I’m Not Worthy

“I can’t do it.” That phrase expresses a feeling of failure.

Failure is a powerful emotion because it damages our pride and challenges our ego.  

Theodore Roosevelt once said:

“The credit belongs to the [hu]man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends [them]self in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if [s]/he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that [their] place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

When we step into the arena, we run the risk of exposing ourselves to the world. We risk failing and having the world, our friends, and even our family think less of us for our inability to succeed. To a large degree, we’ve come to assess our self-worth through our ability to succeed or fail at certain tasks. So instead of trying, we play it safe and avoid putting ourselves out there so the world cannot judge us. 

For Christians, being averse to adventure or risk-tasking is to avoid the most dynamic elements of being a disciple of Jesus. Almost all of the ministry of Jesus happens on the boundary of success and failure, and more often than we might realize, it does not meet any standard for success we might set for any other leader or movement. He chooses to stand in the arena and asks us to do the same as we move to the fringes of life welcoming in the least, the last, and the lost. 

It seems to me that God doesn’t need people afraid of failure, but people experienced with it. 

The church fathers and mothers experienced setback and failures as they led their people into the Promised Land. The prophets experienced a tone-deaf culture who refused to hear their message of repentance. The disciples, for as much as they sometimes got it right and understood what Jesus was shaping them to be and calling them to do, there are as many moments when they got it royally, laughably, or painfully wrong. 

Who knows why God chooses such flawed individuals? Maybe they are more likely to understand the necessary posture for the kind of success need in Kin-dom building. A posture that acknowledges God’s grace is both necessary and sufficient for those who would take the risk of expanding the boundaries of grace, mercy, love and justice, including the excluded and embracing the rejected. 

God has called and continues to call us to rise above our fear of failure. The first step is to accept that failure is inevitable. But soon after, we must also embrace the notion that this is where the real stuff of God happens, out there on that fine line between success and failure.  For when we do, we will allow love to trump our fragile egos and see our self-worth, not in wins and losses, but through the eyes of God, who says “You are enough, my beloved child.”