Something We All Do Every Day, Fail God

[Bro. Bill]

Something We All Do Every Day, Fail God
(Romans 3:23; 1 John 1:9)
Today's Devotional is a powerful word about something we all do every day, fail God. Even though it is the goal of every follower of Christ to live our lives perfectly as He did, the Bible tells us that we all sin and fall short of God's glory. It also says that if we say we don't sin we are a liar. So accepting the fact that we all fail God at times, I want to focus today on how we respond when we fail. Listen to me closely, you will never be able to live this life victoriously until you learn the proper response when you fail God.
The most important thing you can do when you fail is to accept responsibility for your actions. We are masters at blaming others when we fail. As I share with you often, man has not really changed since the Garden of Eden. When Adam failed, he blamed Eve. When Eve was confronted with her failure by God, she blamed the serpent. Admitting you were wrong, accepting responsibility for what you did is the most important thing you can do when you fail. When you take responsibility for your failure, you become sorry for letting God down and go to Him with a broken and contrite heart asking for forgiveness.
None of us are immune from sin. That is why God gives us His special promise in 1 John 1:9. It tells us if we will confess our sins, He will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We must trust His Word, know He has forgiven us, and move on to fulfill our purpose of serving and glorifying God with our lives. You see, we are no good to God when we allow our sin to strangle us, to paralyze us. The enemy loves to use our sin against us, to hold it over our head. But the Bible says that when God forgives us, He not only forgives, but forgets. If God forgets, then we need to as well so that we can move forward and live victorious, productive lives for the Kingdom.
Jesus tells us in John 8:44 that satan is a liar, that he is the father of lies. When he speaks, he speaks his native language, LYING. One of the lies of the enemy is to use your sin against you, to tell you that you are no good. He will tell you that you are not worthy of God's love and grace. Let me share this with you, on our own we are not worthy, but because of Christ WE BECOME WORTHY! You see, when you know Christ as your Savior it is not your righteousness that God sees, but it is the righteousness of Christ.
We try our best each day to live like Jesus. We are all faced with the temptations of this world. We are all faced with the traps the enemy lays for us. From time to time we ALL fall into sin. How we respond to our sin is critical. Running from God is a natural response, but the wrong one. We quit reading the Word, quit praying, quit going to church, which makes us an even bigger target for the enemy. Instead, we must run TO God, accept responsibility for our actions and have the guts to say, "I sinned."
I love you and care about you so much. The point I want you to understand today is not if we sin, but when we sin, what our response must be. I will pray for you today that when you fail, you will accept responsibility for your sins and ask God for forgiveness, stand on His precious promise in 1 John 1:9 and move forward with your life. God has much for you to do. He has a great plan for your life. Let me assure you today that He loves you. Whatever you may have done doesn't change that. Our failure DOES NOT change God's love for us!

[Coup de Grace]

thank you brother, always going hearing from you...

[jkg2003]

very nice bro bill, thank you

[Geezy Rider]

Thank you for a much needed message.

[Bro. Bill]

ttt morning crowd

[Blood Trail]

Yep, that's me brother...

[tomcat8910]

Good message that I needed. Thank you.

[iamntxhunter]

Thanks Bro.bill for such a great post.

[Rudyl]

Thanks

[Crash Co9]

Very good stuff!

[Bowshark]

It is the truth... Thanks Bill

[Mike D]

Amen!

[Cam-Mac]

Bro Bill- I read most of your devotional threads, and I appreciate them very much. I have debated posting on this one though because I don't want to be misunderstood, and I'm not entirely positive that I can get my idea across without sounding confrontational or being labeled "Anti-Bro Bill", lol. I am Pro-Bro Bill! But since this is a subject I feel strongly about, I decided to try to get my ideas straight, hopefully nobody will take it the wrong way. Hopefully we can share ideas/discuss without that happening. That is why we are all here, after all.

The subject of your thread is "We Fail God Every Day". I disagree. I do believe that we sin and will continue to do so from now on, but to me that does not translate into "Failing God". I believe that we live under Grace. To me- the condemnation of failure is Old Testament Law that discounts Grace. (You did mention Grace in your thread.) In my opinion, if there were no Grace, the whole thing would be very disheartening and frankly, pointless. I imagine myself as a non-believer sitting in a church somewhere. I hear the preacher say "I've got some good news for you- join the Kingdom of God!". So I decide in my heart to do that, fully believing that God is good, and that I will have a relationship with him and share the Good News with others. But then the preacher says "You've been saved and forgiven, but you're a failure, and you're going to fail God every day of your life from now on no matter what". That wouldn't exactly be "good news" to me. I would think that God was just some mean taskmaster sitting up there with his lightning rod ready to strike me down every time I failed him. And would I have to keep gettting saved every day? And I wouldn't want to share that "good news" with any of my non-believer friends either. I would not want to live under that condemnation every day.

It's almost like having a bad set of tires. Every night when you go to bed, all the air leaks out of them. So you have to air them up the next morning. Some salesman comes to your door with a new set and says "These are the best tires in the world! They are perfect! You'll never have tire problems again". So you buy them expecting them to be great tires. But then you still have to air them up every morning. This made no difference in your life at all. The only thing that changed is that your neighbor could say "Oh look, Teddy got new tires!". Does that make any sense? I guess that was the first thing I thought of because I just bought new tires, lol.

I feel like we (as believers) are constantly being subjected to a subtle but very powerful lie from the enemy that we are failures, and that we will always be failures. If we believe this, then really- what is the point of going on? Our plight would be hopeless. I do believe that we are constantly under attack from an Enemy who hates us and fears what we could become if he left us alone. We were, after all, made in the image of a Warrior God. He can't let that happen, so he must remove us from what we were created to be. I guess what I'm trying to say is that relationship is essential, and duty is not. We can't perform well enough to "pass God's test" (I don't believe there is one), but we can have a personal relationship with him under Grace, where it doesn't matter if we are inadequate. I am NOT saying that it doesn't matter if we sin because we're under Grace- so we can just do whatever we want. That's not how it works. But the Father knows that we are under attack- he knows the enemy very well.

In my opinion, telling a believer that they are a failure, and that they will fail every day, is essentially telling them that they are not good enough for God. If somebody told me that, that's what I would think they were saying. It would translate to me that "If you REALLY loved God- you would not fail". I believe that the phrases "If you were really a Christian" or "If you really love God" are the worst thing you can say to someone. Here is an interesting quote from William Gurnall:

The devil has more temptations than an actor has costumes for the stage. And one of his all-time favorite disguises is that of a lying spirit, to abuse your tender heart with the worst news he can deliver-that you do not really love Jesus Christ and that you are only pretending, you are only deceiving yourself. (William Gurnall)


Here is a quote from the book Waking the Dead by John Eldredge:

Satan is called in Scripture the Father of Lies (John 8:44). His very first attack against the human race was to lie to Eve and Adam about God, and where life is to be found, and what the consequences of certain actions would and would not be. He is a master at this. He suggests to us-as he suggested to Adam and Eve-some sort of idea or inclination or impression, and what he is seeking is a sort of "agreement" on our part. He's hoping we'll buy into whatever he's saying, offering, insinuating. Our first parents bought into it, and look what disaster came of it. The Evil One is still lying to us, seeking our agreement every single day.

I don't think we should buy into the lie that we are failures. In my opinion, Grace and our relationship with the Father nullifies that. Does that make any sense? I believe that our hearts are good. Another quote from the book:

Your heart is good. Your heart matters to God. Those are the two hardest things to hang on to. I'm serious-try it. Try to hold this up for even a day. My heart is good. My heart matters to God. You will be amazed at how much accusation you live under. You have an argument with your daughter on the way to school; as you drive off, you have a nagging sense of, Well, you really blew that one. If your heart agrees-Yeah, I really did-without taking the issue to Jesus, then the Enemy will try to go for more. You're always blowing it with her. Another agreement is made. It's true. I'm such a lousy parent. Keep this up and your whole day is tanked in about five minutes. The Enemy will take any small victory he can get. It moves from You did a bad thing to You are bad. After a while it just becomes a cloud we live under, accept as normal.

Well to me it's NOT normal. We shouldn't live under that cloud. That condemnation that our hearts are bad. That WE are bad.

Does any of this make sense? I hope I'm not rambling, just trying to put thoughts together. Again, I'm not saying "You are wrong", I am just sharing with you guys what I thought when I saw "failure". Bro Bill- thanks again for the post. Let me know your opinions and let's discuss.

Cam

[SCRIBNER]

Thanks!

Sandra

[Texastrophy]

Again, I'm not saying "You are wrong", I am just sharing with you guys what I thought when I saw "failure". Bro Bill- thanks again for the post. Let me know your opinions and let's discuss.

Cam

Cam,

I get what you're both saying. "Failure" denotes a life-style of failing as "Sinner" denotes a lifestyle of sinning. A successful man can fail and a saint can sin, but that won't make them a failure or a sinner. I agree that we should take responsibility for our actions and repent (in the sense of changing our thinking) when we've sinned. But beating our chests or displaying false humility or considering ourselves failures isn't going to impress God. Nothing we do is a surprise to Him. Once we are 'born-again' we are recreated as a NEW creature. ALL things are new, old things have passed away. Even the old sin 'nature' is gone. The New Covenant has not just provided a way into Heaven, but a personal relationship with a Heavenly Father and an inheritance of all that is His. That makes it impossible for us to be 'Failures' even though we may not appear to succeed at everything we do. I agree that the enemy can try to convince us otherwise, but we have the option to stand on the Word or buy into the lie. Our 'feelings' have absolutely nothing to do with it either because 'the truth is the truth' regardless of how we feel. Faith, trust, in who God says we are according to His Word is really the only thing that matters. His grace IS sufficient.