We all need a soft place to fall. As a wife and mother I want to be a soft place for those I love most in this world to land when life gets hard. As Christians, we have a hard time admitting that we need a place where we can just be fallible sometimes. Aren’t we supposed to have it all together? Aren’t we the ones who know best how to trust in the promises of God?

We aren’t supposed to worry, we aren’t supposed to get discouraged, or feel overwhelmed with all that life throws at us. But the truth is, even Christians need to be able to pull off the mask and just be weak some days. Sometimes we need to be able to show someone our wretchedness without fear of being criticized for it.

I don’t know what I would do without people in my life that let me be less than perfect. As a ministry wife, there are few people who can handle me when I am at my worst. To that end, there are a precious few who have ever seen me on those days. I can actually count them on one hand, and I don’t need all five of those fingers, either. These precious few people mean the world to me.

Who do you have in your life that is your soft place to fall? Have you ever misjudged that place only to be allowed to fall hard? You thought they would catch you, but they just couldn’t do it? Have you felt the disappointment when that person just couldn’t handle knowing your brokenness?

We have to choose wisely those places to let it all hang out… but we must have them. We have to risk finding that place where we can be completely honest, for it’s in that honest place where healing can come. Where growth can happen. Only when we come to the place where we confront our weakness can we begin to grow out of it.

This is especially hard for people who work in ministry. I understand it. People need to believe that those who work in ministry have their stuff together. They have perfect marriages, model children, and uncomplicated lives. All things work out for them because they have a special relationship to the heavenlies, or whatever.

The truth is, ministry people face the same struggles, stressors, disappointments and frustrations that everyone else does. Only ministry people deal daily in eternity… other people’s eternity. Oh, we all know that it is the wooing of the Holy Spirit, and not by our doing that someone comes to salvation in Jesus. But the local church is the means by which God is choosing to accomplish the task of gathering in the lost sheep, and when the local church is your calling, the stress gets ramped up a bit sometimes.

No one likes to think that their ministers need a soft place to fall. They don’t like the thought of them falling at all. But without that soft place, ministers cannot make it over the long haul. They will burn out, have a moral failing, or grow ineffective in their calling.

As Christians, we all need to make room for everyone to be able to face their worst days and come out the other side looking more like Jesus and less like their old sinful self. That is the process of sanctification, and we need each other for that process to be successful.

Who is your soft place to fall?

Are you someone’s soft place?

Are you that place for your spouse? Your children? Your siblings or closest friends?

Being that place doesn’t mean you take on their brokenness yourself. Rather, we are called to bear one another’s burdens. A weight carried on the backs of two is much easier to carry. And when you are that soft place to fall, when you relieve that person of their burden, you keep it only long enough to then pass it off to the Father who is able to carry it.

Being a part of someone else’s process of sanctification is a noble thing. As believers, we are part of the same body. Lifting up another believer only serves to make the entire body healthier. We are the Bride of Christ. We want her to be spotless and ready for the day of the coming of the King. Every time we are willing to lift up another Christian, help them grow, help them refocus, and stand on what they already know to be true, we take one more step toward that day.

I think my favorite flower is the daffodil. I love the different shades of yellow and how, here in the south, they appear in such random places. What I love the most about daffodils, though, is for me, they signal the coming of spring. I am no fan of winter. By the time the end of February is upon us, I am one more cold snap from snapping myself. So the appearance of the daffodils settles my soul and reassures me that God is just about to move the dial once again to a warmer, more beautiful, season.

But here is the truth about the daffodil. Long before I notice their yellow blooms, long before they began pushing their way through the cold ground to hail the turning of the season, long before that, there was activity below the surface. While it was still winter up here, God was stirring something underneath at just the right time. And that, my friends, makes me love the daffodil all the more.

The Bible has something to say about how God chooses to move in our lives. 

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” Romans 5:1-11

Just like the daffodil, at just the right time, Jesus died for us. For every stinking ungodly, undeserving one of us. None of us were worth dying for. Think of the most godly person you have ever known… Wretched. Even they were wretched. But God, while we were still in that undeserving state, sent Jesus to pay the price for our salvation. At just the right time. The Bible called us enemies of God! And he still reconciled us to himself. He made our debt to him disappear.

I have planted daffodil bulbs in my yard. There is nothing pretty about a daffodil bulb. But inside that bulb, God has placed everything needed to make a beautiful daffodil. Before we meet Jesus, there is nothing in us that is beautiful. We are dead. Ephesians chapter two says it. We were dead, and we could not save ourselves. It is only through the working of God to save us are we rescued from death. Verses 8 and 9 of Ephesians 2 say… “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”

Those good works we do? Those things we do that make us look like we are good people? Those are only possible because of the work he did in us first. We can’t do those things apart from him. So any attempt on our part to prove ourselves worthy is then, worthless. It is only because he moved in us, at just the right time, rescued our sorry undeserving selves, that we can stand before him now justified, holy, and worthy.

I got you, didn’t I? With the title, I mean. That sort of tantalizing title is getting a lot people these days. It’s epidemic, really. And they are getting on my nerves. I see them by the dozens on Facebook and Twitter every day. We are sharing them to our timelines because we want to share our quick fixes with our friends. That’s nice.

“Ten Ways to Make Your Marriage Sizzle”

“Nine Foods You Should Stop Eating Now”

“Eight Exercises to Flatten Your Belly in Three Days…Guaranteed”

Why are we drawn to click on those stories? We just can’t help it. We have to know. Most authors of such articles rarely have any real data or expertise to make the claims they are making. It’s all a gimmick to draw us in.

We look for quick fixes and simple solutions. But we are grown ups. We should know by now that there are no quick fixes or simple solutions to life’s problems. Most of us don’t want to do the real work involved in making our marriages better, or improving our diets, or our bodies, or whatever. We want something fast, easy, and we want it now.

Any real life change takes time, and effort. Sometimes lots of time and most of the time, lots of effort. Whatever we want to change about ourselves likely didn’t get run off into the ditch overnight, so it likely won’t get repaired overnight either.

John 15:7 says,

“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”

Just maybe not today.

There are several passages of scripture that talk about perseverance, faithfulness, and pressing on. Looking for quick fixes in the Bible? Not so much. The only real quick fix is salvation in Jesus through the working of the Holy Spirit. Now when he chooses to move to redeem a soul? It can be in the blink of an eye.

But the work of sanctification is usually slow and arduous. We are stubborn sheep. The chipping away of everything that does not look like Jesus in our lives is laborious and continual. It is often painful and difficult. But what is our reward if we persevere? If we stop looking for those quick fixes and submit to real lasting life change?

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” James 1:2-4

Steadfastness, staying focused on the goal, leads to lacking in nothing. How many times has jumping to a quick fix landed you empty handed? More often than not, right?

We learned as children from the tale of the Tortoise and the Hare that “Slow and steady wins the race.”

Let’s not be lured by the quick fixes of this world. We know, deep down, they are bunk. Merely distractions from the hard work ahead of us.

Here’s one for you,

“One Promise You Can Count On No Matter What”

“He who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6