Wow… I read this the other day and I need to get this concept. Jesus doesn’t love me any less when I fail, and I am never a disappointment to him. He expects me to fail, actually, because I am a fininte human being. The whole point is that when I do, I get back up, knowing full well that He is still loving me just the same, and I stay on course and move forward. Admitting that I do fail, and admitting that I struggle is all part of how to live an authentic life. Read this book, for real. Thank you, Evie, for suggesting it and letting me borrow it. Every time I pick it up it rocks me. It’s taking me forever because I keep dwelling on these concepts. The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning.
“There is one barrier to love that deserves special mention because it is so crucial to the second call of Jesus Christ — fear. Most of us spend considerable time putting off the things we should be doing or we would like to do or we want to do — but are afraid to do. We are afraid of failure. We don’t like it, we shun it, we avoid it because of our inordinate desire to be thought well of by others. So we come up with a thousand excuses for doing nothing. We put things off, waste the energies of life and love that are within us…. There is no growth in Christ Jesus without some difficulty and fumbling. If we are to keep growing, we must keep risking failure throughout our lives…. The Christian with depth is the person who has failed and who has learned to live with it.
There is no growth in Christ Jesus without some difficulty and fumbling.
Procrastination is perhaps the worst, the most damaging failure of all. We who believe in Jesus, who hope in vindication, who proclaim the love of the heavenly Father, waste our time trying to avoid the things that are most important…. What we do about the lordship of Jesus is a better indication of our faith than what we think. This is what the world wants from our rhetoric, what the man of God longs for in shepherds – daring enough to be different, humble enough to make mistakes, wild enough to be burnt in the fire of love, real enough to make others see how phony we are.” — Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel