When you're already failing, and it's only February
but let me tell you, that can be a good thing. if you let it be...
We’re entering into week six of the new year. It seems like our feeds and our conversations can be filled with goals met, numbers on scales lowered, healthy habits formed, and new hobbies started.
In January, I made (alongside half of humanity) all these fresh, shiny goals, my heart brimming with excitement and hope at how my life would be changed for the better.
Self control and constraints on my phone.
Waking up earlier.
Exercising daily.
More books, less tv at night.
More patience, less losing it on my kids.
More intentionality with others, less self-focus.
‘Oh, how the Lord will use me!’ I thought.
But here I am reviewing the past month and realizing my complete lack of measuring up, my own impossible standards proving my incapability... Enter utter disappointment. Tired hands lifted in defeat. Tortured eye rolls at how I thought I could possibly bring something of use to the Lord’s table and somehow accomplish every single objective on my endless list.
More focus on self.
More helplessness.
This is where I think I’ve gotten it wrong, though. And where I think many of us become misled and stuck in a relentless cycle of striving, anxiety, and frustration.
What if that helplessness would bring us instead to the foot of the cross? What if that was God’s plan all along?
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‘The Lord who delivered me’
In her devotional Upon Waking, Jackie Hill Perry references David’s reply to those who did not believe in his ability to defeat Goliath: “And David said, ‘The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of the Philistine’” (1 Sam. 17:37). To whom does David merit his successes—to his own abilities? his own self-discipline?
No. He says it was “the Lord who delivered me.” He finds his confidence for the future not from his past successes, but from the Lord’s work through him.
Jackie goes on to say (and it’s worth quoting the entire paragraph here):
When we look at our resumes and see ourselves and all that we’ve accomplished instead of God’s grace, then when something doesn’t go according to plan, or work like it used to, when the strategies that have always worked for us turn around and fail us, we cope with the anxiety of it all by trying to be more productive instead of becoming more humble. We strategize before praying. We work before resting… All because when you know that you know that you know how to get stuff done, you start believing you are the common denominator in every victory. You start thinking it’s not the Lord who delivered you last time and will deliver you this time but you.
We too often take our eyes off of the One who enables us to act. In our pride, we forget it was in fact not us who did this or that, but him through us. So then the pressure falls heavy back on our weary shoulders so we can accomplish our goals yet again.
The same goes for when we fail as well. Instead of our failures pointing us to our desperate need for God’s grace and strength, we look inward to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and to get it together dangit. Because after all, we think, it’s up to us. If we fail, it’s due to some lack inside of us. So we therefore must work all the harder.
But what would change if every success and every failure brought us to our knees in prayer, then asking God to use every aspect of our life to transform us and to mold us like only he can?
Could it be possible that as we form well-intentioned changes, we forget that “it is not I but Christ in me” (Gal. 2:20)? We end up neglecting the whole story of God being the Redeemer throughout Scripture. Not man. Not us.
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A weakness that leads to grace
Despite man’s best attempts at following the Law, they still fell short; they still failed at perfect holiness. They needed a saving that arose from somewhere deeper than within themselves.
The arc of redemption consists of God working through and in spite of flawed human beings, yes, but ultimately it is him alone who does both the saving and the growth (1 Cor. 3:7). The Lord chooses to use humans in their weaknesses as they learn to humble themselves before him, recognizing their desperate need for him to move. Then, he does.
And that bestowed grace does not end at salvation. It is a continuous offering, for though we are a new creation, we are still weak and fallen human beings in constant need of Jesus.
Paul David Tripp shares in his book Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family about the gap in understanding too many Christians have about the present grace we have in Christ when we are feeling inadequate. And the same can be true for those who aren’t parents, as well.
“Rather than your inability being in the way of God’s plan, it is part of his plan. He knows that parents who admit that they are inadequate and run to God make the best parents. You see, he doesn’t ask you to be able, he asks you to be willing.”
Tripp goes on in the following chapter to claim that “it is when you confess that you don’t have a prayer of being what God wants you to be and doing what God wants you to do as a parent without the rescuing and enabling grace of God. You become increasingly excited about and thankful for the rescue, and your personal thankfulness causes you to be enthusiastic about your children reaching out for the same kind of help.”
Our inability and weakness forces us to our knees in dependence. We can then rest in the grace we have now, daily, in the saving work of Christ.
Like Tripp states, that’s where our children, our friends, the world, and our own hearts are drawn to the gospel because we display the answer to our lack. Our need for his grace causes us to recognize and point to the fact that everything we have is from above. It is by him and through him and for him we take each breath. The truth of our reliance on our good Father who loves us reminds us we can safely, and with great confidence, bring all our fears, failures, needs, and even victories to him. Praising him for when we “succeed” and begging for more of him when we fail.
Paul shares with the Corinthian church of what he calls the “thorn in the flesh” that God used to humble him—“Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’” (1 Cor. 12:8-9a).
And how does Paul respond to Christ’s reminder? He says, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (12:9b-10, emphasis mine). Paul actually chooses to boast in his weaknesses, because he knows it is in a place of need where we are drawn in dependence to the Father. Where we learn to give him, not ourselves, all the praise because we see how unworthy and unable we are without his saving grace at work in our lives.
So as the onset of 2024 continues, and our shortcomings raise their ugly heads in defiance that somehow we are not God and can’t do all and be all, will we hang our own heads in defeat or just work harder until we “get there” (wherever there is), or will we lift our weary souls to the One who is completely able… completely patient… completely loving… completely disciplined… completely in us?
Jesus, we need you. May our failures bring us endlessly back to you. May you get the glory in both our victories and defeats. For where we are weak, there we are truly strong, in you alone.