various backgrounds were manipulated and led to believe that all not following the collective were evil and deserved punishments.

We are told that in the last days, a man’s enemies will be the people in his own home (Matthew 10:36). I stress again, back to our text, while we do not know how long after the flood this was, it is certain that many of these folk knew the flood story; maybe the elders had seen the ark, and maybe some of them knew Noah. There was no ignorance here of what God wanted them to do. God wanted the people to have kids and spread throughout the earth. God knew what was coming if they stayed in one place, and He commanded them to spread out.

This is the same kind of defiance that we are witnessing here. The people who built the EU Parliament knew and believed the story of Babel; there is no other explanation for their actions. There are no coincidences in these things. At the end of the Millennial Kingdom, after the successful, peaceful, and very productive earthly reign of Jesus, Satan will still be able to raise an army to attack Jerusalem (Genesis 20:1-10). There is no claim of ignorance here, just abject rebellion.

None of us know the time of the end, but we are told to observe the signs of the times. Surely, the end of the age is near. God’s dealing with Noah’s time, His destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and His punishment of Israel under the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and Rome for their open rebellion against Him, His laws, and his loving offer of redemption reminds us that God’s patience, though long, sadly, does have an end.

Lord, please help us! Forgive us for being quiet for so long, for looking the other way and being indifferent for so long that evil has taken root, and no one can come and deal with it but YOU.

The collective is about to run headlong into the power of the Living God, and they have been convinced by the evil one that they can win. The people of Babel thought they could defy God and win; they are wrong, and so are these deceived persons today. May the Lord have mercy on their souls, and by His grace, some will see the light, repent, and miss God’s judgment.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

Online: https://mmbchurch.ca/

Email: seangooding@mmbchurch.ca

Join us on Zoom every Sunday (10:30 am) for Sunday Service AND every Tuesday at 8:00 pm for Bible Study: Meeting ID: 700 794 460 Passcode: 032661; https://us02web.zoom.us/j/700794460?pwd=M3NFRG91ZW5Sa2Z3amVyWkFnYXd6QT09