Friday, April 4, 2008

When Failure Stands on Your Heart


It's Friday, April 4th...and all the juggling I've tried to keep going is collapsing around me. I guess I'm not as good at all this as I let myself think...or others think.

What I'm desperate to fix, I cannot.
What I'm longing to say, I have no words.

Sorry to all of you.

When failure stands on your heart, it's hard to breathe.

2 comments:

. said...

What's up brother?

Scott a.k.a. Scoot

Ralph said...

Ahhh, you too have come to know the weakness of who we are... Turn to Micah. I read this recently in Piper's "When I don't desire God:How to fight for Joy. (keeping you lifted in Jesus)

Astonishingly, in all his contrition and gloom under God’s anger, Micah gets in the face of his enemy and says, “Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise.” The enemy is rubbing it in. The enemy is saying that the sin of Micah cuts him off from his God. The enemy is lying and trying to make Micah hopeless. This is a major battle against Micah’s joy in God. And Micah fights well—he preaches the gospel of justification by faith. He gives us an example of how to fight for joy with the weapon of the gospel.
He says, “When I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.” Remember, this darkness is the Lord’s discipline. God’s indignation burns. And in the midst of the darkness imposed by God, Micah says, “God will be my light.” He counts on God’s light in the darkness that God himself has sent. That is gutsy. That is what we must learn to do in our darkness—even the darkness we have brought on ourselves because of our sin. Yes, I am under the gloom of failure. Yes, God has put me here in his displeasure. But no, I am not abandoned, and God is not against me. He is for me. Even in the darkness that he imposes, he will sustain me. He will not let me go. Though he slay me, he will save me. We must learn to preach to ourselves like this in our fight for joy.
Then, even more astonishingly, Micah says, “I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me.” In the midst of his guilt, and in the gloom of its consequences, he knows that a limit has been set to the darkness. God will come. “And when he comes, he will come pleading my cause.”
Piper, J. (2004). When I don't desire God : How to fight for joy (88). Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books.