What to Do When You Have Failed Again?

I failed today… big time. Just put a big F on my forehead. Just hours earlier, in my quiet time I had promised the Lord I would not yell at the children again. However, here I was  yelling at the children. I felt like a failure, like I had let God down in some way.

I rushed to the bathroom, and put myself in a timeout, but then the accusations began from the enemy.

“What is wrong with you? How can you be the woman’s ministry director at church, how can you be on the ministry team and prayer team? You will never get it right!”

I had a choice, to allow the voice of the accuser to bring me to a place of guilt and shame, or to allow the truth of God’s word to wash over me. This is place that I know all to well. I get stuck in the cycle. Lets call it the guilt and shame cycle. I  miss the mark, come running to God, but instead of allowing Him to speak truth to me, I believe the voice of the accuser. Shame and guilt then harness me and I  live out of a place of inadequacy. So I work harder to control and prevent my failures, only to screw up and repeat the cycle.

There have been plenty of times when the voice of guilt and condemnation have been so heavy on me that I never thought I would make it through the day. All my flaws and struggles would replay over and over in my mind. I was sure that my children would become dysfunctional because of me. I was flooded with the expectations that I thought every good mother was supposed to live up to. I was playing my children’s Savior. The cross of Jesus just didn’t seem to be enough for me and my children. I used to think that if I did everything right, as a mom, then my children would then turn around and be the “perfect Christians.” I was living as a slave to my own words and actions, and ultimately the lies and accusations of the enemy.

Somehow along the way  a line gets drawn from our children’s behavior to our own faults, our own sin. But this is not my story or my children’s story.  This is not our destiny, nor our inheritance.  What if instead of drawing a line to ourselves, we draw a line straight to the Cross? For those who have chosen Jesus, guilt and shame has been crucified. Our identity is no longer that of a guilty one, but one that has been chosen and set free. I hear the Father saying, “Not guilty!”

“For you know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from the fathers, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.” 1 Peter 1:18-19

“Peter offers is beautiful symbolism of Jesus Christ as a lamb- a sacrifice lamb. He says, “Ye were redeemed.” Redeemed” means “loosed,” not in the sense that you would loose a man bound to a post or loose a horse, but loose in the legal sense of being freed from legal bondage. It is in the sense that a slave is loosed, it’s legally declared free. And Peter said, ” You were loosed from the vain conversation.” A.W Tozer in Living as a Christian 

I found myself making a decision in that moment, hiding in the bathroom: Was I going to listen to the voice of guilt and shame or listen to God? I may not have been the best mom, the best example of showing them self-control, but I do show them how to run to Jesus. Run to Him when you are hurting and allow Him to fill you, run to Him when you sin and allow Him to forgive you.

We want our lives to point straight to Jesus not to our own attempts to walk this Gospel out in the flesh.

Because I found myself on this guilt and shame cycle so often,  started making declarations about, who I was in Christ, with my children each morning. We have been saying them for over a year now. When guilt and shame try to over take me, I rise up and allow God’s truth to override my emotions! I allow His truth to wash over my dry and thirsty soul.

God is who He says He is. I am who God says I am. God will do what He says He will do.

He has blessed me with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

He chose me in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blame before Him in love.

I am predestined to be adopted through Jesus for Himself

He has made us excepted in the Beloved.

In Him I have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to his grace.

I am sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit

I am loved by the Father with an everlasting love.

I have a divine destiny that God determined before the foundation of the world.

With God nothing is impossible!

I am conformed into the image of Jesus Christ.

I am being made into the reflection of Jesus, the light of the world.

I reflect God’s word and light and will on this earth.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I sanctified you, I ordered you, I set you apart for a purpose.

For I am His creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead time, so that I should walk in them.

 

When you exchange your guilt and shame with God’s truth, you can begin to live from a place of rest….A Heart at Rest!