PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
1 Corinthians 13:8a
Love never fails.
CONSIDER THIS
In union with Jesus, you have the God Who Never Fails with you—at all times.
With today’s section of 1 Corinthians 13:4–13, let’s repeat our exercise of inserting the name of Jesus in the place of love first, and then inserting our own names second as a declaration of our union with Jesus.
Love never fails.
Jesus never fails.
[Insert your name] never fails.
Here we are, saying things that feel so far beyond us, we may feel like we are ignoring reality and confessing positive thoughts that have no weight behind them.
We are doing anything but that.
It is true that Jesus never fails. And because Jesus lives in you, it can be said of you that you never fail. But what happens when someone who never fails, fails?
There is a biblical path for those who fail along the way to Christlikeness. It is not the path of wallowing in our brokenness and giving up on being like Jesus. The biblical path forward begins with reclaiming who we are in Christ. Then, having owned our union with Christ and our belovedness to Christ, we move in radical humility. We confess our sin, we repent, we receive grace and forgiveness, and we realign ourselves with the way of Jesus. All of this happens in community.
In other words, your failings inform your testimony rather than define your destiny.
When I think of Jesus never failing us even in our weakness, I often think of Saint Patrick. As his story goes, he was taken as a slave by Irish raiders from his home in Britain. In his Confessio, he talks about how little faith he had and how wayward from God he had become. He spent six years feeding animals until, through a dream, God spoke to him about a ship that was ready for his rescue. After a 200-mile trip, he made it to the ship and sailed to freedom.
Back in Britain, he had a dream in which he heard the “Voice of the Irish” beckoning him back to those who enslaved him. He returned as a missionary to Ireland and the rest is history. If even half of the stories we read about Patrick are true, he had a mighty force of faith—despite his weakness—that flowed from his awareness of his union with Christ. He walked boldly through the land of his pain with wild courage—leading many souls to Jesus.
His sense of union with Christ is captured in a few phrases from his famous prayer St. Patrick’s Breastplate: “Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ at my right, Christ at my left . . .”
Let’s read Paul’s words in Ephesians 1:7–12 to remind us of the new reality in which we live in union with Christ Jesus:
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.
Hallelujah! The God Who Never Fails is the God who chose you. He predestined you to be conformed to Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:29). He invited you into hope in Christ for his praise and ultimate glory. This is the God who lives in you!
A friend once told me after a particularly hard season of ministry, “Dan, success and failure are events, not people.” I took a deep breath then, and I invite you to take one with me now.
Jesus is living in you. And you are living in Jesus. This means that God’s never-failing nature is in you. Jesus will help you succeed in becoming a person of never-failing love.
THE PRAYER
Lord Jesus, I am in you and you are in me. If I have seen myself as a failure before, I choose to change who I see in the mirror from now on. Your love never fails. You never fail. You in me never fail. I take hold of this truth and make it my own. In Christ Jesus, I pray, amen.
THE QUESTIONS
How many times have you failed in your life? And how many times have you gotten back up to try again? What has the Lord taught you about himself, and yourself, in that process?
For the Awakening,
Dan Wilt
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3 Responses
Love never fails, but every unkind word is a failure of people to love one another. Love has never failed, but when it is set aside and replaced with pride and self-focus, human ego fails and paints human lives with emotional and mental misery.
There’s only one unfailing source of faith and hope and that’s the failproof love of God which is being poured out into human hearts that are willing to humbly receive, surrender to, and be continually led by the Holy Spirit. Love (and all the other aspects of the fruit of the Spirit) always flourishes in hearts and lives that are fully surrendered to living Jesus. Love is not an academic style study or Bible lesson of the Greek word “agape.” It’s the ongoing supernatural overflow of the unfailing “Christ in you,” and His inner rivers of living water.
My main takeaway from today’s lesson is this: God is all-knowing, and we are not. There will be many obstacles, distractions, trails, and failures on our journey of faith to eternity with the Trinity, in the New Creation of a co-joined New heaven and earth. But Christ’s promised presence should inspire us to never give up, regardless of our external circumstances. Praise be to God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ!
I never fail to love is my new goal.