Faithfulness

 

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

                                                                                Hebrews 10:23

 

We are not called upon to be successful, but to be faithful.

                                                                                Mother Teresa

 

Today, we move to the fruit of faithfulness.  Staying the course of faithful action even when it’s hard and even when it seems like it isn’t doing any good seems downright impossible at times.  I like to think that my actions make a difference.  I’m guessing you do too.  So Mother Teresa’s words above are sometimes hard to hear.  Jesus never said, “follow me and I will make you successful.”

Here’s the hard part about being unsuccessful.  Failing is an integral part of growing up.  I worry about my kids when things seem to come too easy.  I actually want them to encounter some adversity and even fail sometimes.  Do I sympathize, hurt with them, and love on them when that happens?  You bet I do!  But I don’t actually hope that everything they ever attempt is a rousing victory.

Why? Because there are lessons you cannot learn any other way other than by failing.  Failing also has the potential to teach you compassion.  How can you know how to support someone who is suffering if you’ve never suffered.  One of the deepest comforts that Jesus supplies to me in times of  suffering is that I know He knows what is to suffer.  God knows my suffering because God suffers as well.   The really powerful part of that is that God’s suffering brings redemption.  The cross is how God brings redemption.  But here’s the part that isn’t said much.  Our suffering can also, with God’s help, bring redemption.

This truth helps me be faithful.  Knowing that God uses success and failure to bring about redemption means that my faithfulness is enough.  My obedience to the call is not about me producing certain results.  In fact, I’m not responsible for the results.  I am responsible for obedience.  I’m responsible for being faithful.  But I don’t even have to be faithful on my own.  But that’s a topic for next time.

 

Prayer:  God, it feels so good to succeed and it feels so bad to fail.  Thank you that you are able to use our efforts regardless of how we feel about them. Help us to be faithful.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for struggling business owners you know today.

 

Song:  Hillsong United – So Will I – Pay close attention to the words of this song…so powerful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyYn21RdBBQ

Only We are Surprised When This Happens. . .

Mark 14:27-31, CEB - Jesus said to them, “You will all falter in your faithfulness to me. It is written, I will hit the shepherd, and the sheep will go off in all directions.  But after I’m raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.”

Peter said to him, “Even if everyone else stumbles, I won’t.”

But Jesus said to him, “I assure you that on this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.”

But Peter insisted, “If I must die alongside you, I won’t deny you.” And they all said the same thing.       

 

            If we see anything plainly in this passage, it is that God has a completely realistic view of us.  God is not surprised when we lack faithfulness.  God does not give up on us when we find ourselves denying that we are God-followers.  God is not deterred in caring for us even when we flee in multiple directions.  God sees us as we are – gloriously flawed and fickle creatures.

            This is not to say that God has a pessimistic or negative view.  God sees our gifts (after all, they came from God in the first place).  God sees our amazing potential.  He rejoices in our wise choices.  But God is not deluded as we sometimes are.  We often have grand visions of how we will perform in situations when our character is put to the test.  Sometimes, we live into those visions.  Sometimes those visions turn out to be fantasy.  God knows this about us.  God even accepts it. 

            Listen to Jesus speaking to Peter and the other disciples above.  He is not scolding them for something they haven’t done yet.  He wants to prepare them for their own disappointment in themselves when their faithfulness falters.  Just as Jesus wants them not to be destroyed when He is crucified (He warned them countless times), Jesus wants the disciples not to give up on themselves after they find themselves giving up on Him.  Jesus calmly tells them that even after they have all failed, He will be together with them in Galilee. 

            Obviously, Peter (and the others) aim to prove Jesus wrong.  Peter protests that not only will he be faithful, his faithfulness will remain true even if he should die because of it.  The others claim the same about themselves.  Unfortunately, I have found myself all too often making soon-to-be-exposed-as-false claims about how I will do when the test comes.  I’ve also seen that I’m not the only one. 

            But again, God sees us not as we foolishly hope we are, but as we truly are.  God embraces the real us, not the us we want everyone to believe is real.  When we fail, and we will, God will be waiting for us on the other side.  There won’t even be an “I told you so.”  With all the pretense wiped away by our failure, we will actually be in a better position to have an even more real relationship with God.  That is what Jesus was laying the groundwork for when He had this little talk with His disciples.  And Jesus is still doing the same for us. 

 

Question:  Are you tempted to believe that God sees your flaws as negatively as you sometimes do?

 

Prayer:  Lord Jesus, help us accept and even embrace that we flawed and, despite our most valiant efforts, we will fail You in the future as we have in the past.  When we fail, help us hear Your reminder that You will still be here for us.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for those who have in the midst of consequences caused by their own mistakes.

 

Song:  Faithful – I Am They

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUaS1Y-jyMk  

Gethsemane

Gethsemane

 

Matthew 26:36-46, New Living Translation - Then Jesus went with them to the olive grove called Gethsemane, and he said, “Sit here while I go over there to pray.” He took Peter and Zebedee’s two sons, James and John, and he became anguished and distressed. He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

Then he returned to the disciples and found them asleep. He said to Peter, “Couldn’t you watch with me even one hour?  Keep watch and pray, so that you will not give in to temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak!”

Then Jesus left them a second time and prayed, “My Father! If this cup cannot be taken away[f] unless I drink it, your will be done.”  When he returned to them again, he found them sleeping, for they couldn’t keep their eyes open.

So he went to pray a third time, saying the same things again.  Then he came to the disciples and said, “Go ahead and sleep. Have your rest. But look—the time has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.  Up, let’s be going. Look, my betrayer is here!”

 

                Right after promising that they would die with Jesus, the Peter, James, and John promptly fall asleep three times when Jesus asked them to watch and pray with Him.  They can tell Jesus is in great emotional pain, but for whatever reason, they can’t stay awake.  Indeed, one of Jesus’s most famous sayings is true; “the spirit is willing, but the body (flesh) is weak.”  Matthew is telling this story on his disciple brothers, but he is telling it on himself as well.  In a very real way, Matthew is telling this story on all of us.

                On too many occasions to count, I have promised the moon, but never got off the ground.  I have watched others fail in the same way, feeling connected to them by misplaced ambitions.  It still surprises me how quickly the powerful and inspired moment of promise can devolve into embarrassing failure.  This doesn’t happen all the time; there are plenty of times when my follow-through has been admirable and productive, but it doesn't erase the memories of alarmingly weak resolve.  I wish I knew what the difference between the two extremes was.  I do not.  My “body” is weak.

                Matthew wants us to see the contrast here between the disciples and Jesus.  Jesus is suffering the opposite of the disciples.  His “Spirit” is unwilling; He asks God repeatedly to find another way.  However, His “body” is strong.  He pushes back on the unwillingness of His Spirit in order to stay focused on what He has been called to do.  He prays His way through the unwillingness of His Spirit.  As a result, He leaves the garden that night with Spirit and Body strong and resolved to stay the terrible course. 

                After the third time of finding his comrades asleep, Jesus seems to acknowledge that sleeping is what they needed to do.  They will each have their key moments of decision, but not tonight.  Tonight, they will see Jesus meet his moment.  Perhaps seeing Jesus move so decisively into the trial before Him will be instructive to them when their moment comes.  But tonight, they sleep.  Tonight is Jesus’s time, not theirs.  That, of course, is what Jesus states when he wakes them up the third time.  “The time is come. . . my betrayer is here.” 

                It’s super obvious that even now, the disciples are not prepared for what is about to happen.  And Jesus’s acknowledgement of their need to sleep seems to confirm that there is no way for them to be fully prepared for this moment.  Jesus has prepared them as much as they can be prepared, but ultimately, they must simply go through the moment unprepared.  They must, as Jesus tells them earlier, “fall to pieces.”   

                In some crazy way, this is comforting to me.  It tells me that my many moments of failure despite my bold intentions is more normal than I realize.  It tells me that my failures do not define me, but rather they help to make me into who I shall be.  Returning to the text, these unprepared and faltering disciples will soon be the leaders of the most explosively growing movement of God the world has ever seen.  They will all meet their defining moments with heroic faith and it is at least in part, because of the trial they will endure over the next three days.  They will lose their Leader, than receive Him back from death.  They will experience complete and utter powerlessness to stop the crucifixion, and then hide away in terror that they might be next.  They will struggle to believe their own eyes when the resurrected Christ stands before them even though Christ told them perhaps a hundred times that it would happen.  But somehow, going through all that prepares them to discover who they really are and what the rest of their lives will be about.  Their embarrassing failures form part of the foundation for their eventual success.  If this is true, then there is hope for all of us who are surprised by our own failures.   

 

Question: How have past failures prepared you for success? 

 

Prayer:  Lord Jesus, thank you for showing us what  complete and utter obedience looks like even though we often seem incapable of emulating it.  Help us learn from our shortcomings and keep our eyes on you.  Strengthen us from within and without. Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for closest friends today that they will receive just what they need right now.

 

Song:  Gethsemane – Claire Ryan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWIx24J00Wc

What WE Would Do Given the Same Situation. . .

What WE Would Do Given the Same Situation. . .

 

Matthew 26:31-35, The Message - Then Jesus told them, “Before the night’s over, you’re going to fall to pieces because of what happens to me. There is a Scripture that says,

I’ll strike the shepherd;

dazed and confused, the sheep will be scattered.

But after I am raised up, I, your Shepherd, will go ahead of you, leading the way to Galilee.”

Peter broke in, “Even if everyone else falls to pieces on account of you, I won’t.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Jesus said. “This very night, before the rooster crows up the dawn, you will deny me three times.”

Peter protested, “Even if I had to die with you, I would never deny you.” All the others said the same thing.

 

                Up until right before it happens, Jesus keeps telling the disciples how things are going to go badly for Him.  And our passage above, Jesus warns his disciples that, when things go badly, they won’t handle it very well.  They will “fall to pieces.”  Peter speaks for all of Jesus’s cohorts when he boasts there is no way that would ever happen.  But just as Jesus foretold, Peter will deny Jesus three times before the night is over. All the others would falter in some way as well.  Though it is Peter that is the example, this prediction from Jesus is one that is about all of us.

                Unlike Peter, I doubt that I would have made a verbal boast about what I would do or not do.  But I am certain, in the same circumstances, I would have quietly assured myself that I would never deny or forsake Jesus though all hell breaks loose.  I believe my approach would have been to quietly prove Jesus’s words to be wrong.  My aim would be to simply show Jesus my undying loyalty.  But I’m pretty sure that I, just like all the confident disciples, would fail to prove my unspoken boast.  I’m certain about this because I have failed Jesus many times when I faced no real danger for being faithful. 

                However, this passage is not about Peter’s denial or the failings of all the other disciples in the midst of the arrest, crucifixion, and death of Jesus.  Jesus lets them know that they will fall to pieces not to shame them, but to assure them, that when it happens, He will be there to lead them forward after their failure.  The reality is that all of the disciples, except John, will go on to be martyred for their bold faith in Jesus.  But not before they first fail Jesus.  The encounter with the Risen Christ turns their failure into faithfulness.  The gift of the Holy Spirit turns their fear into holy bravado. 

                We all know what we think we will do when the “big moment” comes.  Bur regardless of whether we fail or succeed, Jesus promises to lead us forward afterwards.  Jesus knows that we will fall short sometimes.  We might even completely fall apart.  But on the other side of those darkest of moments, our Shepherd will be there to help us pick up the pieces and move forward to a better future. 

 

Questions:  Can you think of times when you didn’t live up to your own expectations about how you would perform in a difficult situation?  What was helpful to you in such moments?

 

Prayer:  Jesus, we sometimes overestimate our loyalty and devotion to You.  Thank you for your promise to be with us when we fail.  Use our failures and shortcomings to strengthen our faithfulness moving forward.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for people in places where Christians are martyred for their faith on a regular basis.

 

Song:  Are Ye Able – Han Sol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG8b0J7gnLw