“The Blessing Of The Rebound”

Butterfly on orchid
(Photo by Georgia)

Message Summary:
Have you stumbled? Have you fallen? Perhaps you are even down right now
as you read this. God has provided a means for spiritual rebound with
no additional conditions or limits. Just a straightforward promise
based upon His character of forgiveness. When we confess our sins “He
is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.” This really is good news and the best kind of rebound
with the bonus of eternity spent in heaven. Joyfully accept His
cleansing and forgiveness today.

“If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Last night’s NCAA basketball championship game had a tremendous finish
with Villanova, the winning team, sealing the championship with a
buzzer shot. That is, the buzzer ending the game went off as the ball
was in the air before the ball swooshed through the hoop. (See here for
24 second video).
For sport’s enthusiasts these are the best types of games (unless you
favor a particular team, in which case you don’t mind your team having
a blow-out victory!)

The buzzer winning finish in basketball has a parallel in spiritual
things but we certainly don’t recommend it! Essentially we might call
it a deathbed conversion. We recommend living faithfully for Christ so
there’s no drama or suspense at death, rather peace and serenity as the angels escort your spirit to heaven.

But there’s another parallel in basketball to the Christian life. In a
basketball game solid play is required all through the game to keep it
close enough for a buzzer finish. One key component is the rebound. In
basketball a rebound refers to the ball being retained after a missed
shot and the offensive team having another opportunity to score. Or on
defense it’s getting the ball back after your opponent misses a shot.
Because even the best players miss shots, rebounding is an important
component to having a good basketball team.


Thank God for another kind of rebound. If you’ve been a Christian for a
while hopefully you’ve memorized the daily verse: “If we confess our sins,
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from
all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). It’s one of those remarkable truths
in the Christian life that form a fundamental principle we’ll call “the rebound principle.” It describes the
wonderful means that our gracious God has provided for us to rebound or
bounce back after we stumble or when we fall. We may fall but we are
not cast down. By the grace of God we can get back up, for the Lord
upholds us with His righteous right hand (Psalm 37:24)!

But we also rebound in life. In fact in some way everyone reading this has rebounded.

Have
you ever fallen? Of course you have! You did so a lot when you
were learning to walk. Just ask your parents. We’ve all fallen a few
times after being fully grown and how embarrassing that is! Or worse,
it’s painful and requires a long recovery period and sometimes surgery.
Some of us
will remember the low budget, rather cheesy TV ad from the late
eighties with the elderly person calling out the memorable line, “I’ve
fallen and I can’t get up.” It became the catch phrase for many years
and was used jokingly in many settings. Not such a joke when you’re the
incapacitated person, young or old!

All of us have stumbled and fallen physically, but as believers we’ve
also fallen spiritually at different times. The Apostle James says, “We all stumble in many ways” (3:2). Sometimes we fall “big time”, but more commonly in “small ways”.

The seasoned believer will quickly distinguish the difference between a
small stumble and a plummeting fall. The persevering believer has an
ongoing testimony of overcoming spiritual falls. 

The apostle John is writing late in the first century, perhaps sixty
years after he had walked with Jesus. Peter, Paul and many of the other
notable apostles died about thirty years prior to this writing. He’s
surely very mature now. If anyone was ever expected to have fully made
it in their spiritual journey and earned the right to point his finger and use a preachy
“you” it would have been John. But I find encouraging significance in
the personal pronoun he uses throughout the passage. It’s known as the
first person plural.  John does not say, “if you confess your
sins” but “if we confess our sins.”

Have you stumbled? Have you fallen? Perhaps you are even down right now
as you read this. God has provided a means for spiritual rebound with
no additional conditions or limits. Just a straightforward promise
based upon His character of forgiveness. When we confess our sins “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
This really is good news and the best kind of rebound with the bonus of
eternity spent in heaven. Joyfully accept His cleansing and
forgiveness today.

Be encouraged today,

Stephen & Brooksyne Weber