Psalm 119:11

“Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You.”

Psalm 119:105

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

Matthew 7:24-25

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.”

Next year at our church camp, the theme will be Transformed, and the sub-theme is Our Firm Foundation. As I was contemplating this theme and what I might begin to write as we plan the lessons, this lesson came to my mind, and I began to think about my journey in the Word of God, first as a boy, as a young man, and as a minister. I grew up seeing my father and my mom regularly reading the scriptures at home. I saw my dad reading almost daily and my mom often sitting, drying her hair while reading the scriptures. My dad died when I was 16, and my mom re-married when I was 20. My other dad could be seen often reading his Bible at his desk first thing in the morning. He is 84 years old now, and every morning shortly after 5 am, he can be found at his desk with a cup of tea, reading the scriptures.

I have spent a lot of time reading the scriptures over the years. I read many parts of the Bible and even taught through entire books. But it was not until about 4 or 5 years ago that I began simply reading the Bible cover to cover. I still read topics, and along with a church member, I may do a reading for 30 days on a lesson series to help encourage them. But for the most part, I set aside time to read the Bible from cover to cover. I recently finished the cover-to-cover for the 2nd time this year. I did a challenge that my preacher friends and I do for the first 90 days of each New Year, and then I did another read-through.

The idea here is not to embarrass, to hurt, or to boast. Rather, I want to encourage you to do the same. If you have the Bible App, it has several read the Bible in a year plans that you can use. You can do the chronological one that lets you read the Bible in the order in which each book was written, or the one I just finished did a Psalm each day, so by the end, I had read through the Psalms multiple times as well.

Once one reads through the Bible multiple times cover to cover, the continuity of the narrative begins to come into play. One can begin to see parts of each book that mention each other; you can see the prophecies that are fulfilled in the New Testament; and when a verse or set of verses are cited or quoted in the New Testament, they begin to sound and feel familiar, and it becomes easier and easier to understand what was being said.

The Bible is the only firm foundation that we have today. It is the Word of God, and in it, we have the basis for our faith. The Bible offers us truths in history, science, geography, laws of physics, and many other areas while not being a book about any of the topics. We can take facts like the ones often mentioned in Acts about who was the leader, where a certain event took place, or who was involved in an event and find that the Bible is very accurate. We can take a look at Daniel 11, one of the most prophecy-filled chapters in the entire Bible, and then take secular history and see how accurate these prophecies were.

The Bible offers us the truth about where we come from and where we are going. It tells us that we are deliberately made by God and that we have a purpose for which to live each day. The Bible tells us that God loves us, and as we read the Bible, we see that God loves imperfect people from Abraham to Peter. We see that God has been faithful even when His people were not and that when He did have to punish us evil-doers, He exhausted every offer of grace, kindness, and pleading to repent before any punishment was meted out. We see that even in the punishment, there is grace from Noah, to Lot, to Daniel and his fellow captives, and even to today and God’s preservation of Israel in the midst of very hostile neighbors.

We have a firm foundation that is based on the truth of God’s Word. The time is coming and may come sooner than we think when the Bible will be illegal. Have we worked hard to ‘hide it in our hearts?’ No one can erase it there or confiscate what we memorize. The Bible offers us the understanding that God uses broken and fallen men and women who submit to Him and let Him do what only He can do.

The Bible offers us a firm foundation of God’s grace to fallen and broken people who have no hope in themselves, and without His grace, we have only despair to look forward to. Even if this life you had here was the best ever, the one to come without Jesus is intolerable. The opposite is also true; if one has a horrible life filled with hurt, filled with loss, and filled with pain, but you have Jesus as Savior, then this is as bad as it gets and the future is awesome.

This is the kind of foundation that gives us a sure footing. But this only comes when we read the whole Bible and see people just like us, just like me, being used by God. It comes when we see the barnacles on the ‘heroes’ of the faith, and we see the same kinds of barnacles like we have on us. We have a sure foundation to see that God is there in the background making things work for His people, and we see that even if He is silent, He is never off the clock. And if we just keep looking, we will see His mighty hands at work.

Read, study, re-read, and work at memorizing the Scriptures. Find songs that have entire verses of the Bible or that are based on the Bible and learn them. Keep working and knowing the truth, and in it, we have the power to serve the Lord and be sure-footed as we walk here until we get home. Learn to love the Book.

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

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