Look Out Below!

When I was young, there was a kid that lived behind me that I liked to hang out with. He lived with his grandparents and had all these cool toys. One of those cool toys was an Atari game system with the game Pitfall. The goal of Pitfall was pretty simple in that you just had to get your character through the jungle and miss falling into these random pits or lakes. Whenever you came to a pit or a lake, you would jump onto a vine and swing over to the other side. As simple as the game was, I, for whatever reason, was really bad and always ended up falling into the pits. 

A few years ago, while I was thinking about this game, I thought to myself how I tend to view life like I’m playing Pitfall. Like sometimes I’m just going along, minding my own business, and boom, there’s a pit and I fall into it. Then other times I feel like I’m more alert and I see it coming, so I grab onto anything that looks like it might help and I get to the other side. Truthfully sometimes I just make it worse than it was when I started.

Now I’m sure some of you are thinking, “Wow, this feels super encouraging. Thanks, Aaron!” Well, I’m going to show us what Gods word says about the pitfalls in our life and how they can actually be for our benefit. So let’s look at the book of James and start with verse 2 of chapter 1: My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials,

Okay so what I hear when I read this verse is when I get to a trial or pitfall, I should be happy about it and make sure to look Christian. Now that is called taking a verse out of context, which is the opposite of how you should approach Gods word. But, I have to be honest with you, I have more often than not done that very thing, and with this verse even. 

Okay, so now that I’m done confessing, let’s move forward and see this in context with verses 3 and 4 so we can see the full truth. My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. 

We see now, in full context, these trials or pitfalls that we all face, allow our faith to be tested and that causes patience; or we could even say endurance as some translations put it. That endurance is what we all need to be able to walk through this life as believers. The reality is being a Christian isn’t easy and without a strong faith, we would never be able to finish well. That faith we have is simply our trust in God, who is all powerful and can do anything, and He is always allowing us the opportunity to learn to trust Him. The reality is these opportunities, whether we like it or not, will graciously come in situations where we may feel pain. See only when we are able to see that God is our only refuge and strength will we then find that we have all that we need. 

Now I’m not saying that God is going to overload your life with pain, but I’m also not saying it will ever be pain-free either. What I am saying is nothing is wasted in Gods Hands, and nothing you go through will you walk alone. We have to learn to praise Him on the mountaintops and learn to trust Him in the valleys. He loves you and He will never leave you or forsake you and you will never walk alone and when you do fall He will always be there to pick you up. 

"There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still" - Corrie ten Boom