Falling in Reverse

To watch the sermon Falling in Reverse

Download the Discussion Guide: Download

Download the 5 Day Devotional: Download

All right, well, good morning, everyone. If we haven't had the opportunity to meet yet. My name is Cam Wallace. I am the youth leader for Covenant Youth here at hff. I'm also the co director with my wife Sarah, of our summer camp, Covenant Youth Camp.

Very clear lines there. We didn't travel far with the names added to one word anyway, so it's a pleasure to get this opportunity today. Being the youth, youth pastor means that either this will go great or you'll never see me again. So this is the shot that we're going to have. So I'm excited for what the Lord has put on my heart and what I'm going to share with you guys today.

As a youth leader, I do expect a little bit of participation here. I'm going to do it one time, just one time, and that's it. That way I don't overwhelm you guys. Show of hands real quick, anytime at all. Like, maybe it's this, this week, this month, this year.

Who has ever had a bad day, a bad week, or a terrible year? Just the train wreck of a time. Yeah. If anybody did not raise your hand, we know the liars will pray for you. But, yeah, so everybody.

Everybody has this time in their life, whether it's just a bad day or it's a bad week. Some of us have had bad years. I've definitely been there. I had one a couple years ago, but here I am now. So the thing is, we tend to think that, like, maybe life isn't supposed to be that bad.

But I've read this book, and it even says so. That's why I always laugh a little bit whenever I hear people saying. They're like, oh, the world is this terrible, dark place. It's like, duh. I mean, he said it was Matthew or John 16:33.

Christ Himself says, you have suffering in this world. But then he follows that by saying, but be courageous, for I have overcome the world. Today we're going to look a little bit at what it means to be an apprentice, to try to pick ourselves up when that world is so dark. The reality is that it's not a matter of if we're going to fall. It is a matter of when, at what point we're going to have these moments.

But it isn't. The test isn't never falling. The test is how we get back up.

So a little story. I wish it was warmer. I thought about wearing shorts so that you could see, like, the scars from this. But back when I was 11, a little bit before that, let's say I am the youngest of four sons, and when I was 11, one of my older brothers decided to hand me his old skateboard. And I had thankfully learned a horrible lesson two years before that when I was nine.

Those commercials where it says, do not attempt skilled professional, that isn't a challenge for me personally, because I broke my foot on a razor scooter, like, straight in half. Like, if you're going to break it, it was pretty impressive. It was all the way right across to the pinky toe. It's like I went in. But when I did this, when I got the skateboard, I wanted to learn better.

I wanted to go at it and be a little bit wiser about it. So I wasn't making that same mistake. Fortunately, when you're looking at it, they immediately want you to understand this concept and grasp the fact that you have now picked up a piece of plywood and are going to attempt to break the laws of gravity. And this will result in you falling many, many, many times, many times. That's why I'm talking about, like, if I had had shorts on.

My knees are scarred up from all the times that I fell. But the thing is, it's like skateboarding tells us that they say they set you up. They're like, okay, first step, stand up. Now you're on the board. Cool.

Now learn how to push it off. And then when you fall, because you are going to fall, here's how to fall properly. But this is where Christianity and our religion and everything has really failed us a little bit because we teach everybody, like, here's how to stand up. You are identified in Christ. You are there.

Your confidence, there is your foundation. Then push off. Here's how to walk it out. Here's how to live it. But then when it falls, that's where we've left you to fail.

Because I see too many believers that have fallen and had these hard times, and they're like, I thought it was going to be easy. I thought I had Christ now and all was kosher and everything's gravy and it's rainbows and shutter sunshine. And then we've built this false reality that somehow we're going towards this hyper perfectionism that doesn't exist. Worst case scenario is it sets people back and then ultimately they walk away from Christ because in their head they had said, I'm never going to fall. I'm a weeble wobble.

I won't fall down.

But as humans, we know that we're imperfect. We know that we're flawed. A lot of us will openly admit this fact. So we need to realize that we're going to stumble on our path to perfection as we try to walk out to be like Christ. There are going to be things that happen, and our testimony is never about being perfect.

It's about a resiliency and a reliance on Christ, our reliance on God in those times. But also, are we going to let those stumbling blocks be setbacks or are they going to be a step up to the next thing?

So I've known since July that I was going to be speaking today. That's when Chris asked me. And I immediately had this idea. I was like, I think I got it. Because God said the immediate thought was, remember when you were a dumb kid and you fell a lot skateboarding?

Let's talk about that. Let's embarrass you a little bit.

But that's fine. I'm a youth pastor. I'm supposed to embarrass myself so they can learn from me, hopefully.

But I never had the title, first of all, and that's weird for me. So I've spent 10 years being a creative, and I always started title, first title, get people Drawn in and then work from there. This was the first time in my entire life I worked body of text first. So when Chris finally asked, I was like, all of a sudden I had this band name. So, yes, the title of today is a band name.

No, it's not a Christian band. I'm sorry. Yes, I listened to secular music, too. Fine, God forgives me.

But what I thought was cool was not only that I thought about that, but when I looked into them. The lead singer had apparently spent some time in prison. And the reason he named this was that he felt like he was going to constantly be falling. But now he wanted it to not be setbacks. He wanted to find a new way to fall.

So it was a path. He was changing his perspective that his falling wasn't falling back and the habits, but falling in reverse.

So I'm going to look at James chapter one today. So if you have your Bibles or your phone, please feel free to turn over there. And it's real easy because we're going to chapter one. I'm using an actual Bible, so I can use these little tassel things. This is fun.

So James chapter one, starting at verse two says, consider it great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials. Okay, this guy must not know me. He must not know my life. This guy doesn't know what I've Been through. But let's keep reading.

It says, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. So first he tells us to find joys in the trials, and then he tells us to grow up. Or he says, be mature. But, you know. But James is saying that it's a perspective shift.

It's not trials and tribulations. It's an opportunity to experience God at work.

Scripture shows us that even those closest to him throughout time had these setbacks and these stumbles, but it never defined them. It was just a part of their story. Adam and Eve, Noah, Jacob, Moses, Rahab, Samson, David, Saul, Solomon, Jonah, Peter, Paul, all of these people, their identity wasn't their mistake. They were children of God, just like you. It was a part of their story.

So we need to remember that when we fall. God got you. Jesus, not your failures, is what defines you. Just have a little side note here that some of us parents aren't setting this great example. We have these kids out here, and we're like, I want them to run to me the second anything happens.

The second they feel uncomfortable, the second they have this thought and they're falling, I want to be that person that they go to. But then we as adults, we as children of God, whenever the hard times happen, we fall into our rituals and our habits. We don't run into the father.

We'd rather run back to the things that helped us and maybe worked before. Maybe we emotionally shut down. Maybe we've been tempted to grab the bottle, which I'm not saying anything bad about grabbing a cold beer after a long day. Like, I get that. But, like, don't let that be your crutch.

Some of us embrace the darkness and the fall. Some of us were born in the darkness. If you Bane. That was a terrible impression. But in my head on the notes, it looked really cool, but I did it bad.

But some of us feel like this is where. This is what's natural for me. I was. I'm rooted in this chaos and this darkness. I want to return there because that's home.

That's where I was born. But you're born again, born into light.

But if you're struggling with that and you're struggling with the chaos and wanting to learn how to get out, I won't be that guy. I'm going to tell you a couple weeks ago, Christian, an amazing message about getting out of the chaos, finding clarity in those times. So I get to promote his message. Not that he needs me to. But often we learn that getting out of our chaos, sometimes we're trying to get away from it because we think that it defines us still, or we allow it to be a a setback.

There's a story of an employer that admitted openly to a group of people at a conference and said that he looks for people that have a track record of failures. And it's not because of any like, oh, well, I want to fix this person. But honestly, because if their track record points out a failure, he knows that they've accepted it. If a person is an employee, has no failures, has no setbacks that they've ever had in their entire working career, that means that they've probably blamed it on someone else or they haven't worked hard enough for it. So if we identified those failures as a time to see where our strength grew, we wouldn't view it as a setback.

Micah 7. 8 says this. It says, do not rejoice over me, my enemy. Though I have fallen, I will stand up. Though I sit in the darkness, the Lord will be my light.

Falling isn't about just letting go and letting life take you, but it's about falling into God's grace and letting him catch you and know that his love and strength are there for you every single time. Now, when we talk about falling honestly, like, the biggest thing that we think of is not just tripping, but it's this visual of, like, if I fall and I'm on my path, if I'm trying to pursue righteousness, my falling is like falling down a staircase. I'm 20 stairs up, and now I've just set back everything because I'm falling down and I have to start down here, first floor.

But that's not how it is. It's not this struggle where we get down and we have to start all over from the beginning. It's we're falling right where we are.

And this falling in reverse isn't about falling back. It's about falling away from our struggles and falling forward into the grace of God.

We should be always consistently seeing ourselves moving closer to him, so that even in our attempts to pursue him, to pursue righteousness, when we slip up and we fail, we do these things ourselves. Our momentum is what's carrying us. If you're falling and your momentum is going backwards, you were doing the wrong thing. You're relying on the habits. You're allowing life to just take you.

You could stand there on the edge like Creed. If you remember the music video where it's like, ha. Anyway, that's a little joke for Ian this morning.

So we don't want to fall into those same old struggles. Proverbs 24:16 says this. Though a righteous man falls seven times, he will get back up. He will get back up. I started to go northern.

He will get back. He will get back up. But the wicked stumble into ruin.

So when we start having to learn how to fall, we're looking at this and you're watching a YouTube video or you're reading the manuals or anything, our first thing that we have to learn is to fight our human nature. Because our human nature is, stick out my arm, do this. And I'm sure Jensen can point out, because he's worked in er, that if people stiff up, lock themselves and land on that, something's going to break. That's the whole thing that they're teaching you when you learn how to skateboard, when you learn how to fall, is that if you do it wrong, if you rely on yourself to do it and you don't, let there be some, like, resiliency, if you just stick it out, you're going to snap. Something will break.

So suddenly, what would have been this simple scrape, maybe a bruise is now a broken arm. Suddenly you're in a cast.

But if we expect to fall, if we see it happening and we just go, okay, roll with it, let it happen. Absorb the fact that this is happening. But I'll be okay. Everything goes a lot easier. Yeah, we're a little dinged up, but that's okay.

We're not broken.

Now when I'm saying expect a fall, expect to have a stumble. I'm not trying to be glass half full or glass half empty, per se. And I'm also not going to tell you to be glass half full and be super optimistic, like, everything's fine. When you're tumbling down the stairs and going into your old ways and breaking things and bowl in China shop, you're like, this is fine. Like the meme where the dog's at the table and everything's on fire.

That's my favorite meme.

Often felt like that guy at work sometimes. But what I want to do, and this is where I tend to approach things, is more realistic. There's water in the glass. We're looking at the facts of life. We're not trying to gauge where we're at in things.

It is, I'm going to have something that will set me back. But God through Christ has already conquered anything that I struggle with. He's helping Me. He is walking alongside me. The water is in the glass.

So I scrolled my page for dramatic effect, but I don't know why I did that because now I lost my place. All right, A.D. okay. Yes. So we need to learn about picking ourselves back up in the presence of God.

And there is a humility to this. So one of the first times that I went to start skateboarding, I went to a park and I was like, I'm going to go in the middle of the day. I was homeschooled, so I had that option. I'm going to go when nobody's there and it's just going to be me. And if I fall, I'll fall alone.

Of course I get there and there's like two guys standing there that are like 30 something, and I'm like this 11 year old fat kid that was super self conscious and I'm like, I'm going to die. But I go and like, I had to embrace the humility of what I was doing. I was on the edge and I'm trying to go down this two foot slope ultimately at like a mile an hour. Not anything stressful, but to me it's this big hurdle. And yes, I went down at once and I fell.

But the thing is that once I did that once, the other another guy there saw me do it and came over and assisted me. And next time I went down, he held my hands and helped me go down. I had to embrace the fact that yes, I was going to fall, yes, this accident was going to happen, but it's a learning experience. And also if I can have somebody else to lean on, it's a lot easier. And I'm learning the entire time so that next time I might not need so much help.

Second Corinthians, I keep going all over the scriptures, so if there's any question I'm using scripture. Okay? Youth pastors do not just use one verse and build an entire sermon off of it. So 2 Corinthians, chapter 2. Also, I'm going to say this, so usually I'm used to like 10 minutes of teaching.

So right now we're at like, I still got 20 minutes.

So if I start stalling, I'm just trying. Like, this might be the easiest. We might be on the good terms where you're like, I want him to preach every Saturday so we can get to lunch. But I'm giving 45 minutes. That's four times.

That's crazy. Like you all have that much attention span. I have to reduce it to 10 minutes. So that they'll keep interest. Let's play a game in between.

Maybe I'll throw a ball into the crowd.

Sorry. I do actually carry a ball to youth just for that reason. Just like randomly keep the squirrels at bay.

So. Second Corinthians, chapter two, verse seven. Starting at verse seven through verse ten, Paul talks about his story of the thorn in his side where he's pleaded for God to take it away. But God's response immediately wasn't immediately relief. Instead, it was a reminder.

My grace is sufficient for you. God didn't remove the struggle. He provided grace enough to sustain you through the struggle.

And that I think is one of the hardest things that we do because we have these trials in our life and we're like, this is the hard Lord, just take it from me. And honestly, if we heard the audible voice of God, just be like, no. We'd be like, well, we might mimic Stephanie Tanner from Full House or Jar Jar Binks. For my Star wars fans were like, how rude. I saw a message like, I thought you were gracious, I thought you were loving.

He is, but his grace isn't defined how we would think about grace. His grace isn't like, oh, yep, I'll just throw out the red carpet and make everything super easy. His grace is, I know you're struggling and I'll be there with you every single step, every single moment, walking alongside of you, making you stronger. Because if it was all easy, we'd have no reason to go to him. That's the truth.

I've heard that message my entire life and I've struggled with it. It's like, well, wouldn't I still want a relationship with God? It's like, no. Because if I didn't have a reason to call him, if I never had these moments where I was weak, where I just was like beyond myself, where I had reached critical limit of myself and self reliance and I needed to just sit there and go, God, I need you. I wouldn't be where I am today.

I wouldn't have the relationship where I am with him now. It's in those moments where we feel the struggle and we're like, God, you better be with me right through this. I just need your hand. Or sometimes we just need to feel that his presence is there. I'm a very touchy person.

Not like you can set me off emotionally, but like, I love, I've said this before, I love hugs. I feel like Olaf sometimes. Like I love warm hugs. I embrace that about myself. Also love summer and probably have no Thought about how it'll affect me when I sit out in the sun for 10 hours.

But I love the presence. I love being intimate with somebody and knowing that they're right there. It's very vulnerable when you open yourself up to that experience and that relationship. You're like, we are intimate. We are bonded at this moment.

Your hearts are close to each other. So when we're experiencing these things and we're not saying, God, remove it from me, we're going closer to a relationship with him. That's how that grows. Because we said, God, remove it from me. He's just the janitor.

He's picking up the spill on the floor. He's picking up the stuff that's there in the way. He's not helping us grow. He's not making us strive in life. He's just picking up the trash.

Let's be honest. Nobody runs to the janitor except unless there's a message. And that's honestly how we treat God, is that he's his janitor. God, I'm struggling. There's this thing in my path.

If I go that way, I'm going to fall again.

God, I locked myself out of this thing. Can you. The flooding. There's flooding in the closet. I need help.

And we just want him to remove it. But God's like, no, run to me. Cling to me so that we can do it together.

So obviously bad things will happen in talking about that. But I feel like the downside in saying this earlier and about, like, how Christianity has failed is that we set off new believers and we don't understand and reflect and realize that whether it's been a day or it's been five years, you might be standing there like a baby giraffe trying to stand up for the first time, which understandably is relatable to me because I'm six foot four and three quarter leg. Like, this is the part of me that, like, I've fallen a lot because of that, because I didn't feel like my foot was planted in something. And you're just trying to get into the groove of it. You're still at that point of, like, trying to grip.

Get your grip on the foundation.

You're trying to do that. But then people are saying, now push. And you're like, but my feet aren't on the board.

So that's where we need to understand that God's there and he's going, okay, just get back up. Okay, now try it again.

We live in a culture, obviously, that very opposite of this that's not. Go get somebody for help. Now we've become a little bit better. We're starting to get people to go towards therapy, do these things. Go find some professional.

But millennials, Gen X boomers, we can all understand. Like, the thing was, go make it happen. I very much still parent like a Gen X millennial. I was raised by two older parents, and so when I see my kids fall, I'm like, get up. Spit some dirt into it, and you're fine.

Like, you'll be good. Dust it off. I'm not usually the parent that's like, all right, well, how did that make you feel? I'm screaming from the other side of the yard going, you're fine. Just dust it off.

It's just a little blood. You're good.

Yeah. There's some parents that are still wanting to be like that a little bit more.

But for us, we don't like this, having to rely on somebody because one, it's having to admit weakness. And that's a big area of struggle for a lot of people. And that's where, you know, the thought of it being like, oh, but we're family. We're a family of God. We should run to the father when we're weak.

It's like, I don't know what your family life was like, but maybe that wasn't an option. And we carry that with us. Why would I run to my siblings for help? Why would I listen to the father that isn't going to respond to me?

So we carry that with us. And God's asking us to admit weakness, embrace the fact that we're going to stumble and that we have these things in life and call up to him.

But our struggles don't diminish the purpose. Our struggles don't define our story. He's the one that wrote it. A lot of it can be found in here. Who we are, what kind of life we're supposed to lead, the impact we should be leaving with every interaction that we have.

And if we're known as the person that's always Eeyore, that's always woe is me. Often you get left out of the friend chat. You get kicked out of the chat because nobody wants to hear you anymore. And we don't like doing that.

Our struggles should always drive us deeper into God's grace. So when we're falling, we're not falling into struggles, we're not falling into habit, we're falling into him. We're falling into the Father's arms.

So for us, this means that we don't have to pretend that we're okay when we're not.

We don't have to fake it to look strong. God doesn't call us to hide our thorns or push down our own or push through our own. He calls us to lean into his strength. Our thorns, our struggles, are just invitations. I can speak.

Are invitations to experience God's sustaining power. Okay, the band can come back up this time.

So when life knocks us down, getting back up isn't about ignoring the pain, saying I'm okay, or pretending that we're unaffected, because that does damage.

Like, it is more than just a flesh wound. You know it.

Sorry. Also a youth pastor thing. Just tons of, like, media quotes and stuff.

God wants us to stand back up. And standing back up with Christ means leaning into grace even when the world tells us to toughen up and to do it on our own.

If your thorn hasn't been removed and you've been praying, you're like, God, just take this from me. It's a constant struggle. Maybe you're a man and you struggle with your thoughts and where they go. And you're like, God, just remove the temptation from me. But he's like, no, I want you to work past it.

Or maybe you've had trouble with alcohol before, and you're like, God, just make it so that my life goes easier. So I'm not tempted to fall back in these habits. So I'm not tempted to run back to the bottle, to drown out the thoughts, to become numb. And he's like, no, you're stronger than that. Because if you're falling down in the sight of something, that something is more of an idol to you than you have ever imagined.

Our struggles don't diminish our purpose and should always deepen our reliance on God in the world that we have today. A lot of the best example that we can set is getting back up.

Because anybody that's in the world, we all raised our hands in this room that we've experienced hurt, that we've experienced a setback, we've experienced a bad day, a bad year. Every single person out there has done the exact same thing. And what makes us different, what sets us apart, is the fact that we can stand back up. The fact that we have hope, the fact that we have joy, that's what defines us. Not never falling ever.

That's an unrealistic expectation. And when we lie to ourselves about that, we're lying to them about that, and we're setting a false story that they can find the errors in. Well, if God is good and you're a good person, then why do bad things still happen to you? Because bad things happen to everyone, but because that bad thing happened. I'm standing here, maybe I know something bad happened yesterday.

Maybe I feel a little weak. Maybe my personality is affected by it. But I'm here and I'm confident. Not in myself, but I'm confident in Christ.

And when we look at Scripture and we've got this understanding and we go like, well, that's cool that he did that. It's really nice that he helped out those people and he rewrote their story and helped guide them.

This is your God. It's the same Messiah. Why are we separating what's in the book from what's right here? We don't have to go to a stone temple. We are the temple.

We're not having to go do some act. He's right here, constantly defining us, working within us, every single opportunity we give him.

And he's the same God. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, forever. And if he did it then, he'll do it again today, he'll do it again tomorrow. You don't focus about how often you're gonna fall. You focus and keep looking up on the fact that the father is standing right there saying, my child, come.

His hand is always reaching out for us, waiting to pick us up. You are not a burden. You are not a failure. You are a part of a person on your journey. A part of you are a person that is writing out your story.

Reach out to the father because he's gonna do it.