Start Strong: Failing DailyNick Beasley - 18 Jan 2017

I am an aspiring filmmaker. I am a frustrated writer.

I am a penniless, business-less entrepreneur, a qualification-less academic. I am an engine of a box-to-box midfielder without a professional contract, and a preacher without a congregation. I am an Astronaut with a C in GCSE physics. I am a wayward, poetic, cant-pin-me-down traveler, who grew up in the South East of England and still lives in the South East of England.

I have ideas. I have ideas all the time. I have ideas about the things I want to do and I have real, honest convictions that I’m meant to do them – and that this time, even though I didn't last time, I’m going to do them.

But I’m a procrastinator. I lack discipline. I get overwhelmed by all the stuff I want to get done and not knowing how to do it. I can work to a deadline, but if there’s no deadline and if no one knows I’m planning something and holding me accountable, I won't get it done.

And no one was waiting for me to be an astronaut…

Now, I know that in order to do my job properly, in order to not get fired, I have to put things in place to make sure my lack of discipline doesn’t mean I drop the ball. Meetings, timetables, to-do lists. It's my job. But no one's employing me to be a Christian everyday. 

So I have great relationship with God - and I doubt that relationship every day.

I had felt frustrated for many years that I didn’t feel closer to God. Actual years. I could feel close to God – I could pray and I could worship and I could read the Bible. At 10.30 on a Sunday morning when everyone else was there doing it too; when I was in a place built for prayer and worship and reading the Bible – then I’d feel close to God.

But I still felt that frustration and that doubt everyday.

So, I had years of frustrations, years of knowing I needed to do more, but I still didn’t have the rhythm; the disciplines that I had to put everywhere else in my life to account for my disappointments.

Because I know this to be true: I suck at getting things done.

And so this is where my advice comes from. This is the place I write from; from a place of regular, sustained - and still apparent - failure.

I wanted a better relationship with God, so I eventually just asked my friend who has a good relationship with God what he does. Because I didn't have any better ideas than that.

And he gave me this verse:

Let us acknowledge the LORD; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth."

– Hosea 6:3

And so for 40 days, I decided I would spend half an hour everyday with God – that this would be my priority. Going to bed would be my deadline, and I wouldn’t be allowed to do that until I had spent half an hour, praying, or reading the Bible, or doing something that at least felt vaguely Christian. I told him I would, and he checked in that I did.

Because this is what I learnt:

Let us acknowledge the Lord:  Seek the Lord. Go try and find Him. It’s an instruction to try. Don’t wait to feel good about it and don’t wait till Church on Sunday.

Let us press on to acknowledge him: push into it. Feel distracted and then try again anyway. Fail at it, know you’ve been failing at it for years – and press on.

As surely as the sun rises, he will appear: As surely as the sun rises.

It's a promise. Our God is the God who is Father to the prodigal son. Our God is a God who runs to meet us. As surely as the sun rises.

When we make a decision - in spite of a thousand failed decisions before to press on, to acknowledge God - he runs to meet us.

So set yourself in the right direction, taking the simplest steps you need to - praying the Lord's Prayer, reading a verse a day - and press on.

Do something that resembles walking towards God, and He’ll come running. Whether you feel like you’re getting it right or not – with the right heart, the right frustration; you can't get it wrong. Because “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.”

This is the third blog in our Start Strong Series. Catch the whole series on the blog, and keep up to date on instagram.  

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