There's one very comforting thing in life: we always have a safety net.  No matter how bad we screw up, God will be there to catch us before we plummet to the ground.  Sure, the fall will probably scare the crud out of you, and the landing may not be a soft one, but we'll survive to learn from our mistakes.

But, as Shakespeare once wrote, "Ay, there's the rub!"  The key is that we need — I stress "need" here — to look for the lesson in our failures.  There's an old adage in Christianity that "God helps those who help themselves."  The idea is two-pronged: the most common translation of that phrase is that God will only give assistance to those who don't sit back and expect God to do everything, like pay the bills.  But the more obscure meaning of the phrase is that God will continue to catch only those who stop making a mistake they know they're making.  It's not because he's given up on you; it's just that he's giving you the lesson the hard way.  And while you may fall to the bottom, know that the bottom of God's love is infinitely greater than the top of the world.

Three years old and his father asks him
To take a leap of faith
From the safety of the dock
Into the dark, cold lake
Standing with his arms stretched out
The child looks so small
Scared to death he whispers
"Daddy catch me when I fall"

Seventeen and he's been pushed
To drinking by his friends
At a party one night he's caught
With a beer in his hands
At the station the sheriff says
"Boy, you've got one call"
He dials home and whispers
"Dad, catch me when I fall"

Thirty-five, on the streets
Begging for a meal
No more wife, no more kids
His pain is oh, so real
He bet on booze and his cheating ways
Now he's lost it all
Tears stream down as he prays
"Father, catch me when I fall"

A child-like faith in the one
Who finds him when he's lost
As a kid he looked to daddy's arms
He now looks to the cross
Knowing those same outstretched hands
He jumped into long ago
Will catch him when he falls
And they won't let him go

When I face uncertainty
When I need some help
I remember Him who caught me
Every time I fell
I've never faced the world alone
Any time I can recall
I walk beside the one I know
Will catch me when I fall

– When I Fall, ©2001 Mike Frazer 

As Christians we are taught to love and to accept — within reason, of course.  The point of "within reason" is to emphasize the fact that there are times when we are not to accept someone as they are.  In fact, that happens a lot more often than we may realize.  And if you're a naturally caring person like me, sometimes you lose sight of the difference between acceptable and unacceptable.

Acceptance and tolerance, as a Christian, are two things that should be handled with care.  Regardless of what you have been taught, the simple fact is that we are not to be tolerant of sinful behavior.  We are to recognize and deny it in our lives.

We need to be diligent in our efforts to identify those who seek to drag us down — and that can be difficult at times.  The strongest weapon Satan has against us is deception, and this is where the caring, trusting people are at a huge disadvantage: we seek to help all, and to be compassionate to all, and as such we let ourselves get close to the wrong people.

Paul listed a handful of the types of people who would deceive and destroy us in 2 Timothy 3:2-7 as he says, "People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God — having a form of godliness but denying its power.  Have nothing to do with them.  They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning, but never able to acknowledge the truth."

God's instruction through Paul was in reference to the end times.  While we never know when those times will be, the one thing we know for sure is that these same things have happened all throughout history.  These are the works of Satan and his charges, who only desire to steal, kill and destroy.

Your best protection is to simply follow Paul's advice and have nothing to do with them.  But Satan is the great deceiver, and is good at what he does.  It's often difficult to see the difference between sincerity and deception.  Your only defense is to pray, and pray regularly.  Pray for God to protect you from deception, to keep you on the path he has set before you, and above all pray that God will open your eyes so you can see the deceivers for who they are.

When I wake up tomorrow
And I look to the sky
I'll see you, I'll see you
If the sun shines or it's raining
If it's warm or if it's cold
I'll see you, I'll see you

And when the night falls all around
And I lay in my bed
When the memories of my day
Are bouncing in my head
I'll remember it was you
Who made everything I see
I'll remember it was you
Who made me…

You're in everything I see, I touch
I hear, I smell, I breathe
You're in everything that gathers
Around me
You made the stars above me
The moon, the winds, the seas
You're the beating of my heart
The life in me

©2007 Mike Frazer

I'm a control freak.

It's not that I desire power, or that I have to be a leader to be happy.  It's simply that life, on the surface, is much like trying to regain control of a car that is traveling at 100 miles per hour through a narrow canyon, with no brakes.  Oh, and the steering wheel just fell into your lap.  So, I desire to regain that control.  The problem is, the only possible way out of that situation is to hand the wheel to God and pray that you be saved.  You simply aren't going to stop that car any other way.

But still I've tried.  And the one thing that every attempt has had in common is complete and utter failure. All attempts to control your own destiny are in vain. 

So what, then, does this have to do with free will?

Yes, we are free to make our own choices.  The Bible tells us so.  It also tells us that God knew every hair on our heads long before we were ever born.  The concept of free will in Christianity is tricky, because we are given the ability to make choices, but through his omnipotence God has known and understood every decision we will make, and he has always know them.   And those decisions are far simpler for us than we ever let ourselves believe.  Brace yourself, because this is going to come as a shock to your system: the only decision we ever have to make for each situation we face is whether or not to leave it in God's hands.  It really is that simple.

Let's face it: we will never, ever be able to truly control another person, let alone an entire population.  The hardest part to accept about free will and about giving our problems to God is accepting that the world does not revolve around each one of us individually.  You are merely one of more than six billion cogs in a very large machine — and you, with your incredibly narrow view of the world, can never begin to understand how even a seemingly benign decision that shouldn't have any effect on anyone else can have a domino effect down the line.  You live in the here-and-now, and what you can accept in your world is limited to what your senses can comprehend.  Don't feel bad, you're far from alone in that mindset.  You have billions of brothers and sisters in the same boat.

So how does one go about "giving it to God"?   Easy: pray for it.  Prayer is, as a Christian, your best friend, your strongest weapon, and your greatest comfort.  It is a direct communication between you and your maker.  Pray that God will take your burdens.  Sounds easy, right?

Wrong.

The hard part isn't giving your problems to God.  The real struggle is not trying to take back the wheel.  We stumble because God doesn't always handle things the way that feels the best to us.  Sometimes you have to lose something to gain something else.  And while that something else may not be what you want, it will most definitely be what you need at the time.

Case in point: I've been dealing with two sources of anxiety in my life.  The first was a job search.  I found a listing that seemed to be a great fit, scheduled an interview, and asked God for the strength, wisdom and confidence I needed to make a good impression.  The interview went great, and I didn't try to contact them again until I felt it being impressed upon my heart to make a follow-up contact.  I kept my nose out of God's work, and I will be starting my new job on October 22.

On the other hand, I was dealing with another issue that has been a point of contention for me for a while now.  My impatience got the best of me, and I screwed things up big-time because I wasn't going where God was leading me.  And every step I took only got me deeper into the mud.  See, problems like these compound themselves: once you've screwed up, every attempt you make at fixing it on your own stands a very good chance of resulting in a situation that is far more twisted than that from which you were trying to escape to begin with.  Much like quicksand, the harder you struggle the worse off you'll end up.

The bottom line is this: you have to do nothing more than make a simple, binary decision when faced with adversity: give it to God, or go it alone.  The good news is that we all know the right choice; the bad news is that we usually fail to believe it.

I leave you with the following:

And so I stand here
Looking at all that I have made
Fallen in ruin
And it would seem that

It's out of my hands
There's nothing I can do
The best laid plans
Again have fallen through
I though my world
Was under my command
Now I can't believe
It's out of my hands

My favorite delusion
I must control the universe
Failure brings freedom
You are God, and I'm not so…

It's out of my hands
There's nothing I can do
The best laid plans
Again have fallen through
I thought my world
Was under my command
Now I can't believe
Just how glad I am
It's out of my hands

And so I stand here
Looking at all that you have made
Learning to place my life
In your keeping

It's out of my hands
I know this much is true
The best laid plans
All belong to you
When I know my world
Is under your command
I can't believe
Just how glad I am
It's out of my hands

- Out of My Hands (Carolyn Arends)

Every morning we wake up
And get started with our day
I stumble to the shower
As I quietly pray
For the strength to make it through the morning
And to survive the afternoon
To fight the evening traffic
So I can come home to you

It's just me and you
And I try to be your everything
It's so hard to be strong
When there's no time to be weak
But when I look into those baby blues
I see the child I wish I still could be
Please remember, little Angel
You're everything to me

I don't have the time
To spend with you like I should
Sometimes the ends don't meet
Quite like I hope they would
I wish things worked out different
And we weren't here on our own
But always know I'll never leave you
And you'll never be alone

'Cause It's just me and you
And I try to be your everything
It's so hard to be strong
When there's no time to be weak
But when I look into those baby blues
I see the child I wish I still could be
Please remember, little Angel
You're everything to me

I lay you down each night
And I read your favorite book
All the struggles I go through are worth it
When you give me that little look
That says you'll always trust me
To be your hero and your friend
And you'll always be MY hero
Until the very end

It's just me and you
And I try to be your everything
It's so hard to be strong
When there's no time to be weak
But when I look into those baby blues
I see the child I wish I still could be
Please remember, little Angel
You're everything to me