Failure

Spiritual Failure

How do we deal with our spiritual failures?

* Despair?  (to lose hope)

* Self-condemnation? (feeling of guilt)

* Self flagellating? (whipping or punishing ourselves)

Or

Confession: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

Acceptance of His grace: If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared. (Psalm 130:3, 4)

New determination: For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief. (Proverbs 24:16a)

How you and I choose to deal with our spiritual failings probably has something to do with our view of God, either as a condemning Tyrant, or as a loving Father.

Here’s how Francis of Sales, a Seventeenth Century mystic handled his failings:

“Well my poor soul, here we are in the ditch again – in spite of our earnest resolve to stay out of it. “Ah well, let us get out and be on our way; and we will do well enough, God helping us.”

Unless we comprehend and appropriate a measure of His grace amidst our personal struggles with sin and failure, we will despair of the Christian life. Those pilgrims who end their spiritual journey well, have learned to drink freely of that grace. How about us?

Pastor Woody