I mentioned on Sunday that my church is participating in a Week of Prayer and Fasting for the next few days (It's not really a week, it's Sun-Wed, but you get the idea). I also mentioned that, in the past, I've approached this as an opportunity to prove to God how much I loved him by giving up food for a few days.
It never worked. The prayer time was good, but I've always felt like I missed out on something very cool.
I think that something cool was failing.
See, we are taught early on that the worst thing that we can do is fail. We are taught to be strong, self-reliant, and successful at any cost. Even if we have to "fake it" we have to be strong. But that's not what I read today.
...God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world...This is subtle and may not make any sense if you're not a crazy perfectionist like me:
1 Cor 1:27-28
I would rather give up on something than try and fail.
So I'm trying something new and I'm letting myself screw up; I'm letting myself fail. In fact, I failed tonight just to demonstrate my new commitment to failure.
In all honesty, I'm very disappointed with myself (thus the attempt at humor). Still, I'm not quitting; I'm going to try again tomorrow.
I you would like to jump on board with the week of prayer and fasting, you can visit www.prayandfast.org and watch live webcasts Tuesday and Wednesday night at 7 PST. If you're in the Grant County area, stop by Ephrata Foursquare Church and pray with us in person.
And even if you're not participating, I'd love to hear what you're learning about being weak. I'd love to hear your crazy stories of perfectionism and fear of failure and share some more of mine.
You can leave a comment below or find me on Facebook or Twitter (@sarah_e_brewer, I'm tweeting with the tags #prayandfast and #learningtobeweak.).
Let's learn to be weak together.
--Sarah Elizabeth
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