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In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.  Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.  And one cried to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!”
 And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.
 So I said:
“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The Lord of hosts.”
Isaiah 6:1-5
 
I have some bad news and Good News - and the Good News will nulify the bad news.

We all (I think) have a fear of failure to some degree.  Here is some bad news:

We all are failures.  That may sound very negative, but bear with me.  If I am able to get this out right, we'll be able to see a very big positive.
Isaiah, the prophet doing the talking above is one of the most well known prophets, a 'good man'.  But when He has this encounter of seeing God, he says "Woe is me, for I am undone!"  Another version says "I am ruined".  When he saw how glorious God was, he immediately saw how imperfect and sinful he was.

So, none of us will ever fully meet the standard that we ourselves or others put on us, but whatever standard we put on ourselves, pales into insignificance when compared to the standard God expects of us. 

The answer.  We are failures, so don't be afraid to fail.

I am not saying, we are failures so go ahead and fail - give up!

I am saying stop being worried when we forge ahead, of failure.  Failure will come.  We are far from perfect.  But, Christ is perfect and in us surrendering to Him,

He can be perfect in our imperfection.  By surrendering to Christ, we receive the perfection of His finished work on The Cross, therefore in God's eyes and judgment, He sees us as perfect through Christ's substitution.  We cannot meet God's standard because we are failures (because of what happened in Eden) -

God's standard of us is perfection - but Christ, who seeks to live in us, is perfect.

'Good' people do not need a Saviour.  Failures need a Saviour.  Mark 2:17 says "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners".  The people who were speaking with Jesus at the time thought they were not in need of being made 'well' and that they were righteous. 

But no one is righteous (Romans 3:12).  In fearing failure, we risk going against this.

We do not need to worry about whether we are achieving a particular standard or whether we have to do what we do successfully everytime.  We are incapable of doing that, but with Christ in us, Who is Perfection, we are free to fail and still worthy in God's eyes because Christ is worthy.

Free   to   fail.  How does that sound?  Do we feel free to fail right now or a prisoner of the fear of failure?

Free to fail and free to have Perfection living in us having us become more and more in His likeness over time.  His likeness.  His perfection flowing out of us.  Good News. 

Steve Harewood
 


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FREE TO FAIL