Thought for the week: Remember that God is our refuge and strength – an ever-present help in trouble
There’s hardly a day goes by without some significant report in the news about a failure – perhaps by a team in a competition, or a public body that is meant to oversee an important part of everyday life, or maybe a business being taken down by internet hackers, or even government itself failing to do something that it should.
But, of course, for many, probably all of us, there are personal failures as well. None of us is perfect, or anywhere near that, and for some of us our failings have been or indeed still are very distressing. So, on that basis, I would like to offer a word of encouragement that comes from my own experience, for I too am no stranger to failure.
One of the reasons I am a committed Christian – and there are many – is that no-one is ever written off as a failure by God. He knows only too well that we are fragile people in a deeply flawed world. Failing is part and parcel of being human – sometimes on a small scale, and sometimes on a grand scale. This goes right back to the rebellion against our Maker in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3).
I find it a huge encouragement that the Bible reminds me that God does not abandon us when we fail. So many of the ‘heroes’ of Scripture failed, and often failed dramatically. Yet the Lord rescued them from their failures and they became instruments of great blessing to many.
Abraham in the Old Testament lied about his wife Sarah being his sister (Genesis 12). Yet he was privileged to receive repeated promises from God who made a covenant with him. After David killed the giant Goliath, he then committed adultery with Bathsheba and arranged for her husband to be murdered to cover it up (2 Samuel 11). Yet the gospel writers trace the birth of Jesus right back to King David.
Simon Peter denied knowing Jesus three times on the night of his betrayal (Luke 22). Yet he became a pillar of the early church. The clear message is that God is our refuge and strength – an ever-present help in trouble. (Psalm 46). He is not a crutch to prop us up when we fail, but a source of refuge, forgiveness and guidance. He does not take us into a religious bubble to help us pretend that all is well, when clearly it is not, but he gives that firm promise that he will walk our road of failure with us, and crucially, that the failure will absolutely not define our identity either here on earth or in eternity.
I suggest that the message of the Bible is clear. If feelings of failure, or the fact of failure are all too real to you, read again that wonderful promise from God in Psalm 46 that he will be your refuge and strength. My own experience tells me that you will not be disappointed!