I want to live life! I want to paint, watch my kids grow and become everything they can be, and basically change the world on a grand scale. I actually think I can do it because I daily fail do to even one item on the list! I fail; I know I will continue to fail and that is just ok because God is the one doing the work.
There are people who react very negatively to my goals. I think they focus on their assumption that I think it is ok to fail, screw-up, do things that only benefit myself, and generally be a jerk. Let me be clear! I do not that I do all this and more, in fact I hate it with a passion! I can give you a endless list of how I daily drop the ball.
The reason I do not worry about it is very simple; God knows that I failed yesterday, will today, and will continue to fail tomorrow. God, with full knowledge and understanding, offers me, and you, a gift of unconditional acceptance, love, and mercy. The gift does not end there – He offers us the chance to be restored fully to Him! The gift is guaranteed because He took care of everything through his Son Jesus.
I, along with others, keep thinking otherwise and the result is sad. “Those [of us] who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life.” (Romans 8.5)
It does not matter when I fail, just when I respond! God knows I am failing; however, He is not sure that we are going to respond because the choice is completely ours. He keeps laying out the details of his offer by giving us gifts of mercy, love, and grace in our life. He assures us, to quote a friend, that we are “a child of forgiveness, of joy and of riches”.
The question remains; want to do it all?
