Grace To Fail...And Get Up Again

 How many times has someone ever told you it's okay to fail? Probably not many. And you've most likely never told yourself that it's okay either. In our performance-driven society, mistakes and failures are not given enough credit. I don't mean that striving for excellence isn't a good thing, or that setting goals for yourself and pushing hard to achieve them isn't admirable. But often, an improper idea of failure can cause us to give up hope. We think that it's not okay to fall. That the hallmark of the one who impresses in this world is the one who "has it all together," who finds perfection at every turn. But we fail to remind ourselves that any person who ever did anything worthwhile in this world first learned how to fail before they could learn to succeed. 

 I've struggled with this fear of failure for most of my life. I've never been a natural at anything and, so often, my many attempts at mastery in things left me more discouraged than hopeful. Years ago I would sometimes quit because I felt like I could never be "good enough" for the thing I was striving for, or the people I wanted to please. Over time, I stopped trying because I didn't want the pain of my own lack of ability to hit me in the face... one. more. time. 

 After awhile, this began to carry over into my view of the Christian life. I knew I didn't read the Bible as much as I should, pray as well as others, feel as close to God as the "model believer" ought to, and I felt like I was more fake than authentic. Because I played the believing game and tried to force faith... but I lost. So I gave up. But little did I know that God didn't give up on me that quickly. 

 Grace began to teach me a new way to look at life. And, to this day, it's continuing to revolutionize how I live each God-given day. I'm starting to understand that, when it comes to matters of the heart, belief is a risk you take. Love is a risk you take. Because the Son of God was hurt for you...because He believed in you!

You who can't see beyond your own inability to get this trust thing right...

You who think you're never good enough to love and be loved authentically...

You who fear that all your strivings are in vain...

That all your sins are too great to be forgiven by a holy God...

That you'll never be able to move past these failures of yours and that you're forever defined by the mistakes you've made...

You who have accepted your wounds as un-healable...

YOU ARE THE ONES HE CAME FOR! 

You are the broken ones that He went willingly to the cross for so that you could experience forgiveness and grace abundant. You are the very people He set the Gospel in motion to save. Because nothing is ever wasted in the kingdom of God. And your pain is never the end of the story...unless you tell yourself that it is. The serpent lie of "God isn't enough" has ruined stories and souls since the beginning of time. And our only true failing is when we believe that. 

 Over the summer I have been reading a book that has changed so much for me in regards to the concept of Grace and how living in it opens up the heart to so much hopefulness in spite of continual shortcomings and failures. In her book, Extravagant Grace, author Barbara Duguid writes to all broken ones:

"If you are in Christ you are cherished...wherever you have sinned and continue to sin, He has obeyed in your place. That means that you are free to struggle and fail; you are free to grow slowly; you are free at times to not grow at all; you are free to cast yourself on the mercy of God for a lifetime. Repeated failure does not mean that you are unsaved or that God is tired of you and disappointed. It does mean that He has called you to a difficult struggle and that He will hold on to you in all of your standing and falling and bring you safely home. You have great reason to hope."

 Because the thing is...it's not up to you, dear hurting hearts! It's not up to me either. Our Savior has done all that was necessary to fulfill the perfection we owed God but couldn't make good on. His one death, burial, and resurrection changed the trajectory of all human history so that mankind could have eternal hope in the face of their own failure. And this is why only once in time has a perfect life been laid down for the imperfect...God's Son Jesus did that for us broken ones. 

 As a result of this, God says to us that it's okay to not be okay. It's okay to hurt. It's okay to risk on love. It's okay to fail to get it right...because we're human and we fail all the time. God gets all this and yet loves us deeply anyway. Once you realize that His approval of you isn't dependent on how much you do, how often you do it, how well you do it, or even if you do it...then you can take heart even though you fall. 

 God gives grace to fail...and grace to get up again. Sometimes its easy to think that grace is only there for us when we are fulfilling all God wants us to and, when we fail, that grace somehow goes away. We think that we need to get beyond our sins in order for God to love us more. We think we need to start succeeding and stop failing. 

 But what if we started to see that God won't always give us the victory over our sins as we desire. He may give us grace to overcome them, but He may not. And He may leave us to struggle with our failures so that we come to depend on Him more. But either way He chooses, grace is provided. 

 In short, because the God-Man Himself was strong, we are free to be weak; because He won for us, we are free to lose; because He was Someone, we are free to be no one; because He was extraordinary, we are free to be ordinary; because He has succeeded for us, we are free to fail. And fail big. 

 Once we recognize the simple fact that we can't sustain our good intentions, no matter how hard we try...once we realize that sin will be a constant influencer in our lives until we finally reach our eternal home...once we grasp that we will never be "good enough" but that Jesus stepped in to be all these things on our behalf, it somehow becomes a little easier to breathe freely. To thank more frequently. To notice miracles and blessings previously ignored because we were running ourselves silly trying too hard. 

 It becomes a little easier to face ourselves and live with ourselves because "ourselves" are being re-made and this isn't all there is. Whatever you are beating yourself up about today in your journey through life...your inability to love well, your repeatedly failed attempts at consistent time with God, your lack of prayer, your addiction that keeps haunting you, your fears that keep speaking un-truths in your ears...whatever is keeping you from seeing through to God...know this: God is offering you grace, and He loves you...even though you fail. 

 All your tears, your broken places, your empty soul-spaces...they aren't the end or the defining point of your story. Because God is more. And it's okay that you don't have it all together...because He does...and that's what we need to trust in.