Accept one another, then, just as Christ has accepted you, in order to bring praise to God
Romans 15:7 NIV

I fear we live in a world that seems to say too often that we are what we accomplish. We believe that hard work and perseverance will get us what we set out to do, and sometimes that is the case. But if we are honest, success is often the product of something that looks a lot more like blind luck. Still, we give praise, honor and acclamation to those who win. The trouble is we too often measure ourselves by success.

So we try our best and attribute our success to a combination of our hard work and perhaps God’s blessing. I think we are really good at teaching people to work hard and accomplish what they set out to do. I suppose there is good, practical advice in that, but the trouble with this kind of thinking is that it is only a matter of time before you fail. I think faith in winning is false hope and certainly not in line with the faith that is spoken of in the Bible. Faith in Jesus is faith in a hope that transcends failure.

It’s a part of my personal pathology, that the highs tend to be very high and the lows, very low. It is tempting to see God in the highs and the absence of God in the failures. The truth is God is there in the highs and in the lows! Life oscillates. Are we the sum of every high and every low? In some ways yes, but in other ways, especially when it comes to faith, the answer is a resounding no. God accepts us and embraces us in spite of our highs and in the midst of our lows! God bears with us in our successes and in our failures. It is a little strange how contrary that is to the message that we often hear, which is much more conditional.

God accepts us as we are! God will be with us in every failure and with us in every victory.