Baby Steps

Sometimes I feel like a baby who is just learning how to walk. I take a step, and another faltering little step, and then I tumble down in a heap. I may have learned to walk on two feet without falling (most of the time!), but learning to walk by faith is a whole different ball game. I take a step, and another faltering little step of faith, and then I tumble down in a heap, tripped up by my unbelief.
But funny thing about babies…no matter how many times they fall, they never give up. Every one of them will eventually put one foot in front of another and not fall down. The reason they succeed is that they will not quit trying. (illustration from Harris, Do Hard Things)

I have to admit, when I mess up for the hundredth time in a week, I definitely don’t feel like chanting “Never, never, never give up” with Winston Churchill. I feel like going for broke; I’ve already blown it anyway. Baby steps, big tumbles. I cry with Paul for that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not, but what I hate, that I do…(Romans 7:15) I strive to honor God with my life, but over and over again I fail. It feels like a losing battle. My testimony is ruined; how can He possibly use me? His answer is not what I am expecting. For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again.(Proverbs 24:16)

It would be foolish to give up on a baby the first time it tumbled down in a heap. Yet we are so ready to give up on ourselves. We buy the lie that God can’t use us once we’ve fallen. God does not expect us not to fall…He expects us to get back up.