“A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out.” —Isaiah 42:3
God doesn’t ask for perfection, only that you keep rising, trusting His mercy more than your own strength. —D.
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When you stumble—speak out of turn, lose your patience, get swept into some needless quarrel—don’t let it consume you. The world pulls at us constantly. One careless moment, one passing storm cloud of fear, and we find ourselves saying or doing what we swore we wouldn’t. But don’t fall into despair. Don’t hand yourself over to the voice that says you’ll never get it right, that you’re too weak, too flawed to serve God well. Those thoughts are not from the Spirit. They come like smoke, clouding the heart, tying the soul up in knots of guilt and fear. And each time you listen, you tighten the chain, shutting yourself off from the gentleness Jesus still shows you.
Why carry that burden? Why weigh yourself down with shame when Christ already bore your weakness on the Cross? Self-condemnation only deepens the wound. You begin to believe your failures define you, that your heart is too broken to be of any use. But that’s not the truth. That’s not the way. The Christian life was never about polish and perfection. It’s about breath and grit and grace. It’s about falling, yes, but more than that, it’s about getting up again. Not by your own strength, but by the God who lifts. Your soul isn’t a machine, meant to run without flaw. It’s a wild, living garden. It grows sideways. It gets messy. It needs tending. And yet, even in its wildness, even in the midst of all that seems broken, God works.
He is not looking for spotless saints. He’s looking for hearts that turn, again and again, toward Him. What matters is not that you never fall. It’s that you trust Him to meet you each time you do. So rest in Jesus Christ, your steady hope in every trouble. He is not ashamed of your weakness. He does not recoil from your stumbles. He draws nearer. He lifts. He heals. Let His mercy move through the cracks. Let it soak into the places where you feel most ashamed. You are not beyond repair. You are not cast aside. You are, even now, being remade by mercy.