He will not start because he has done the arithmetic on how it ends.
That is the honest version of his position and it took him about a year to be able to say it. He has turned before, twice, in a serious way, and both times he went a distance and then something happened and he was back. He is not bitter about it. He is simply somebody who has run an experiment twice and got the same result, and he considers himself to have data.
So when the pull comes now, and it comes fairly often, he does the sum. If I turn again, I will probably fall again. And a third fall would be worse than not starting, because a third fall would settle something about me that I have so far been able to leave open.
He is protecting himself from a conclusion. That is what the not moving is for.
And I want to say something to him and to you before we go anywhere near a verse, because I have sat with a great many people in exactly this position and there is a lie under it that has to be named. The lie is that a fall is a verdict. It is not, and it never has been, and the whole of Scripture is full of people who fell in ways far more publicly than you did and are named afterwards without an asterisk.
But he does not need me to argue with him. He needs to know what happens next time, and he needs it to be in writing rather than in my opinion of him.
That is you doing the sum.
You are not refusing to turn because you do not want to. You're refusing because you have been here before and you know how you go, and you have decided that not starting is safer than starting and stumbling.
The psalm plans for the fall before it happens
Here is the passage, and I want you to notice that it does not pretend.
The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand.Psalm 37:23-24
Though he fall. Not if. Though. The psalm builds the fall into the sentence in advance, as an expected feature of the journey rather than an interruption of it, and then it tells you what happens around it.
That is the thing I most want you to have. You have been trying to work out whether you can avoid falling before you will start. The psalm does not offer that. What it offers is a description of what a fall is like for a man whose steps are ordered by God, and the description is: not utterly cast down, because a hand is under him.
You are dealing with a psalm that expected the fall and made provision for it, and I am not softening anything: Psalm 37:24 says though he fall in writing, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than my reassurance who can get that to a man who has stopped starting.
Look at the phrase not utterly cast down. It is careful. It does not say he does not go down. He does. It says he is not cast down utterly, which is to say the fall is not the end of the sentence, and it is not the end of the man.
And then the reason: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand. The upholding is not a promise about your balance. It is a promise about His grip. Those are two entirely different assurances, and you have been waiting for the first one, which nobody ever gets.
You have a hand under you that does not depend on your footing being reliable, which is written into the second half of that verse rather than into my hope for you, with the Spirit of God able to reach a year of arithmetic that no argument of mine could touch.
And there is the first half, which I nearly skipped and should not. The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. Delighteth. In the way of a man who, three verses later, is described as falling. God is not merely tolerating the journey of somebody who stumbles. He takes pleasure in it, mid stumble, with a hand out.
This step is available to you with your record exactly as it stands, and the fall you are planning around has already been planned for, because Scripture put though he fall into the middle of a promise, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that onto a bridge on a bright afternoon.
Take the step you might stumble on.
You have been waiting for an assurance about your own footing, and Scripture does not offer one to anybody. What Psalm 37 offers is better and it is the only thing that would actually help: a hand under you that holds when the footing does not, with the Holy Spirit keeping it there.
The psalm says though he fall. Not if. It expected it, wrote it in, and then said what happens next, and what happens next is not what a year of your arithmetic has been predicting.
You are upheld by His hand rather than by your own reliability, and the fall you have been planning around was in the verse before you were born, because Psalm 37:24 says not utterly cast down, and the Holy Spirit is the one making that a thing you can move on rather than a comfort you file.
Start again. There is a hand out.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud, in whatever voice this afternoon has left you. The standing to say them is not something you work up to and it is not on loan from a steady record: Christ is in you, and the authority in these words belongs to Him and has been given to you in Scripture, made living by the Holy Spirit rather than by how sure you are of your own feet. Jesus put the faith required at a mustard seed, which is His way of setting it under the line where anybody would trouble to measure, and then He said the part that carries: speak to the mountain. The mountain here is not the two falls. It is the sum you keep doing before you move. Speak to that. What He does with everything else He does in His own way, and the step is yours to take this afternoon.
- Fall I am planning around, you are not the end of this, and in the name of Jesus I move anyway. Scripture says though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, and the word though is doing the work that my arithmetic never could.
- Fear that a third stumble would settle something about me, you have had a year of my starts. Scripture says the Lord upholds him with His hand, so the promise was always about His grip and never about my balance.
- Lord God, You order the steps and You delight in the way of a man who stumbles, and I am standing one step further on than I was a minute ago with nothing proved. I thank You, because Your Holy Spirit did the upholding and Your word wrote the fall in ahead of me, and I am received mid journey and not at the end of a clean run.
Psalm 37:23-24
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