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A friend once said to me, “I feel like a total failure,” I was taken aback, because she is anything but a total failure. But I know the feeling, don’t you? Maybe that’s the way you feel. Perhaps your plans and dreams have never materialized or something you attempted didn’t work. Or maybe you’ve failed in your moral behavior or in your lifestyle and habits. How in the world can we face our failures without being devastated?
I truly do speak from my heart as I approach this topic of failure. If experience qualifies me as an expert, then I feel fairly competent to talk about failure, because I’ve had my share. There are some gigantic failures in my past, things for all the world to see, and there are others which are smaller, known only to God and me.
I haven’t outgrown failure; none of us do. But I know this beyond any doubt: the God I serve is great enough to give me the strength and the ability to face my failures and to recover from them. In fact, in his incredible efficiency, he uses my failures to teach me and to help me encourage others.
Maybe you are even now struggling with failure. You feel totally defeated and discouraged because you’ve failed in some way. Maybe you keep failing in the same way over and over, and you’re ashamed and guilt-ridden as a result. I want to talk to you from my heart today, as one who is in that same boat with you, but who is learning the good news that failures don’t have to be fatal.
Let me first share with you the blessings of failure. I know, you didn’t think there were any blessings in failure, but believe me, there are. Here’s what I mean. One of the most difficult things for any of us human beings to admit is that we are sinful. None of us truly want to believe that deep within us is this sin nature which tries to control us; none of us like to think that we are not capable in ourselves of doing good or being good.
That’s because we’re born proud. Pride is at the root of all our wrong thinking and actions. We have to come to the understanding that within us there is no good thing and all the things which we call good look like filthy rags to God. On our own we’re just one huge mess! So, this inborn pride can keep us from knowing God, from the fullness of who we are in Christ.
Therefore, failure is a blessing, for it teaches us just exactly who we are in our natural, unredeemed condition. C. S. Lewis states it so well in his book Mere Christianity: Speaking of failure he says: “It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven.”
So, those failures which look like total disasters to you can indeed be an instrument of blessing to teach you this essential truth about yourself; to “cure your illusions about yourself,” as Lewis puts it. I know they’re painful; I know it is an unpleasant lesson to learn. But, dear friends, until we know the depth of our fallen state and how truly helpless and hopeless we are on our own, we can never know God as we need to.
I want to look again at a story of failure in Scripture and see how our Lord dealt with it. You’ll find it recorded in Luke 22, where we see Peter as a total failure. Did you ever think about the fact that Jesus knew beforehand precisely how badly Peter would fail him? He tells Peter exactly what Peter’s going to do and when: “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.” Jesus knew, and yet, he didn’t discard Peter because of his miserable failure.
In Luke 22:31 Jesus said, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.” It’s interesting that Jesus called Peter “Simon,” his old name, the one he had before he met Jesus. This is the proud “I-can-do-anything-I-want-to” Simon, and Jesus made that clear by using his former name.
Yet, knowing the great failure Peter was to become in just a few short hours, Jesus did not discard him. People sometimes discard us for failures; Jesus doesn’t. People can refuse to give you second-chances; Jesus doesn’t. People look at failure as the end of the road; Jesus sees it as a place of new beginning.
Notice that Jesus told Peter he had already prayed for him, that “when you have turned back,” he would strengthen his brothers. Wow, isn’t that great! Jesus believed that even though Peter was going to fail miserably, he could have a comeback. And as a result of failing and coming back, Peter would be able to strengthen his brothers.
Do you see what I mean about failure? God is able to use it for good in our lives. He’s not standing around waiting for you to make a mistake so he can have an excuse to punish you. That’s not the nature of God, as we see displayed here in Jesus Christ. Jesus, even before Peter failed, had chosen to take him back and turn him into an encourager of others.
Also, notice that Jesus indicates Satan had something to do with this failure on Peter’s part. Now, I have to admit that the theology of this situation is way beyond my understanding. I can’t explain how Satan asks permission, but I see it here in Peter’s case and of course the same type of situation happened with Job. Suffice it to say, for my understanding at least, that Satan uses the tactic of failure to try to ruin us. I believe it is one of his most effective tools.
First, being the liar that he is, he tempts us to sin, often telling us it’s no big deal, just as he did with Eve in the Garden. Then once we have failed, he dumps guilt on us and tries to tell us that this failure is fatal and we can never recover. Maybe that’s the stage you’re in now concerning a failure of your own. Do you feel totally guilt-ridden, as though you’ve had a fatal failure? Please understand this marvelous truth: Jesus is in the business of restoration and recovery. He will not discard you, just as he did not discard Peter, and Peter’s failure was pretty terrible.
You see, Satan meant to use failure to destroy Peter, but God used it to refine him. Though it wasn’t right for Peter to fail Jesus as he did, nonetheless that failure was used by God to help Peter become the mighty apostle we read about in Acts.
Now, let me hasten to emphasize that I am not negating the awfulness of sin, nor am I in any way suggesting that we don’t need to take sin seriously. As Charles Stanley puts it: “We are not minimizing the sin of these actions—we are maximizing the grace of God.”
I know from experience that while Jesus is ready to forgive and restore, often people are not. That’s very difficult for us to deal with. But I want to remind you of another failure in Scripture. You remember that Paul and Barnabas were traveling partners, going everywhere to spread the gospel. But at one point, as we read in Acts 15, Paul and Barnabas had a disagreement and as a result, they split up, and Paul traveled with Silas while Barnabas traveled with Mark.
The reason for the disagreement was that Mark had failed at one point earlier when he had deserted Paul and Barnabas and not continued with them in the work. That’s a pretty serious failure, no doubt, and remembering that, Paul did not think it was wise to take Mark with them because he might fail them again. Barnabas, on the other hand, was insistent on giving Mark a second chance, and the disagreement was so sharp that they parted company.
Later we read that Paul asked for Mark to be brought to him, for he had become profitable to Paul in the ministry. Mark failed, yes, but it was not a fatal failure. He was restored and eventually Paul recognized his usefulness. I have a strong feeling that Paul also recognized that Barnabas was right to give Mark a second chance. But Paul, the great and mighty man of God, had not been willing to do so at first.
Dear friends, people often will discard us because of failure, even well-meaning people and spiritual people. But please understand that just because someone may declare a person to have fatally failed doesn’t mean Jesus has.
What must become so obvious to all of us is that no one qualifies; we’ve all failed miserably in one way or another. The uniqueness of Jesus Christ is that in spite of our terrible failures, he can salvage us just like he did Peter.
There are so many people who feel that their lives are totally and fatally ruined because of some failure in their past; or who feel devastated when they come face to face with their own failures. I remember once when I failed terribly in front of some of my peers in a business meeting. I lost my “cool,” as we say, and said things that were not kind. And one of those peers was a man who I had been encouraging in the Lord and trying to help in his walk with God.
As I realized the terrible failure I had been, especially in front of this one man, I wanted to run away and never go back and have to face him again. You know that feeling, don’t you? But the Spirit of God very definitely led me not only to go back and face the music, but to share my feelings of failure with my friend, in order to give him an object lesson on how God deals with us when we fail. So, the next day I sat down and apologized to him and told him how sorry I was that I had failed to be Christ-like in my actions. But I also shared that I had been forgiven by God and that the failure was not fatal in God’s sight.
Then I learned that one of his greatest struggles was how to deal with his own failures, and from that experience he began to understand that his own failures were not fatal.
And so, my message is one of great hope today. If Peter could make a comeback after his terrible, visible, public failure when he denied he even knew Jesus, surely the God of Peter is willing to do the same for you and me. And because he is the all-powerful God, he is able to take our failures and turn them into instruments of blessing. Believe me, that is true in my life.
I hope you are encouraged to know that your failures are not fatal with God. They are not the end of the road; you are not put on a shelf forever. Be encouraged by that truth.