“WINNING” vs. “EPIC FAIL.” These phrases have become a bit of a mantra in my generation. Starting out as silly quotes, they have turned into common-place slogans for announcing our own victory. These are expressions of the shift that has taken place from doing our best to keeping score at everything we do.
I have always been an all-or-nothing person…If I can’t be the best, then I don’t want to try. I want to have the best grades. I want everyone I work for to think they hit the jackpot of employees. I want to be the best friend a person could have. I want to be the best daughter ever. The list goes on and on. But even while striving for what seem like worthy goals, I use God’s call to holiness to rationalize my own idea that there is no space between winning and being an utter failure.
I realized something recently: this attitude has seeped into my spiritual life. It hit me hard after I recently fell down and returned to an old sin. Even in the process of conviction and asking for forgiveness, one of my first thoughts was “There goes my record”. And this is where the ugliness of my own heart came out: was I repenting and seeking forgiveness to restore right-standing in my relationship with God, or because I wanted a clean slate on my report card so it wouldn’t reflect the F? Do I even truly love God, or am I just trying to get spiritual straight A’s? This is a question I will be mulling over for some time, because the honest answer will reveal the difference between being covered by his blood and taking his grace for granted.
My prayer is that I would be able to throw out the spiritual score card and serve God with the same passion that I had when I was most in love with Him. What about you?
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