“Change is the only constant.” True as an axiom, but that doesn’t mean we like it or want it to mess with us.

There are countless reasons not to allow change in areas we must, but fear of failure is at the top of the list. We are petrified the whole machine that is our life—stability, personality, comfort, etc.—will implode and we’ll be discouraged beyond repair. Why? Because we couldn’t make the change work, or, worse, the change just outright failed. For example, you decided to stop drinking or over-eating or being a lazy spouse, but two-weeks later you were back at it again. And your fall made the two-week rise a more devastating collapse—if I just hadn’t started to climb, I’d never have crashed so hard.

And yet, what if we took the fear of failure out of the equation? What if failure was just part of the success? What if two-steps forward just meant one-step back for a while? And then you moved those two-steps again.

Seems to me that sums up the reality of a Christ-follower, which is why we need so much grace and so much guidance from God’s Spirit. The moment we stop failing is the moment we don’t need a Savior. Note: That’s the deal with Jesus Christ; we need him to save us.

The Apostle Paul writes: “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more…” (Romans 5:20). In other words, our failure or sin causes us to realize the necessity for a greater change agent. Settle down. This mantra does not invite failure and sin to attract grace. On the contrary, Paul completes the thought in chapter 6, “…What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?”

What then? Failure and grace just creates a tension we all have to live and thrive in. It’s the tension of moving forward with Christ, but also failing backwards with him, which brings lasting change.

Get busy failing. Get busy changing. And stop being afraid.