“I messed up again…why do I still do this? I thought I’d grown more and made more progress, but when the same challenge came again, I just fell right back into the same reaction.”
I feel that. Faced with a familiar temptation, I follow a familiar pattern away from rest in God’s presence which would empower actions of loving service.
“Why do I still struggle like this? Why do I still fail to trust God like I know I should, and like I want to? Will I still be doing this when I’m 70?”
Maybe answers to those questions wouldn’t actually bring us peace…because the truth is, if I’m turning 70 in the wilderness of this life, I really might still be wrestling against the same opponent. The perfect rest of perfect faith doesn’t come until we get home, to the promised land of the Father’s unmediated presence.
So what questions should I ask? What questions have answers that can settle my heart when I feel bound by old patterns? What will give me hope, nurturing my faint faith after my failures? Colossians 1 gives us a good starting point.
Jesus is the one who works to present you holy and blameless, above reproach before the Father. He’s the one who made you right, bringing you into relationship with the Father. His body of flesh, broken in death, was the cost—and it’s paid in full, by the blood of his cross.
So what’s the “if” for us? What are the conditions of our final status, holy and blameless and above reproach in God’s sight?
“Continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard.”
Do you still trust that Jesus shed his blood to deliver you from the domain of darkness and place you in his kingdom?
Do you still hope in Jesus alone for redemption, the forgiveness of sins?
Do you still love the Father—even with the faintest flicker of affection—who reconciles all things, including his people, through the Son?
Do you still cast yourself on his grace as the guarantee of your salvation?
Then be confident that he’s still continuing his work that he purchased on the cross. You are continuing in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel you heard. THAT is the hope that will still get you home. Those are the better questions to ask yourself about yourself: the questions that assume the state of your soul is not dependent on your responses…questions about you that are actually questions about Jesus.
Is Jesus’s blood still powerful enough to forgive you, keeping you in his kingdom?
Is the Father still at peace with you, lavishing grace on you?
Does the Spirit still dwell in you, loving you?
Maybe our ongoing struggles are meant to center our confidence on these realities, when we’d otherwise expect to find confidence by measuring our faith in terms of our performance. I received Jesus by faith, and Jesus is still saving me as I walk with him by faith. That’s a reason to give thanks.
“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”
Colossians 2:6–7