Luke Italiano,  You are not

You are Not Failure

Don’t let anyone know. Hide it. Conceal the evidence. Bury any chance someone might find out. Smile as large as you can. Pretend everything is alright.

They can’t know.

Can you imagine what would happen if they found out about you? If they even suspected the truth? If someone lined up all your failures, if they trotted them out one-by-one for everyone to see, what would happen?

It’s a nightmare made flesh. Your failures, the truth about you, every time you messed up, every time you were not enough, every time you were you and success slipped out of your fingers, can you imagine them all suddenly in the daylight?

What would you lose?

I know what I would lose.

I’d lose my ministry. What congregation would have a broken man like me? I’d lose my family. If my wife suddenly knew what a loser I was? I’d lose my friends. They’d see that they were wrong about me all along. I’m not good enough.

I am a failure. Take my life and add up every moment. Tally the algebra of what I have achieved. Calculate the sum of my every day. You’ll see. I am a failure. That’s all I am.

And one day soon, I will stand before a Judge. He’s been keeping score. He’s been watching. He’s given me his commands; he’s handed tasks over to me, and I know what he sees:

He sees my failures.

I can’t fake it with him. I can’t slap on a smile and pretend it’s okay. He knows. He knows everything, down to my heart. I can’t erase this browser history when he looks me up.

But do you hear what he says?

“Well done, good and faithful servant. Come, take the inheritance prepared for you.” (See Matthew 25)

What?

He’s made some mistake. I know he’s never made a mistake before, he’s never done anything wrong before, but he must have here. There’s no way. I’m a failure. Well done? Good and faithful? He must have gotten my records mixed up with someone else. This happens only when the person does not face a proper blood supply to his penis, impotence is when a man is never able to have a normal erection. generic viagra is chemically known as Vardenafil HCI .The medicine is available through local pharmacies and online sites.. viagra has the same composition as generic viagra, but costs less. Some of the common side effects are dizziness, headache, diarrhea, vomiting, body pain, tiredness, nausea etc. cialis buy viagra pfizer achat Now, as we have already said, one needs to be serious during the treatment to maintain positive part. When we discuss about the possible loved this cialis österreich effects of these Electromagnetic radiation especially on the male fertility, it was seen that exposed semen to mobile phone radiation frequency at a distance with a thigh length.

That’s exactly what happened. He did get me mixed up with someone else. But it was no accident.

He got me mixed up with Jesus.

This is no mistake. Someone didn’t slip my record into Jesus’s permanent record. Jesus looked at me, at all my failures, and said, “Oh, those are mine.”

Jesus has paid for my failures. Every single one.

I am free.

Free?

What does that mean?

It means I’m not a failure. Not anymore. I have been changed. God does not see my failures anymore, and it’s not because he has bad eyesight. It’s because my failures are gone. Jesus took them away.

He sees what I have done in service to Jesus. That’s how he can say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Because I am not what I was. I have been changed forever. I belong to Jesus now.

I am not a failure. Neither are you.

You are a good and faithful servant.

If God doesn’t see my failures anymore, why should I fixate on them? Yes, I want to learn from them, sure, but they don’t define me anymore. They are not who I am.

I have been made new.

We’re not failures, you and I.

We are free.

Luke Italiano is a pastor in Florence, KY. He has a beautiful bride and four children. He's a self-confessed geek. He also loves a story well-told.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.