Peace family, do you ever feel like a true failure? Can you really trust God in your places of failing?
I usually feel pretty confident, and don’t really remember many regrets on a day-to-day basis. However, I was cleaning out my email inbox earlier today (with more than 3,000 messages in there, it was time), and it left me feeling like a huge failure. I wasn’t expecting it, but I came across emails from an old job I used to have, where I felt like I was never good enough, I was never skilled enough no matter how hard I tried, and there were even emails from a coworker and my boss referencing mistakes I made there. I also found several emails and a photo of a bouquet from the beginning of a relationship that would turn out to be one of the most painful experiences of my life. How could I have been so stupid and gotten sucked into things that would turn out to be so destructive to me, when everything started out so seemingly normal, and I had prayed about them and trusted God? I felt ashamed. As I read and deleted those emails, the confusion of those times swarmed over me, and the condemnation made my heart sink.
These emails are from several years ago, yet the feelings of failure heavily weighed me down. As I shared my feelings of failure with God, going over specific failures, I felt like he said, “Do you have to be good at that particular job? What if I have something better for you?” I said, “That’s a good point. I don’t have to be good at it, but then again, it never feels good to fail at something.” However, if God put me in those places, and I tried to honor and obey him where I was, then I wasn’t technically a failure, in God’s grand scheme of things. My identity and value are not found in my jobs, nor in my relationships, and although I still don’t understand why those things happened to me, I can choose to trust him that there was a purpose to it all.
Are there any places in your life where you can relinquish your failures to God? Do you know that his power is made perfect in your weakness, that his glory can shine through even your most difficult and painful circumstances? His grace is sufficient for us! Shouldn’t God’s love for us, not our failures, be the defining characteristic of our lives?
All of this to say, if you have areas where you feel like a failure, take heart, and don’t give up! We can trust God. He is merciful enough to love you despite your failures. He is powerful enough to use you for his good, despite your failures. And he is good enough to sustain you, despite your failures. Let’s release our failures to Christ today, and allow his love and mercy for us to be our defining characteristic. It’s time!
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