Stumble VS Falling

Sometimes when you are walking along, you trip and stumble. You may or may not actually fall down at this point. To stumble is less harmful usually than actually falling down to the ground or floor. It is much easier to keep going when you only stumble. When you fall, you must get up, attend to injuries and then try to continue on. 

In our spiritual life, it is exactly the same. You may stumble and make a mistake with a sin of somewhat minor proportions such as inappropriate thoughts or telling half truths or speeding slightly in the car and it is easy to correct and carry on. However, taking part in a more serious sin that leads to destruction of yourself or someone else may be considered falling. For instance, spreading gossip that destroys another's reputation, doing drugs and not caring for your child, having an affair, driving drunk and hurting yourself or someone else or stealing from another will be much harder to correct and continue on. Each time we engage in grave sin, we fall lower and lower and become weaker and weaker making it harder to get back up on the topside. 

The best thing we can do is try to keep ourselves from stumbling in the first place so that we don't go down in a fall. We can do this by keeping in God's Word; because if we hide His Word in our hearts we won't sin against Him! We can also do this by only keeping company with those who will not tempt us to treat sin like the fun house. It is really just a matter of taking precautions as best we can against even stumbling so that falls rarely, if ever, happen. 

Of course, we are humans and with that comes sin. However, we can guard against falls and keep stumbles to a minimum if we work at it.