When You're Failing All the Time
A Prayer For Days You Feel Like a Failure
I asked the Lord at the start of 2020 for healing in a few areas of my life. I had no idea it would come through a painful revealing of my brokenness and inadequacy. Over the course of this past year, my sinfulness has been continuously revealed, my brokenness exposed, and my failures laid before me.
It has all been for God’s glory and my good, but boy has it hurt.
And it continues to hurt. God’s not done with me yet.
Have you struggled too?
I wrote this prayer for on a particularly difficult day. It’s only edited for grammar. My hope is that reading it will bring you encouragement. Just know you’re not alone.
I feel like a failure this week, Lord. I’ve messed up in so many ways. I just keep hitting the floor. Oof!… My heart feels like it’s in my stomach.
I’m realizing once again, I’m not who I thought I was.
I’m more in need than I thought I was.
I know I’m not perfect, but it really hurts when I don’t live up to my own standards. I am not the Christian I should be; I’m not the wife or mom I should be. I know I’m growing, but the battle is unending. I can’t be the person everyone wants me to be. I can’t even be the person I want to be. I’m too imperfect. I mess up too much.
But I’m realizing something. Humble valley is a good place to be. You brought me here.
Not all of life is mountain tops. If it were, my heart wouldn’t be tender. I wouldn’t seek you in prayer because I wouldn’t need you.
I need grace. Every day. Every hour, even.
“I need thee every hour” is not just hyperbole. It’s gospel truth. I am not capable of goodness without my good, sovereign creator. I need you so much Jesus!
In a way, I thank you for these failures! They keep me on my knees.
I praise you that my failings can be used to bring me nearer to you. “[Your] mercies are new every morning.” (Lamentations 3:22-23). Great is your faithfulness, Lord, to a woman who desperately needs you all the time.
Jesus, you know my need. You said “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Lord, make an end of my pride. Help me to walk humbly before you so that I can be used to glorify you. Let me “boast in my weakness, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9.
Help me to live to honor you, Lord. You have said that I have everything I need for life and godliness. (2 Peter 1:3). Help me to live in godliness and reverence of you. Help me accomplish all the things you have in store for me. (Ephesians 2:10).
Thank you, Lord, for your goodness to me.
Amen.
— Written August 20th, 2020
