Whatever I do, I end up feeling like I am falling short of what God wants from me. Is that feeling ever going to lift?

“Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.”

David writes about God as a father who knows exactly what his children are made of. The word translated frame carries the sense of pottery, something formed and breakable. This is not a psalm about God quietly lowering his standards. It is about him knowing your material from the beginning. He never held inflated expectations that you are now in the process of disappointing.

“And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

Paul had asked three times for a persistent problem to be taken away and been told no. What he received instead was a sentence about strength showing up in weakness. He was writing to a church impressed by polished, powerful leaders, and he deliberately puts his own inadequacy on display. Falling short, in his account, is the ordinary place where grace does its work rather than the disqualification you assume it is.