faithfulness

It’s not about perfection, but persistence.

At first, that may sound a little patronizing. It might have the ring of a little league coach who’s trying to encourage that one kid who could not catch the fly ball. (That was me, by the way.) But I can assure you that the above statement is not patronizing in the least. In fact, it is an amazing word of grace that compensates for our uniquely human ability to completely destroy everything that’s good and right in the world. There. Is that better now?

Even if you don’t like the movies, you certainly know the story of Rocky. He is the stereotypical American hero. He’s the down-and-out, poor, average Joe who decides to change his whole destiny by becoming a boxer. Quite frankly, he isn’t very good. He is continually getting the snot beat out of him! But he has this one quality that makes all the difference. There is one personality trait that separates him from all the rest of the boxers. He will not stay down! No matter how hard you hit him and how many times he falls, Rocky is going to keep getting up and coming at you. He is tenacious, gritty, tough. Rocky knows all about faithfulness.

Rocky sure wasn’t perfect. I mean, it wouldn’t be a good movie if he was, right? But it’s not about perfection. It’s about persistence. I’m not perfect either. I hope this statement doesn’t shock you, but you are not perfect either. None of us are. I mean, life wouldn’t be very interesting or exciting if we were, right? But, thank God, He doesn’t expect us to be perfect. He didn’t create us perfect. He created us “good” (check the story in Genesis 1). None of us will ever reach perfection. Stop beating yourself up over that fact! Instead of being discouraged and feeling depressed, change your perspective. God doesn’t want you to walk through life without ever tripping up and falling down. Instead, He wants all of us to learn to get up, dust ourselves off, hopefully figure out what tripped us in the first place, and keep going.

Since faithfulness is so difficult to define and understand, we’ve found it helpful to throw in a couple synonyms. Words like “consistency” and “integrity” help us get a picture of what faithfulness might look like. A faithful person understands the weight of and is driven by his/her "responsibility." The last one, which is actually a phrase, is my favorite picture: “life of honor.” To me, that phrase conjures up images of Arthur and Lancelot. I see medieval knights fighting vicious dragons and Aragorn battling the evil Sauron. It seems that the men and women of these stories had a true sense of honor. They did the right thing because, well, it was right. It wasn’t about looking good or fitting in or being politically correct. That is faithfulness.

Taken literally, God is the only One truly faithful. He is the only One who can always be counted on. His is the only word that will never fail. And I want to be like Him. I want to follow that example. Holy Seed Community Church is a place of faithfulness. We’re going to model our lives after Jesus, the Son of God, the ultimate Faithful One. No, we’re not going to be perfect like Him. Yes, we are going to make mistakes unlike Him. But that’s okay. When we fall down, when we sin, when we mess up, we’re going to get up. Even if we fall 100 times, we will get back up 101 times. After all, it’s not about perfection, but persistence.