Have you ever given a life long passion up because of a single failure?
When I was in high school I loved to go skiing and later snowboarding. I still enjoy it now although I don't go as much for various reasons. I remember probably my freshman year we went up to Red Mountain in BC with the school ski program. It was a great place to go. The length of the runs far surpassed any other mountain I had been to before. I was skiing with a group of classmates who were not a proficient as I was. They knew it and you better believe I knew it. So they told me about a jump they hadn't been willing to try for being to scared and said I should do it. I wasn't very good at jumps really but I was a sucker for praise so I went for it. The problem is I didn't GO for it. I took it cautiously and didn't get enough speed so as my ski tips went over the lip of the jump they started to go down and ran into a lip at the bottom of the jump. My tips got caught and I went skidding on my face across the snow under the chair lift for all to see.
There are a couple of interesting lessons I can reflect on for this. One is to watch my pride because it did come right before a fall, second just because I failed on this one jump I'm not going to give up on skiing. Third my integrity, value, and worth are not tied to what I do or do not do, whether I fail or succeed.
This is what I pick up in Job chap 27. He says to his accusatory friends, " I will never admit you are in the right; till I die, I will not deny my integrity. I will maintain my righteousness and never let go of it: my conscience will not reproach me as long as I live." I struggle with this statement it seems so proud and so unrepentant. Job is a tricky subject, on one hand at the end of the book God says, "Job what you said about me was right, and what your friends said was wrong." And yet Job repents of speaking of things he does not understand and even despises himself.
So was what he said right or not? Is holding onto his integrity and righteousness really the right thing to do or not? I have to go back to the context once again. At the beginning of the book God calls job righteous, the suffering he is going through is not caused by any sense of punishment, but rather as a test of the devil. So Job is right to hold on to his integrity. He is right not to give up on his righteousness in the midst of what feels like a failure in life.
God is still there, Job is still the same righteous man who began this story, and Job is right to hang on.
Even when we fall on our faces we don't need to give up. Christ has still made us his righteousness. God placed value on us even when we were sinners, because he died for us while we were sinners while we were his enemies. All we need do is hold on to Jesus and we hold on to our integrity and stand righteous. Our failures need not make us to be failures. We do need to stop living or give up on our relationship with God when we fall or when the world seems to fall on us.
I hope today we can find the courage to hold on even when we feel like letting go.
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