Faithfulness, Courage, and the Readiness To Risk Failure.

It is a timeless and beautiful thing to recognize the possibility of living in this world soberly, seriously, honestly, and at the same time joyfully: faithful in a faithless age.  This is the sentence spoken by our lives, the message proclaimed by our walk in the world: that it’s possible to make a radical choice to trust, and in spite of our sins, stains, evil and arrogance, to sustain it through the details of daily life for Jesus Christ our King and His eternal Kingdom.

As author Brennan Manning has said in his chapter entitled ‘The Victorious Limp’ {The Ragamuffin Gospel}— to live in “faithfulness requires the courage to risk everything on” Christ Jesus, “the willingness to keep growing, and the readiness to risk failure throughout our lives.

 I.  The courage to risk everything …to lay it all on the line for the Cause of our King.  Faithfulness to Jesus Christ means we stand with Him— no matter what {Jn. 21:20-22}; “that we are formed and informed” by the wisdom of “His Word;” that we offer Life and not death to the hearts of those around us.

II. The willingness to keep growing.  “Unfaithfulness is a refusal to become, a rejection of grace, and the” unwillingness to be oneself— to be precisely who the Father destined us to be.  The great Gen. Douglas MacArthur once composed a prayer which read:

Youth is not a period of time.  It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, of the taste for adventure over the love of comfort.  A man doesn’t grow old because he has lived a certain number of years.  A man grows old when he deserts his ideal.  The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul.  Preoccupations, fears, doubts, and despair are the enemies which slowly bow us toward Earth and turn us into dust before death.  You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good and great; receptive to the messages of other men and women, of nature and of God.  If one day you should become bitter, pessimistic, and gnawed by despair, may God have mercy on your old man’s soul.  {Italics Mine}

III. The readiness to risk failure.  “Many of us are haunted by our failure to have done with our lives what we longed to” do.  The disparity between our ideals and our existence, the specter of sins long past, the aching awareness that I don’t live what I claim to believe, and the relentless pressure of cosmic conformity reinforce a sense of existential shame: I am a failure.  “This is the cross we never expected, and the one we find hardest to bear.”

Would it shock you, would it surprise you to know that in all the glory of His grace and magnificence of His mercy your Abba expects more failure from you than you expect from yourself… and loves you— unerringly and unendingly— regardless?

The lone believer wandering the world’s wastelands who sees her life as a voyage of discovery and runs the risk of failure and relationship has a better feel for faithfulness than the timid who hide behind the Law and never find out who they are at all.  “Winston Churchill said it well: ‘Success is never final; failure is never fatal; it is courage that counts.’”  It is courage that counts.  Amen and amen.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
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