Freedom from Failure

I have heard it said, "What would you accomplish if you knew you would not fail?" In other words, what have you been avoiding out of fear of failure?
      I suppose what frustrates me most within the body of Christ (the church) is how often I see people who claim belief in Christ but live with no real victory.  I think the root of this is a lack of belief or trust in the deep, true, and wonderful love of Christ.  They are saved, but don't know just how powerful Jesus saving power is.  They grow weary in trying to do good. They sin. They feel the guilty conscience pricking their hearts. They begin to believe, "I have failed. I can't DO this anymore." Ultimately, they run from God.  ( I know what this feels like, I lived it!)  What they fail to understand ( and what I failed to grasp for many years) is that they have a mediator between them and God, someone who knows exactly what it's like to face temptation, how frail and weak the human being is.  This mediator is Jesus.  He is our intercessor, our advocate before the Father, standing up for us and cleansing us daily.  Jesus isn't angry with them, he's standing right there, ready to lift them up and offer mercy.  He promised he would not cast out anyone who came to him. This is what scripture is trying to teach us when it tells us we can now go BOLDLY into the throne of grace and receive mercy in our time of need.  We don't need mercy when we are doing it all right...mercy is for the failure, the fault filled, the weak ones. Like me, for example. :)
     In the case of unbelievers, they may feel that they have sinned too much for God to accept them.   In truth, they have, we all have. But this is the exact moment when the gift of Christ shines forth! This IS the reason for the good news! God can't accept us as we are, on our own...but He can accept us when we have the payment of Christ covering over our sinful deeds. When the unbeliever begins to see that despite what they have done Christ can cover it, they begin to have hope.  Failure is lost and gaining is at hand!
     Within the Christian world, we tend to get saved and then forget that we have mercy. When we forget that we have mercy, we put on facades and start "acting" as if everything is all right.  It's like we were willing to be humble and admit our sin once before..but NOW..now we have to look good. We earn reputations in church as being godly or wise and so the stakes for failure seem so much higher. No one expected holiness of us the day we sauntered into church the first time. They expected us to be full of sin and broken.  As much as it saddens me to see it and sometimes angers me, it is not surprising to me when I see a huge scandal involving some head pastor of some mega-church or ministry.  The more they are looked up to, the more people lean on their every word, the higher the pressure becomes internally to look like you have it all together.  I can't let them know! What will they think? What will happen to my ministry?  Honesty gets replaced with fear.  Fear of man is a snare. Let me tell you a little story about how a big failure actually HELPED another believer...
    A few months back, I went to Disney with my family and  a fellow Christian family.  All went well until the sun got too hot, the head counting of children went on too long and this girl got plain old exhausted.  I had just been informed by my husband that my youngest child had pooped her diaper and that we had left the diaper bag in our stroller on the other end of the park.  Yay.  In that moment of "Oh Crap" (literally and figuratively) I began to make my way across the entrance of the park.  I am not sure if I did, in my haste, cut off a woman walking with her kids or not...I felt I didn't but she felt STRONGLY that I did.  In her anger, she started yelling at me and swearing at me.  Super bad timing for this lady to yell at me.  I completely lost my cool and yelled back at her emphatically that I "DID NOT TOUCH YOUR KIDS!"  While this may seem mild as a response to some of you...I immediately felt horrible.  I was on the church prayer team for goodness sake! How can I call myself a Christian who is supposed to turn the other cheek when instead, I yell back!?  This upset put me in a guilt heavy mood that led to a later loud altercation with my husband whom I yelled at quite well in front of my kids and our friends..as well as a few hundred Disney guests.  I was appalled at myself.  I should KNOW BETTER! What a hypocrite I am! What a FAILURE!  These thoughts raced repeatedly through my mind for several days.  I thanked God for His forgiveness in the matter and trusted all was well, although I was still upset with myself and felt like I had failed personally.  Soon after, a young man we had prayed for and spent some time with ended up in the hospital.  He had made some pretty regrettable choices and found himself under surveillance in the hospital.  We care deeply for him and asked if we could visit with him.  He agreed. When we arrived, he started to tell us the reason he was there and how badly he felt.  I read some scripture but I didn't see relief on his face.  So, I told him my Disney story.  He laughed and said it was the first time he had really had joy all week.  My failure made him feel encouraged. He looked at me and my husband as leaders, as people who "had it together".  My willingness to share my "secret shame" with him, helped him to continue and not give up..to keep close to God.  I was SO thankful that night.  God had used my failure to encourage someone else who was on the verge of giving up.  While I am sure that God wasn't loving my volatile reaction at Disney, He, because He loves me, was going to use it for good and redeem it.  In doing so, He redeemed me!  I no longer felt like a failure.  I felt human.  And it felt good to know that He had my back.
   When we fail, when we sin, we must remember that God has our back. That in Him there is no shadow of turning.  We must remember that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.  It is this unconditional love and promise to never leave us or forsake us or condemn us that gives us the encouragement to keep going...to keep the faith.  We may condemn ourselves, as I had, but He doesn't.  I learned personally the truth of this as well as that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.  He not only forgave me, but He used my mistakes to build up another one of his children.  A two for one!
     I hope that this story will make you laugh.  I hope that these truths will encourage you as you continue to place your faith in the saving grace of Jesus. I hope that if you don't have that kind of relationship with Christ, that this story and these truths will prompt you to desire one. Most of all, I hope that you realize that in Christ, you can not fail.  So, get up, dust off, and get moving.  Victory awaits!  I am going to DISNEYLAND! :)

Broken me...

As I was sitting in a prayer service at my local church recently, I was pondering the scripture in which Jesus says he has not come to condemn the world, for it is already condemned, but to save it. As Christians we can get so angry with the "sinful" choices of the world and with our spiritual eyes having been opened, it can seem absurd when laws are passed that are in direct opposition to "common sense" in our view. I however, am beginning, by God's kindness, to see the WHY behind the mess. Condemnation. Jesus told us the world was already condemned...it is like a huge red demolition sign has been posted on this earth and on every inhabitant since the garden of Eden and the fall of man. In Genesis we learn that due to sin, the whole Earth is cursed. The entire world groans for it's release from the bondage of sin. This is the WHY. Humans inherently "know" that they are condemned and under this curse. God makes it no secret. We can see it in nature, we can see it in the brokenness of man. We all see the pain of the world and think, "This is not right...this should not be". No one is happy with the curse and so they seek ways to get around the big red sign that marks them as soon to be destroyed. They do this in several ways...but the reason is always the same. Deny, deny, deny. Avoid, avoid, avoid. Cover, cover, cover. Hide, hide, hide. Nothing has changed since the garden. Adam sinned and hid. Eve covered herself and her husband with leaves....both trying to deny and avoid that big red sign. The ultimate problem with our worldly efforts to avoid being condemned is that NONE of them work and sooner or later, we need to add more leaves and hide in deeper and darker places. This is why we are seeing the legalization of the murder of our unborn...legalization and normalization of homosexual marriage....normalization and acceptance of divorce...normalization and acceptance of extramarital or premarital sexual relationships...legalization of drugs and the push for the legalization of marijuana...the normalization of pornography, the glorification of lying,cheating, backbiting, gossip (has anyone seen the "Real Housewives" series?)the list goes on and on....The world is trying to escape the curse the only way their darkened spiritual eyes can figure. Make what causes us to feel condemned NORMAL or LEGAL or FASHIONABLE. Our methods do not work as we are seeing evidenced across humankind. As we hide further and further from the truth about our fate, we simply heap sin upon sin, leaf upon leaf, and retreat further into the forest to hide from God. That is like ignoring a sunburn, putting on more tanning oil and sitting back out in the sun. God gives us warning signs for a reason! To warn us and to turn us back to the truth!

Notice how in the Garden, after Eve and Adam had hidden themselves and fashioned their new wardrobe, God came looking for them? He still comes looking for cursed man today, offering us a new covering that HE makes for us. He covers us with a sacrifice that HE determines worthy of redeeming us. His Son. Those who accept this offering can finally be free from condemnation. It is as if God takes that big red sign off of us and marks us with a new sign, TO BE SAVED! No one demolishes a building without first going through it and removing all the valuables and treasures it holds. They must be marked and removed before destruction begins. Every corner of the building gets looked over for anything that is precious or anyone hiding out inside. God gives us the opportunity to be marked for him, but we can choose to stay in our ramshackle surroundings and try to duct tape over the cracks, hide in the closets, and hold up the falling ceiling with our feeble hands.

I choose to run to him yelling "SAVE ME" and I look forward to what he will build in place of this cracked and broken world...in place of this cracked and broken me!

Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved!