Please Help Me, I'm Falling!

Please Help Me, I’m Falling!

The title of this message comes from an old C&W song. It is the lament of a man caught between his conscience and his desire. His marriage is not doing well and there is a woman that finds him attractive. He also finds her to be desirable, but he reminds himself and the lady in question about his vows and that to fall would be sin. As the song goes on, he finds the attraction to the other woman becoming stronger. He pleads with her to close the door to temptation so that he cannot walk in. He finds he is losing his will to be true. He knows he should not want her but he does. The song ends with the same plea to the woman to please help him, he’s falling in love with her. It does not come out and say that he finally fell, but from the tone of the final plea it is obvious that he did.

There is a lot of theology in secular songs. Some good and most bad, but here we have a classic example of a person dealing with temptation and doing it all wrong. He is obviously a fairly moral man, but he has allowed himself to get into dire straits due to the state of his marriage and by consistent exposure to this woman. In the darkness of despair he is in doubt of the vows that he made in the light of new love. He is aware of the sin involved if he falls, but he does not run away from the precipice of destruction. Instead, he lingers in the deceptive warmth of emotion rather than peering into the cold crevice awaiting him if he falls. He pleads for help to be true from the very woman who is attracted to him enough that she does not want him to be true. The song had not been written yet, but they were both "lookin’ for love in all the wrong places."

Before we are too hard on either party we must remember the exhortation to "consider thyself, lest thou also be tempted." (Gal 6:1) Another one to remember is "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." (1 Cor 10:12) More of us are guilty in our thought life in this area than we would care to admit and we are just as guilty, Brothers and Sisters, as this couple. (Matt 5:28)

This particular sin stands out to us and we are outraged and indignant, but all sins happen because of the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. Those are the root sins; the rest are just an offshoot of them. They also occur because of the same mistakes that led our couple in the song into sin.

Ephesians 4:27 Neither give place to the devil. (KJV)

The first mistake in any sin is giving the devil opportunity to make us fall. It always starts out as something small and innocent and then it snowballs. We were only going to try one puff on a cigarette as kid, but it turned into a life habit that may bring us to death with cancer way before our time. We just going to have one drink to see what the big deal was and then we became alcoholics after years of just one more for the road to be sociable. We were only going to look at one porn magazine or web site and it turned into an addiction. We were only kissing and petting, but eventually a new life was created in the back seat of a car. We gave the devil opportunity to deceive us and snag us into a pattern of sin.

Our couple here most likely met in a bar. She only came to dance and he was there to have one or two to relax and drown his troubles. First, he just watched her dance and admired her gracefulness. He saw her as the life of the party and he had no life. Then he got the nerve up after a few more belts and asked her to dance. He came back to the bar and she came back and as they became friends he shared with her his troubles at home. She understood because her husband had left her a couple of years ago. Then the friendship turned into a budding romance that caught both of them by surprise. Now, they are in the situation they find themselves in the song.

It doesn’t have to be at the bar. It could be at work. She is a secretary for the Chief and always dresses flashier than the wife at home with the children. She is still slim and trim whereas bearing three kids has not been kind to the "little woman." He is always charming at the office and always has a joke or witty phrase. He seems confident and is quite accomplished in what he does. She admires him and hopes one day to have a man like him. She doesn’t know that he goes home and kicks the dog and bites his wife’s head off. He doesn’t know that she is a very controlling woman and deep in credit card debt to maintain herself in the attire and coiffure that he finds so attractive and cannot afford to pay for his own wife.