I recorded this at my desk this morning before the sun came up.
I was not planning to. I sat down to write, and the verse would not leave me alone. Proverbs 24:16.
For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief.
Read that again. Slowly.
The righteous man falls more. Not less. More. Seven times. The wicked man falls once — into mischief, into ruin — because he never stood up in the first place. You cannot fall if you are already on the ground.
The only man who keeps falling is the man who keeps getting up.
I fall in my home. I fall in my heart. I fall when no one is watching and the house is dark and the only sound is my breathing.
Over on The Biblical Man, I am the man with the sword. Over here, I want to be the man with the scars.
There was a night a few years ago when I understood what it means to fall into mischief — to fall once and stay down. I was on the floor. Not metaphorically. The actual floor. The door was locked. My phone was buzzing but I could not answer it. Everything I had built, everything I was — it was over.
And in that silence — the kind that has weight to it, that presses into your chest — I heard something. Not a voice. Not a verse. Just a single word rising from somewhere deeper than my own mind.
Again.
I thought of Jacob. He wrestled with God before the sun came up and walked with a limp for the rest of his life. He got a new name, but he paid for it with a broken hip. From then on, the way that man walked was different because of what he had met that night.
There on that floor, I felt that breaking. Not a hip. Something deeper. My pride. My certainty. The part of me that thought I was strong enough to do this on my own.
I did not pray for victory. I did not even pray for deliverance. I had no words. I just whispered it again. The only word I had left.
Again.
It is not a prayer of faith. It is a prayer of defiance. A prayer from the bottom of the pit that says: You can break my bones, but you cannot have my will.
My knees cracked. My back ached. I pushed myself off the floor.
I rose up again.
The rising is not a single moment. It is not a victory speech. It is a quiet, ugly decision to put your feet on the cold floor when every part of you wants to stay down.
It is opening the Word. Not for a sermon. Not for content. For a lifeline.
It is a prayer that is not eloquent. Just a single word. Help.
Those notes became the first posts I put on Follow Me.
This is the receipt. This is the cost of following Jesus in a world that wants you to stay down. It is not clean. It is not pretty. But it is real.
This is not a publication about answers. The Biblical Man — I put the answers there. This is a publication about the questions that come at 4 AM.
The falling is not the shame. The falling is the proof.
We fall. We rise. We fall again.
Some truths can only be bought with scars.
Press play. This morning’s episode is above.
I got an email this morning from a 62-year-old man. He has been a Christian since he was five. He wrote to tell me that these devotionals have helped him more than I will ever know. That knowing God was beside him in some of his darkest times has meant so much. That I opened his eyes to a whole new picture of God, the Bible, Jesus, and how complex and powerful and loving He truly is.
Then he said: I know you are being attacked and persecuted, but I want you to know that you have meant so much to me.
He asked me to continue the fight.
Challenge accepted.
If this hit you, do three things for me:
Pray for me. I mean that.
Forward this to one man who needs it. You know who he is. The one who makes everyone laugh and goes home and stares at the ceiling.
Subscribe. If you are reading this for free and it has ministered to you, become a paid subscriber. Not because I need the money. Because this is how we keep the lights on in a ministry that the world would rather shut down. $8 a month. The cost of two coffees to keep a man writing the truth at 4 AM.
Fight on.
Until next time, this is Adam. Out.
P.S. — Every paid subscriber gets access to the full archive — the posts I cannot publish anywhere else. The war journal. The 4 AM confessions. The scars behind the sword. If Follow Me has meant something to you, join the men who are choosing to stay in the fight.
P.S.S. — If you came here from The Biblical Man and you have not read “The Jester” yet — read it. It is the most honest thing I have ever written. And it is only the beginning of what I am going to say over here.
