I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail. — Luke 22:32
On the night before His death, Jesus made this announcement:
All of you will be made to stumble because of Me this night, for it is written: ‘I will strike the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee. — Matthew 26:31-32
Translation? Your fall will be great, but My grace will be greater. You’ll find Me waiting for you in Galilee.
The promise was lost on Peter:
Even if all are made to stumble because of You, I will never be made to stumble. — Matthew 26:33
Not one of Peter’s finer moments. Arrogant. Self-sufficient. Peter’s trust was in Peter’s strength. Yet Peter’s strength would peter out. Jesus knew it.
Satan would attack and test Peter. But Satan would never claim Peter. Why? Because Peter was strong? No, because Jesus was.
I have prayed for you. — Luke 22:32
- Jesus’ prayers hamstring Satan.
Jesus prays for you as well (John 17:11, John 17:20 NLT).
Will God hear the intercessory pleas of His Son? Of course He will. Like Peter, our faith will wane, our resolve waver, but we will not fall away. We are “kept by Jesus” (Jude 1 NIV) and “shielded by God’s power” (1 Peter 1:5 NIV). And that is no small power. It is the power of a living and ever-persistent Savior… who prays for us.
~ Grace
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Voices of Failure
I waited patiently for the Lord to help me, and He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. — Psalm 40:1–3 NLT
Have you heard voices of failure? When you lost your job, flunked the exam, dropped out of school. When your marriage went south. When your business went broke. When you failed. The voices began to howl.
And you joined them!
Failure finds us all.
Failure is so universal we have to wonder why more self-help gurus don’t address it. Bookstores overflow with volumes on how to succeed. But you’ll look a long time before you find a section called “How to Succeed at Failing.”
Maybe no one knows what to say. But God does. His book is written for failures. It is full of folks who were foul-ups and flops. David was a moral failure, yet God used him. Elijah was an emotional train wreck after Mount Carmel, but God blessed him. Jonah was in the belly of a fish when he prayed his most honest prayer, and God heard it.
Perfect people? No. Perfect messes? You bet. Yet God used them. A surprising and welcome discovery of the Bible is this: God uses failures.
~ Glory Days
Excerpted with permission from God Is With You Every Day by Max Lucado, copyright Max Lucado.
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Your Turn
All of us believers are going to fail. All of us who love and follow Jesus are going to go through temptation, and trials, and exhaustion, and we’ll all have questions that go without answers. Jesus prays for us! Isn’t that so encouraging? We can rest today in our insufficiency that He is praying for us and that His grace is bigger than our failures. ~ Devotionals Daily