Disappointment

I have felt like I’ve been a disappointment to God longer than I can remember. I am a person that loves the Lord and wants to do His will. I am passionate about Him and want to live victoriously, yet I never feel I’m good enough. I thought this was something that I was alone in, I thought this internal battle of not measuring up was unique to me, until those around me voiced this same struggle. I want to know why. Why are we living in a shroud of guilt, why do we have so much disappointment in ourselves? As I look back on my life, I can honestly say that the main stealer of my joy has been this view that I’m a disappointment. More than anything, I want God to look down on my life, and be pleased, I want Him to be happy with who I am, but in my mind He never is. Discouragement is always there to rear its ugly head and says things like, “why keep trying”, or “you failed again”, or my personal favorite, “you should be able to live differently, you have the power of Christ in you”. After one of these pep talks I usually inhale deeply and with a huge sigh I feel all of my life energy leave my body. All the energy used to strengthen my resolve, all the energy to keep fighting, all the energy to pick myself up and try again is gone, and I am left right smack dab in the middle of a war with no fight left. The crazy thing is, it’s a lie. I have given up hope, and joy and peace for a lie. All because somewhere along the line I started to believe that I could somehow be good enough, that I could measure up and be faithful all the time. As I write this I’m realizing that all those times I laid down in defeat, I surrendered to an enemy whose only weapon was a lie. It seems small, but what a powerful weapon he uses, he knows we will act out of what we believe, about ourselves, about our God, and about our circumstances. If I believe that I’m a disappointment to God, I will act out of this belief. The enemy knows that he can disarm me in the physical battle by lying to me in a mental one.

One day I had this crazy thought, “what if I recognized and agreed with the fact that I’m not good enough? What if instead of beating myself up for another failure I came to terms with the fact that I’m forgiven?” I continually fall into sin, it seems not a day goes by that I don’t trip on something. It may be an unkind word or an unwillingness to forgive; a prideful heart or being an unwise steward. It could be not taking the time to properly care for those God has entrusted to me, or complaining about the situation that surrounds me. I could go on and on, it seems everyday is a struggle to live righteously. For some reason I started to believe that this shouldn’t be the cases, after all I’m a Christian, righteous living should somehow be easier than it is. When I continued to struggle, I became frustrated because like Paul I was doing the very things I did not want to do (Romans 7:15-25). My frustration led to discouragement and discouragement to disappointment, and on it on it went until I decided that if I felt this way about myself, God must feel it even more so. Living with the feeling that God is constantly disappointed with you is tiring, it makes you want to stop trying. In fact many of us do, one of my friends recently announced that they were tired of struggling and decided instead to embrace the sin they fought so hard against. I know all too well that giving into sin seems like it’s going be easier, but it NEVER is. We must fight even if it means we have to get up 100 times a day, ask for forgiveness and keep walking forward.

I am a new creature in Christ, but I still struggle, every minute of everyday. I’m ready to embrace this and to even get joy from it. I’m going to agree with the enemy when he says I’m not good enough, because I’m not. I’m going to realize that God knew all my failures before one of them came to pass, and He STILL forgave me. I am going to stop focusing on myself because my righteousness is like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6) and start focusing on Christ who had no sin, yet was made sin for me so that in him I could become righteous (2 Corinthians 5:21). I’m going to stop believing the lie that righteousness shouldn’t be a struggle and I’m going to fight for it. I don’t want to lay down in the middle of the battle anymore, too tired or too discouraged to fight. I want to stand for as long as possible and when I get knocked down I want to dust myself off and try again. I don’t care if I’m bruised, bloodied and crawling to the finish line, I want to keep moving towards it.