Restoring Grace 2

Hello Everyone,

This is the first reason people backslide -- OVER CONFIDENCE.

We begin to think we can handle everything on our own. We begin to think we are so strong we could never fail. We begin to say, "That would never happen to me!"

Anytime you hear about somebody else's stumbling and you say, "That could never happen to me" you're setting yourself up for a fall.

1 Corinthians 10:12 says: ^“So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!”  It's a trap!

Proverbs 16:18 says:  Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.

The way you spell ego -- EGO stands for Edging God Out.

When I get overconfident, I let ego into my life, I'm edging God out and I'm already backing away and heading down the slippery slope of falling away from Christ.

The second cause of falling away is LAZINESS.

We see this too in the story of Peter's denial. We get lethargic and slack off.

All these good habits we used to do like praying every day, reading the Bible every day, being in a small group we start saying, "Maybe I don't have time for that right now."

When you do, it ought to be a warning light. Because in the next scene we see this happening to Peter he just got tired.

Jesus took Peter, James and John -- three of the disciples -- into the Garden and said, "I want you guys to stay here and pray with Me for a while." This was the night

He knew He was going to be arrested and the next day He would be executed, crucified.

He said, "Can you guys just be with Me -- watch and pray."

He goes off and prays a little bit and comes back and they're asleep.

He goes off and comes back again and they've fallen asleep again.

Peter's problem was he just kept falling asleep. Jesus says in v. 37 "Couldn't you stay awake with Me for one hour?"

There's a principle here. When you get tired, you're setting yourself up for major temptation.

It's more difficult to do the right thing than it is to do the wrong thing.

If you really want to do the right thing in life, it takes energy, it takes effort, and it takes a lot of stamina.

Because you're trying to do the right thing all the time, you're going to get tired -- emotionally, physically, spiritually, in every area of your life.

If you don't know how to recharge yourself emotionally, if you don't know how to recharge yourself spiritually or physically, then fatigue is going to set in.

And fatigue should always be a warning light that something's going wrong, something's out of order. When you're tired, that's when you're most vulnerable to temptation.

Fatigue lowers your defenses and it makes you vulnerable.

Matthew 6:41 Jesus said, "Watch and pray so you won't fall into temptation." We've got to keep our guard up because when we start letting it down in laziness, we're starting on the slippery slope to falling away.

Be Careful!

Greater Things Are Still To Come!