Failing Towards Grace

As a mentor for many new hunters and a professional who creates spaces for learning to occur, one interesting observation I have experienced numerous times is how gracious new outdoorsmen and women can be towards themselves. Let me elaborate for a moment. A major component of my career is spent in the field with kids, college students, and even adults who are wanting to become hunters. My role is to work with volunteers, landowners, and other industry folks to help create opportunities for these new hunters to gain hands-on experience. While I do spend a lot of my time teaching, my focus is more often logistics. I ensure that the hosting landowners are informed of the event structure, volunteers are equipped with what they need to help lead, and most importantly I help our program participants plan and prepare for their first hunt. Essentially, I am a middle-man. I help connect those who want to learn with those who are ready to teach. This puts me in a wonderful position to watch the life cycle of a hunter play out in real time from multiple perspectives. New outdoorsmen learning from those who have more hunting experience than I have life experience. What a blessing it is that I am in this position.

It is in these moments that I experience the joy that comes with one's first hunt and sometimes first harvest. I listened to the stories that they made while in the field with a mentor. I lean into the concerns they have for future hunting experiences. Often as a group, we celebrate each other's highs and comfort each other in the lows. Again though, the lows don’t seem to stick around for very long and I am fascinated by that. When I was young it was commonplace to hear family and friends joke around with one another when someone missed a shot, spooked a deer, or made some “rookie” mistake. It was never intended to harm. It was almost always part of the camaraderie that comes along in hunting. Everyone would have a laugh and move on, but it always hung around longer if you were the one who made the mistake. I have missed too many shots to count. I have been bested by mature bucks and never even been presented with a shot. I have made my share of mistakes and they all stuck with me for quite a while. The days following those bigger mistakes would be filled with “what if” thoughts and cause me to be less focused for the next outing. Maybe it was lack of confidence in myself or maybe it was the desire within me to be and do better. I can be legalistic in that way at times.

Not so with these new hunters I have seen. Mistakes still sting, but for so many cases I have seen a resiliency that can’t be matched. They show themselves so much grace. I have witnessed kids miss multiple shots that most hunters would say are “easy”. They show up to camp not down and reluctant to tell the story, but exactly the opposite. “I had three shots on a turkey and I missed every time, but I am ready to go hunting again!” That’s the most recent example of what failing towards grace looks like to me. Where I would expect that young hunter to be embarrassed, closed off, and unwilling to try again, they were more than ready to head back to the woods. Wow, I wished I were more like that. I wish I applied that to my own hunting experiences and even my faith.

In battling sin and the killing of evil desires, what would it look like if I showed myself as much grace as those kids who let their mistakes fall right off their backs? Why can’t I seem to be patient with myself as I learn to walk with Christ? All too often I fall into depressive thinking and legalism that strangles my joy. The thing about legalism and withholding grace from ourselves that so many of us don’t realize is that it makes this life about us. We become so focused on our actions that we don’t see the purpose in what we do. We don’t see Christ in those moments. Legalism leads to selfishness and self-loathing because it turns our attention from who we truly are in Christ and makes us painfully aware of what we used to be. The lies of legalism are dangerous. It points out our failures and forces us to stare at the ugliness. That is not the faith we were called to. That is not our God calling out our sins throughout the day. God did not intend for his church to be a place of self-loathing legalists. His church and his people are called to be Christ exalting, the most joyful people on the planet! I hope we start to see more clearly the magnitude of what Jesus did for us on the cross. Grace won’t mean much until we better understand it.

In my opinion, the reason that new hunters seem to be more gracious towards themselves is because they don’t have the pressure of failure looming over their heads. Many times they don’t even know if this is a hobby or skill that they will continue to pursue. So when they fail they don’t always focus on the “what could have been”. All they see is the “what might be”. What might happen if I try this again. I might not miss my shot next time. I might learn something new if I just keep trying. New hunters are very hopeful in a way that gives me a lot of encouragement and changed perspective.

I pray that our faith will start to look more like this. Let us not dwell on our sins and failures, rather let us dwell on what we have become in Christ and even more might be when he returns. Let us think about the pure spiritual fruit we might bear over time through years of following and hoping in the Spirit. God has said of those who love Him, “I will remember your sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12). He has cast our sins as far as the East is from the West (Psalm 103:12). When God sees you Christian, he does not see what you were. He sees who you are in Christ and what you are becoming. He sees the new creation and how brightly you shine for his kingdom. Lord, I pray we will see ourselves as you see us. Forgiven. Accepted. Yours. We are not our sins. We are not our mistakes. We belong to you, purchased by the blood of your son Jesus. So, while we are still in the flesh and temptations and sins remain for a little while longer, teach us to not tear down ourselves or one another, but to strengthen each other in genuine love. We will fail more in this life, but let us not fail into legalism or self-loathing. Instead, teach us to fail towards your grace where there is forgiveness, hope, and pleasant reminders of who we are in Christ. To you be glory in our righteousness and all the more in our repentance. You have taken what was dead and made it alive. We are yours forever.

Amen.