Facing One’s Failure

If anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father.
—1 John 2:1

Only a few baseball players have ever batted .400 over an entire season,
which means they went hitless six out of ten times. Somehow that
makes me feel better about myself.

We focus too much on success stories. Christians, like the champions of
Homeric epics, always make it big. I confess I get tired of hearing such heroics.
Emerson was right: “Every hero gets to be a bore at last.” Personally I’d
like to hear a few more stories about failures like me.

Fortunately the Bible is full of them: Noah drank too much. Abraham
lied. Moses lost his temper. Gideon lost his nerve. Peter kept putting both
feet in his mouth. Paul was sometimes curt and inconsiderate. Mark went
home to mother. Thomas doubted. Most biblical men and women cut unheroic
figures, but they’re still my heroes. I need some failures to look up to
now and then.

David is my favorite—he muffed it so many times. And yet the Bible described
him as a man after God’s own heart. How can it be? Is there hope for
a sinner like me? It seems there is; it all depends on the state of the heart.

David is best known for his affair with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, whom
he saw exposed on her patio. One wrong thing led to another. As Augustine
would say, “Her caresses drew his spirit down.” Bathsheba got pregnant.
David put out a contract on her husband Uriah, an old friend, and after
Uriah’s death, David married Bathsheba to put a legal and final end to the
sordid affair.

Or so he thought.

The law of inevitable consequence caught up with the king. He had to face
the facts; or, more precisely, he had to face Nathan, who dug up the facts. The
prophet trapped David with a trumped-up story about a rich man who stole
another man’s lamb to serve a “traveling stranger,” Nathan’s metaphor for
David’s transient passion.

When David heard the story he was outraged. “As surely as the Lord lives,
the man who did this deserves to die!” David, of course, overreacted; sheep
nabbing was not a capital crime. Or perhaps he knew what Nathan was really
talking about. When David realized that Nathan had his number, his defenses
crumbled. “I have sinned against the Lord,” he said (2 Samuel 12:13).
David didn’t cover up; he faced his failure and repented of it, and the Lord
took away his sin. David bore the serious consequences of his sin, but his
walk with God resumed. He could go on.

Some of David’s most poignant and powerful poems were composed during
this period (Psalms 32, 38, 51). They reveal the state of his heart.

I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess
my transgressions to the Lord”—
and you forgave
the guilt of my sin.
Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you
while you may be found (Psalm 32:5–6).

The word godly may put us off because we may think of someone who is
sinless. The original word merely signified one who was loyal to the Lord and
longed to please Him.

Anyone can be godly because what matters most is not performance but
the inclination of the heart. As Jesus said,

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled (Matthew 5:6).

God doesn’t look for perfection. He knows the miserable stuff of which
we’re made. The godly will surely sin, and just as certainly their sins will be
found out. God reveals our waywardness to heal us. We will notice defilement
because He will show it to us. Such work in us is the sign of His presence.

When that sin is faced and repented of, it is forgiven. Then we can go on.
And going on, after all, is what matters. God doesn’t require perfection, only
progress.

C. S. Lewis wrote, “No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep picking
ourselves up each time.”

Taken from Seeing God, © 2006 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids MI 4950l. All rights reserved.