He Redeems Our Failures

No one likes to fail. Sure, we try to dress it up like Thomas Edison who said, “I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Or Albert Einstein, “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

Yes, failure is a part of life. But that doesn’t make it feel good when it happens.

The pressure to succeed and the expectation of perfection are real and can be overwhelming. The fear of failure can stand in the way of us doing–well, anything. I don’t know exactly what to say to my hurting friend, so I don’t say anything. I don’t know the perfect thing to do for that neighbor, so I don’t do anything. I don’t know that my new ministry or business idea will be successful, so I don’t try anything.

Think of a young child learning to take their first steps. When they fall down, do we chastise and scold them? “If that’s all the better you can walk, then you better sit there and stop trying!” Of course not. Instead, we encourage and cheer them because they are learning. God does the same for us. God works in mistakes, he uses them as building blocks. Look at David in the Old Testament, talk about a guy with failures! David’s failures include adultery, lying, murder, pride, passion, and temper. Each time that he fails, God picks him up, dusts him off, and gives him another chance to make it right. In spite of all his failures, God still calls David “a man after my own heart.”

In the New Testament, the apostle Paul also had his share of failures. As a leader in the Pharisees, Saul (as he was known then) made the laws, kept the laws, and enforced the laws. He made sure the Jewish people followed the letter of the law, and when they failed he was there to punish them, even to the point of death for following Jesus. By anyone’s standards, killing Christians is a pretty big failure.

Paul knew what it meant to fall short of what God wanted. He says in Romans, “I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.” (Rom. 7:19 NLT) God did not cast Paul aside because of his failures. Instead, he used him in powerful ways to encourage and teach others, to grow the community of faith in the early church. Paul writes to the people of Corinth, encouraging them that they too have failed, “Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Cor. 6:11 NLT)

We cannot overcome our failures in our own strength. That is the beauty and power of God’s sanctification in our lives. He comes in and restores our failures and makes them beautiful. Time and time again, we see God in the business of restoration – in the Old Testament, the New Testament, in the stories of the early church, in the stories of today, and in our stories. God does not have a three-strike rule when it comes to failure. He looks at our failures and says, “I can work with this. Give it to me.”

Bob Goff says, “I used to be afraid of failing at something that really mattered to me, but now I’m more afraid of succeeding at things that don’t matter.”

God is in the business of redeeming our failures. It’s what he does. He doesn’t ask that we do everything perfectly. He asks us to be willing to try. There are lots of quotes on not being afraid of failure, but the best promise comes from the prophet Isaiah:

“Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you.
I have called you by name; you are mine.
When you go through deep waters,
I will be with you.
When you go through rivers of difficulty,
you will not drown.
When you walk through the fire of oppression,
you will not be burned up;
the flames will not consume you.
For I am the Lord, your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.” (Isa. 43:1-3 NLT)

We can fail, confident that God is in the business of loving us and growing us and his kingdom through our failures. Go, and fail confidently!

Annie Carlson is rooted like a turnip to the plains of North Dakota where she raises great food, large numbers of farm animals, and three free-range kids with her husband. You can find her with either a book or knitting needles in her hands as she dreams up her next adventure.