How God Can Use Our Failures, Part 1
“Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.”
James 1:2-4 (MSG)
As counter intuitive as this sounds, one of the greatest gifts God gives us is failure. If you haven’t failed at anything yet, you may question how failure could possibly be a gift from God. But for those who have experienced a failure or two in their lives, we’ve come to realize that failure is the gift that takes us to our destiny.
Consider this – most of the great Bible heroes experienced failure. Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. Noah got drunk. Abraham lied – more than once. Moses was a murderer with a hot temper. Rahab was a harlot. David committed adultery and had a man murdered. Peter denied Christ! Each of these and so many more great men and women of the Bible teach us how to fail forward. God wants to use the failures in our lives as much, if not more, than the successes. We need to view failure as a yield sign, not a stop sign. The truth is your failure is not final! You don’t have to be fixed in your failure or defined by it. You’re not a product of your past. If we’ll learn from our mistakes, we won’t have to live in them the rest of our lives. But how?
Failure can be a double-edged sword. Rather than failing forward, many have suffered failure as a final blow. Life stopped for them. For some the despair they felt took them to the grave. Others ceased living and settled for simply existing in drudgery, haunted by their regrets. If you let that happen, Satan wins. But Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil and to lift you and me from the quicksand of failure. For the next couple of days, I want to consider a few ways that God can use failure to lead us to our destiny.
First, realize that failure is never final. We live in a fallen world and we all fall. But the Psalmist writes, “The LORD holds up all who fall. He raises up all who are brought down.” Psalm 145:14 (NLV). In Proverbs 24:16 (GW) the Bible says, “A righteous person may fall seven times, but he gets up again….” If you consider failure as the end, you’ll never get up. But if you’ll let God write the last chapter, you’ll realize that failure is not the end of your story. This is the power of grace! In 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 (NIV) the Apostle Paul writes, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” Failure may have knocked you down, but it doesn’t have to knock you out! It’s time to get up. Let grace define you. God’s grace is greater than all our failures! Here’s a news flash: God is not surprised by my failure! Consider your failure as a gift of God that pushes you into His grace to find mercy. He wants to pick you up if you’ve fallen. He longs to hold you. He offers grace to begin again. Let His grace define you. There’s so much more to your story.
When you realize that failure is never final, you’re ready to learn the life-changing lessons from failures that will take you to your destiny! We’ll look at those tomorrow.
Another important part of your daily devotional is spending time with God in prayer. The Woodlands Church Prayer Board lists prayer requests submitted by our members and provides a way to send them some encouragement by using a button on the page to let them know that you prayed for them. Whether you use the Prayer Board, or pray from your heart, the goal is to build the habit of incorporating prayer into your quiet time.
Need prayer yourself? Let us know by submitting a prayer request on the Woodlands Church Prayer Board.