Failure in the Blood

Published on Feb 19, 2011
What would be like to be enslaved? We are all enslaved each and everyday. Don't believe me then look at your life, and what you spend your time with for most of each day. What is it? For some it may be texting, a computer, Facebook, video games, and the list can go on. We forget that when we do a thing enough that it becomes a habit then it eventually makes us a slave to it. We crave it desire it. I have been married for a few months now, and often find myself caught in this notion of what I need to do and what I have enslaved myself to. Should I spend more time with her, or should I spend more time building my business. It has been that hardest question to answer. I need to spend the free moments I have, and sacrifice the ones that I don't in making sure that she is taken care of and happy. Though more often than not I choose to walk away to the business or the things on the computer that I probably make her feel less than I actually feel about her. I cherish my wife, no I say, I love my wife. However, if I never show it then what do I have to show for it than a lot of missed opportunities to snuggle with her on the couch, or to plain spend time with her doing almost anything. Why do I do the things that I do? A precarious question to ask and horrible answers do I keep getting when I ask the question to myself. Others would say that I do the things I do for others to make sure others are happy or cared for, however, if I corrected them as I should then they would be shocked to realize why I really do these things. I sacrifice time and energy to glorify myself, and not my God. I need to be more aware that when I care about others it is not about making myself look good, but it needs to be about actually doing it for the God who shows me how to be. For all the grace that I have been given over the years, and for all the love that He shed for me then I should have gotten this by now. Wow! I do write about this point a lot. Now that I think about it I spend time trying to understand myself when all I need to do is keeping my gaze upon my God, who already knows me and loves me enough. There is more love in one tiny hair on His head, than I could ever hope to muster in a thousand lifetimes. He gave up His Son, so that I might be reconciled to Him and be brought back into His loving embrace for all eternity. How can I give that up? It's like winning the lottery, but in the same analogy it would be like saying, "I'm good, you can keep it." No one would do that. It would be foolish. Though how many of us give up the great love that God has for us to say the exact same thing. I trade the love my wife has for me for the tools that are supposed to make my life better. I trade the love of my God for the things of this world. So many compromised and still I come right back to the same conclusion. I am a failure in the eyes of everyone around me. Wrong! I may be a failure at life, but I am still made right with all the I have done wrong. What makes the gift God had for us so special is that we are failures. If we did not have sin, then we wouldn't need to be made right with Him. An interesting conundrum. If we need to be failures, in order to achieve the ultimate grace the no wonder we keep screwing up. Wrong again! We constantly fall because it is in our flesh to desire constant nourishment from broken cisterns. We crave getting what we want now, rather than later. We don't want what God has for us, because we want it now and not later. That is why so many Christians crave to go home to Heaven, because we don't want to deal with all this anymore. However, that is why God directs us throughout the hard times, because He desires for us to be greater, better than we are currently. God wants to take you from your failures, and make you into a new creation. He wants to remake you, and not leave you where you are currently. Don't settle for what you can get on earth, when what God has for you is so much better. That's why Christ was so eager to deny Satan's temptation, because He knew exactly what God had in mind for each of us, and it was that much better.
Justin Hough author picture
Justin Hough

Chief Development Officer at Hounder. He is a Christian, husband, father, writer, developer, designer, and a digital carpenter crafting amazing web experience. Also, created the Centurion Framework many moons ago.