When You Blow It

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” — 1 John 1:9 (KJV)

Brother Lawrence was not perfect, and he never pretended to be. What is unusual is how he handled his failures.

Many of us do one of two things when we mess up. Either we make excuses, or we spiral: replaying it, feeling terrible, avoiding God until we feel we have done enough penance. Lawrence did neither. When he failed, Beaufort says, “he only confessed his fault, saying to God, I shall never do otherwise, if You leave me to myself; it is You who must hinder my falling, and mend what is amiss.” And “after this, he gave himself no further uneasiness about it.”

That is not taking sin lightly. It is taking God’s grace seriously. Lawrence was “very sensible of his faults, but not discouraged by them.” He admitted them honestly to God, did not argue or make excuses, and then went straight back to loving and worshipping him. He said we ought, “without anxiety, to expect the pardon of our sins from the Blood of Jesus Christ.”

He even had a habit of placing his sins between himself and God, as if to say: I don’t deserve your kindness. And he noticed that God kept on being kind anyway. He said he did not deserve God’s favours, “but that God still continued to bestow them in abundance.”

What about the times he forgot God for a long stretch? He didn’t panic about those either. He would admit his weakness to God and come back to him “with so much the greater trust in Him, as he had found himself wretched through forgetting Him.” Every failure became a reason to lean on God harder, not to hide.

That is how the habit grew. Not by never falling, but by getting back up, again and again. He said:

“By rising after my falls, and by frequently renewed acts of faith and love, I am come to a state wherein it would be as difficult for me not to think of God as it was at first to accustom myself to it.”

So when you blow it, and you will, try the Lawrence way. Own it. Don’t excuse it. Tell God plainly: without you I will keep doing this. Receive his forgiveness through Jesus. Then get up and keep walking with him. The goal is not a perfect record. It is a quick return.

One thing to do this week: the next time you do something wrong this week, don’t wait until tonight or Sunday. Straight away, tell God what you did, ask him to forgive you and help you, and then carry on with him. If you hurt someone, put it right with them too.