According to a quick search on the Internet, the average person lives 27,375 days on this earth. When you look at it that way, it can seem like a lot. Now maybe it goes without saying, but some of those 27,375 days are going to be awesome. Like the days you get to open the presents you always wanted, the times when you win, make great friends, and fulfill your calling. However, in bright and gleamingly stark contrast, there are days that are going to be embarrassing, disappointing, or even boring. The time you ripped your pants in the middle of 7th grade computer class, the time you lost the game, got T-boned by a male mule deer on the interstate, got the rejection letter from the record label, and missed the Lord in front of a lot of people. Anyone? No, just me? Alrighty then…moving on.
It is the sum of those days, good and bad, that we call ‘life’ and the going through it ‘living’. When I think about living for God everyday, every day…eevvvery daaaaay…every single day…day 10,348…Wednesday…the birthday next year…and the day after that…and the following Tuesday; my focus turns not only to living successfully each day but on getting to my last day as a faithful believer – to finish well.
The good days are easy. While some people need help learning how to receive the goodness of God, few of us wipe our brow at the end of an epic day and exclaim, “Whew, glad that’s finally over with!” or “If one more amazing thing happens today I’m going to punch someone in the face and cry.” What really determines Christian longevity is how you deal with the bad days. Times when things don’t work out like you thought they would or you do something you never though you would. Those moments of disappointment are polarizing to faith. You either draw closer to God in repentance or it severs relationship.
While those days are in fact and in deed ‘terrible’, when you look at the scope of life, they only comprise a small minority of your estimated 27,375 days. So I submit to you that what can actually be worse than bad days is the fear of bad days; that all too easily ‘life’ can become about avoiding failure instead of pursuing destiny.
My wife and I have a saying for our life and ministry. “We want it to be God or failure, but we refuse to live in between.” We make this bold declaration because it’s just too easy to fall into the self-preserving mode of building an insulated world of perceived protection around ourselves or becoming inoculated with the latest distraction so that our days become neither that bad nor that great. We don’t want to be afraid to fail, afraid to succeed, and we certainly don’t want to be afraid to try. We want to live life to the fullest.
Living like that brings amazing highs and some devastating lows. Amazing in that you know it was God when people ask you, “How in the world did you get to do that?” Devastating because failure stinks. I don’t like to mess up or to have things not work out but I’ve found that if you want God results you have to deal with fear and specifically the fear of failure. This is because faith in God is done in the face of fear. Faith and fear are two powerful forces constantly at war for your attention because both have the same basic definition. “Believing what you cannot see will happen.” Faith to the positive and fear to the negative.
Fear seems to come naturally, but faith is a learned skill. Faith is something you grow in. I know God heals. I’ve seen it, been healed, prayed for people and they’ve been healed. I have faith in it. But I’ve have also seen people not healed. I know the problem isn’t with God, so there must be something I need to learn. So I press into the awesomeness of God and let my failures refine me. I know that God provides. I’ve seen it, been on my last nickel when the money came my way, and have also been the one who gave at the right time. Do I always get it right? No. Am I getting better at it? Absolutely. I know God leads. Why? Because I’ve followed that voice to see what happens. I know the voice of my Shepherd? How? Not because I’ve thought a lot about it but because I put it to the test and learned both in success and in failure.
27,375 or so days on earth – it’s a lot of opportunity to do something amazing, to mess up, or to get stuck in the middle between faith and fear. Living for God isn’t just one day; it’s every day, this one and your last one. So enjoy the great days, eat some ice cream and take a nap on the bad ones, but then stand back up and keep moving up. God’s not afraid of your failures and neither should you. I hate failure but I love God’s awesomeness more. It’s not permission to fail but rather permission to really try and to get up and try again.