Failure is inevitable. It’s hard, but it happens. You get caught in the heat of an argument and say something you regret. You forget about a commitment and let someone down who’s really important to you. You’re late to a meeting and compromise your boss’ trust.
But despite our fallenness, we’re called to honor God and serve our neighbors.
So how do we reconcile the reality that we will fall short with our responsibility to God and our loved ones? Well, first we need to talk about failure.
Two Types of Failure
There are two main types of failure that you will inevitably experience:
- Failure outside of your control
- Failure within your control
Failure Outside of Your Control
Failure outside of your control goes something like this: You have every intention of getting to your best friend’s college graduation. He worked hard, and you want to be there. You wake up early, get ready with plenty of time to spare, get in your car, and drive. You notice it’s raining a little bit, but that’s not a problem. Nothing’s holding you back!
All of a sudden, the driver in front of you slams on their brakes to let a squirrel cross the road. You try to stop too, but you’re too late, and you hydroplane right into the trunk of the squirrel-saving car. The airbags eject.
The damage is … expensive.
You spend the rest of the morning trying to call a tow truck, and then a cab, and then the ever-frustrating insurance company.
By the time you’re in the cab, you’ve got about ten text messages from your friend, including a “Where are you?!” Then come the photos of him walking the stage, receiving his diploma. He says he’s not mad, but you know he’s disappointed, and that’s warranted.
You apologize and arrive home without a car but with a sinking, sad feeling in your stomach that you’ve failed someone who means a lot to you.
This type of failure hurts. It’s frustrating, and it causes a fair amount of pain. But it’s the easier of the two types of failure to reconcile. While you feel bad for missing your friend’s graduation, you know the obstacles that kept you from attending were out of your control.
When failure is outside your control, you seek forgiveness and explain the situation.
You receive the grace your friend has for you, but ultimately, you know it wasn’t your fault—at least, not entirely.
But what about the times when the failure is completely and totally your fault? Sometimes there are no outside circumstances at play—just sin having its way in your life.
Failure Within Your Control
Let’s keep going with the graduation example. The night before the ceremony, you take your friend out to dinner to revel in the excitement of the occasion. At the restaurant, your friend says something fairly hurtful, and you’re convinced he meant it. You get into an argument at the table, and you both leave in a huff before the appetizers arrive.
The next morning, your friend calls. You decline it, but he leaves a voicemail explaining how sorry he is. He says that even though he doesn’t deserve it, he hopes to see you at his graduation.
You can tell he’s being sincere, but there’s a part of you—the part that’s still sore from last night—that wants to sit at home and stay mad in the hopes of paying him back for hurting your feelings. So, you do. He’s sad and probably angry.
When you emerge from your frustrated fog, you realize more fully how much you hurt your friend. You run to him, begging for forgiveness. Because he’s a good friend, he forgives you and tells you it’s all forgotten.
Though you’re grateful for his forgiveness, you have a hard time getting over the unkindness you showed someone you love.
So, what do you do? How do you move on? How do you show grace for yourself after you’ve failed?
What Is Grace?
Grace is undeserved kindness or favor. It’s the foundation of forgiveness and ultimately the salvation we find in Christ Jesus. It means deserving a penalty, but receiving a gift.
On a practical level, grace looks like every gift from God. As sinners, we deserve punishment for our sins. But as forgiven children of Christ, we can receive the good things God graciously gives, like forgiveness, provision, and acceptance, as well as things like food, music, and friends. We don’t get these good things because we’re worthy, but because God has infinitely more grace than we could ever imagine.
Paul puts it best in Romans 5:20-21 when he says, “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
3 Ways to Give Yourself Grace
Maybe at this point you’re thinking, “Yeah, I know God has grace for me, but I need to know how to give grace to myself.” Well, I’ve found three things that have helped me escape the shame spiral and find grace, especially when I feel like I don’t deserve it.
1. Remember What God Says About You
Part of giving yourself grace involves observing God’s grace for you, over and over and over again.
Part of giving yourself grace involves observing God’s grace for you, over and over and over again. God, the Maker of the whole universe, sees you as a child worth dying for in spite of your sin. That’s a pretty strong argument that you’re worth the grace.
That doesn’t mean you should be prideful or feel entitled to grace. It means you should look to your Creator and agree with Him when He says He made you as a “very good” creation. Believe the things He says to be true, including Ephesians 2:10, which says that “we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
God Is Compassionate
Having grace for ourselves after we fail involves trusting God and believing His Word to be true. So if we really, truly believe that we are very good creations of God and that He has good works planned for us to do, we cannot afford to sit in the shame of our past failures. We have no choice but to have grace for ourselves so we can continue doing the good works He has for us.
As Christians, of course, we experience conviction. We know that our sin takes us further from our Father, and that should make us sad.
Having grace for ourselves doesn’t mean overlooking or refusing responsibility for our sin. But if we truly believe the Word of the Lord, then we believe Micah 7:19, which says, “[He] will again have compassion on us; [He] will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.”
2. Confide in Community
Sometimes we just need to unburden ourselves. We have to confess what we’ve done and be honest with God and another human being that we are struggling with shame.
There is a certain relief to be found when we say our struggles and our shortcomings out loud. That’s why resources like therapy or counseling are so effective, because they provide a safe space to say the things you haven’t yet been able to say.
James 5:16 says, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”
The joy of confessing sin and shame to Jesus-following friends is that they will pray for you and genuinely care for your well-being. They will take the next steps toward healing and accepting grace with you, so you’re not alone. So, talk to your friend, small group, or pastor about the shame you’re carrying.
Do not believe the lie that your failure is too big to confess. Get it off your shoulders, accept that long-awaited relief, and allow someone else to help you bring it before God.
3. Do Good Stuff
I love the word “stuff” because it can mean so much, and that’s exactly the point of this step. You, as a redeemed, set apart, loved and cherished child of God, can and will do so much godly stuff. Sometimes the shame of our past failures tries to argue that our sin makes us unworthy to engage in good and helpful things like prayer, service to neighbors, or asking for and receiving forgiveness.
Finding grace for ourselves involves working up the courage to continue to act in the face of our failures.
But sometimes finding grace for ourselves involves working up the courage to continue to act in the face of our failures. This proves to ourselves that, yes, we’re broken, but we’re also very good and capable of loving God and our neighbors, which is the whole duty of Jesus followers.
Don’t Get Stuck in Guilt
So, on those days when shame whispers lies in your ear that say you aren’t worthy of grace, just act. You can start small. Make your bed. Walk the dog. Look someone in the eye as you say hello. Then work yourself up to bigger things. Reach out to a friend and ask how they’ve been. Bring baked goods to your friends at the office. Seek forgiveness from the people you’ve hurt. Volunteer at your church or a local non-profit.
As a small disclaimer, this stuff does not cancel out our sins. Our brokenness is still there, no matter how many times we clock in at the soup kitchen. But, this godly stuff we take part in reminds us that we have a purpose and a responsibility to steward the life God has given us.
Participating in our purpose reminds us that there is a reason to give ourselves grace that’s bigger than the sin we committed.
The mission of Jesus to love, serve, and spread the gospel is bigger than our shame and more important than our self-deprecation. And it requires so much grace to do His work. That’s why taking action, even before we’ve fully understood our God-given grace, will remind us why grace is so important and, hopefully, provide a reason worthy of accepting it.
Grace Doesn’t Make Sense
Grace isn’t easy, and it doesn’t make sense. Shame makes sense. You sin, you should feel bad about it. But because you serve the God who “is able to make all grace abound to you,” you can have “all sufficiency in all things at all times” and “abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8). God has flipped the script and made the impossible possible.
So if you’ve read this far and still find grace hard to believe, that’s completely understandable. Grace contradicts our sinful nature, and it can be hard to accept. Where do you go from here? I encourage you to talk to God, read your Bible, implement the tools listed above, and start taking steps to accept the gift of grace God has for you.
You can let go of your shame and failures because you are God’s handiwork, and you have good things ahead of you.