Unfailing Love for the Failing Heart

I think if there is one thing that keeps anyone from knowing or staying close with God, its failure. We can’t imagine God could want anything to do with us on that morning when we wake up, head pounding with groggy regret, too embarrassed to pray. In hopes of forgetting, you hit snooze and sleep away the day. Or in shame, get up and attempt to shower the guilt off. Or try to sweat it out, using muscle ache to numb the heartache. After a decision that results in regret, though it’s as simple as an ‘I’m sorry’ to God (and maybe a few people), it can be hard to try to get a grip on this idea of loving forgiveness. There's something within us that just cannot let a mistake go.

How do you shake the failure feeling?

I sit here typing as tears stream down my face. Failure has gotten the best of me. I have confessed time after time of my shortcomings in this blog. I have put my malfunctions and disappointments on display for the world to read, yet here I sit letting one defeat me. Not only am I not allowing God to forgive me, I’m not letting myself. For some reason, I would rather sit here and in torturous thought telling myself how much I suck at life.

In spite of my efforts to make decisions based on what God expects, I fail. I’m human. I mess up. And when I do, I tend to beat myself up.

I think the definition of success made by our culture is what causes us to feel chained to our bad choices. We are constantly bombarded with a mentality that we have to reach some peak. Like there is a formula to attainment in our personal lives. It’s a belief that the culmination of A, B and C will result in success. If you get married, have kids and have a good job you’re a success or if you go to church, pray sometimes, and read your Bible you’re a successful Christian. You can’t earn God’s love or forgiveness and you certainly cannot “achieve” success, at least not on your own merit; both are gifts from God.

There is no formula for the way God works in our lives. We get various life circumstances. All of our paths take a different course. Just because we KNOW the difference between right and wrong, doesn’t mean we are not going to test it, push it, or go against it. Our world tells us if you take two steps back, you have to make it up in five forward. In God’s view when we take, two steps back, Jesus makes up for the loss as if we never fell back in the first place.

That’s what Easter is all about. Not bunnies and chocolate eggs; it is the day we gained forgiveness. The day Jesus died he showed the world what true love looks like. All those years ago on a Friday night, my failure died on a cross and it was conquered, left for dead when Jesus rose again. We can’t shake that failing feeling alone. Our only hope in moving forward is to give into unfailing love.

Rapper Lecrae’s song, "New Reality" gives a glimpse of love from God’s perspective:

“…But I love you even when your light’s off in your dark shame
When you lay down and profane me
Or when your bloodstream contains the things that would defame me
When nobody knows that you claim me
Or when you mess your life up, get mad, and want to blame me
I still want you back, I won’t punish you
I took that on the cross because I wanted you…”

If his love was an equation, I think it would be:  ¥ + p = ©, because his love is never ending, ongoing, and ever repeating. We cannot comprehend it.

The definition for unfailing is, “not giving way; not falling short of expectation; completely dependable. Inexhaustible; endless, certain.” Basically, the opposite of what I am right now. Yet that’s the description of God’s love for us 121 times throughout the Bible (NLT). The Hebrew translation for the phrase has expansive meaning: grace, mercy, favor, generosity, kindness, compassion, or loving-kindness. That’s why God can’t be put into a calculated formula or a measured box. His love alone is overwhelmingly huge and covers every aspect of our shortcomings. In our weakness, his grace comes alive carrying the weight and giving us the opportunity to let go and be free.

So why do I sit here sulking in my fault, refusing the comforting arms stretched out in forgiveness and love? I deserve the hug. I know I do. I need it.

It’s kind of like a child pouting because they know they were bad but instead of letting you hug them, forgive them and tell them its ok, they throw their hands out and say “NO! GO AWAY!”

Don’t push God away.

A wonderful friend encouraged me today saying, “Neither life or death, angels or demons, present or the future; nothing can separate us from the love of Christ”. She was quoting Romans 8:38. Not only does the Bible say nothing can separate us from God, it says He keeps no record of wrongs. We humans may tend to hold stuff over one another (and ourselves) but God doesn’t. So all the crap I’m giving myself for messing up is not from God; it’s from the human nature that screwed up in the first place—clearly I can’t trust that opinion!

Sometimes God puts other people in our lives to show us his love. I felt a God hug (even though it was over the phone) when her non-judgmental, understanding, sisterly love for me, reminded me that it’s okay to mess up.

God meets me right where I’m at and loves me exactly as I am. Failure and all.