FAILURE IS NOT FINAL

Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. -- Deuteronomy 8:2-3

At the end of CST, everyone on Challenge staff agreed that one of the most difficult parts for us was choosing which candidates would not be offered officer positions for Challenge 2010. I find no joy in telling someone that they failed to achieve their goal. Perhaps that is because I know full well what it feels like to fail. I have failed many times at many things in my life. It is always painful – sometimes, very much so. The devil wants our failures to define us. He wants us to believe the lie that our failures are final. The truth of the matter is that failure is often the beginning of something awesome Christ is accomplishing in our lives. He frequently uses failure to mold us into the men of God and leaders of men that He wants us to be and as a means of bringing us into the fullness of life He intends for us.

Human beings have a tendency to give ourselves way too much credit for what happens to us. We also have a strong propensity to wrongly evaluate why things happen to us. This is especially true when it comes to failure. We tend to see failure as a curse. Yet, God regularly disguises blessings as curses. Consider the Israelites in Deuteronomy 8:2-18. Moses is addressing them right before they enter the Promised Land. He is instructing them to not to forget what they learned during their time in the wilderness, when God allowed them to fail repeatedly. In fact, their journey was an exercise in failure everyday for 40 years, because they were not ready for what He had in store for them. If they had been allowed to travel directly from Egypt to the Promised Land, instead of being forced to wander in the wilderness, the journey would’ve only taken 11 days. Talk about a complete failure! The Lord had much to teach them. Yet, verse 16 says that He used their time in the wilderness “so that in the end it would go well with them.” In other words, He was using failure to bless them. In that same way, God uses failure to bless us. This passage uses the lives and experiences of the Israelites as an example for us today to demonstrate several reasons why God uses failure to develop our character.

1. God uses failure to rid us of pride and teach us humility. On 18 different occasions, the Bible refers to the Israelite people as “stiff-necked.” Deuteronomy 9:7 even says they were rebellious against God every day they were in the wilderness. That is a lot of pride! Deuteronomy 8:2 shows the first reason God allowed His people to fail was to humble them. Humbleness is mentioned two more times throughout the passage. In the book of Proverbs, the need for humility is mentioned on three different occasions (11:2, 15:33, 18:12). Do you think God is trying to tell us something? In the words of Ron Dunn, a pastor I have learned much from, “You will never trust God until you have to. It is man’s nature to be independent and rely on our own means.” Young men, heed a warning I have had to learn the hard way: If you want to realize the purpose Christ has for you in this world, you must first purge yourself of pride and self-sufficiency. Otherwise, you may find yourself failing again and again until you do.

2. God uses failure to show us the deceptiveness, sinfulness and weakness of our heart. Jeremiah 17:9-10 says “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.” God knew that the Israelites’ faith was not genuine and that it needed refined before they could enter the Promised Land. He wants us to understand the same thing about ourselves. To become full men of God we need to be refined by Him. That is the only way He can eliminate sin from our lives and make us dependent upon Him (Jeremiah 17:9, Zechariah 13:9). Unfortunately, refinement is a painful process. The Bible illustrates this by consistently using the phrase “refine them like silver.” Did you know that silver ore must be heated to 1,200 degrees Celsius in order to be refined into pure silver? That is a lot of heat! Failure is part of the refinement process. So expect to endure extreme discomfort as you become men of God. Every other man God chose to use mightily did. We, too, must learn to welcome failure as part of the refinement process and know that it is a “trial by fire” Christ uses to bring us into full godly manhood.

3. God uses failure to teach us that He alone is the source of our strength and life. Most everyone familiar with the Bible knows about the manna God provided the Israelites each day they were in the wilderness. This bread of heaven was a perfect food, meeting all of their nutritional needs. However, there is something else here that many of us fail to see. Take another look at Deuteronomy 8:3. God makes a point of saying that he caused them to hunger BEFORE he mentions feeding them. In other words, the God who feeds us is the same God who makes us hungry. Why would He do that? Because Christ wants us to realize we cannot do ANYTHING without Him! He is a jealous God and wants us to know beyond a shadow of doubt that He alone is the source of our strength and that we have a great need for Him. In Psalm 142, David says he is DESPERATE for God. That is a powerful word! Do you want God’s provision that much? Is your need for Him so great that you are desperate? For most of us, the answer is “no.” Therefore, God allows us to fail. He will let us continue in failure until we want Him so badly that we are willing to do WHATEVER He says and trust Him in ANY situation…until we cry out in desperation, “LORD PLEASE FEED ME!” And then He shows up. Jeremiah 29:13 says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” If God does not let us suffer failure we will never learn to fight hard enough or endure hardship long enough to truly seek Him with our whole heart.

4. God uses failure to enable us to empathize with others when they are in the midst of failure. I believe this is especially true if we are to be used as leaders , responsible for others under our care. At CST, I defined a godly leader as, “Someone who puts others ahead of himself, their interests ahead of his own and never acts selfishly. One who has the attitude of a servant and leads by example.” This is very easy to say… and very tough to live out. Therefore, God allows us to fail miserably in order to understand this concept intimately. He did this in one way or another with all of the great leaders in the Bible – David, Peter, Paul -- even Jesus (Isaiah 53). He spells it out again in 2 Corinthians 1:3-5, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.” In the same way that training is about the people rather than the mission, so is leadership about knowing your men and looking out for their welfare. We cannot adequately understand another’s welfare until we ourselves have endured the pain of failure.

In conclusion, we need to understand that we will likely fail many times over in this life. This is not only normal, but also healthy. Failure is a tool God has used throughout the ages to mold men into His image. Just like the Israelites, every key leadership figure in the Bible had a wilderness experience. You will, too, if you desire to be used by God. Failure not only refines us, it helps us examine our lives. This “self-assessment” is essential to our character development because an unexamined life leads to great sin, which is inevitably followed by unnecessary hardship, pain and regret. Lastly, remember that failure is not final. It is merely a part of our transition into full godly manhood and servant leadership as Christ continues to accomplish His purpose in our lives (Philippians 1:6, Romans 8:28).

Hold the line ye future men of God!

Mike McFarland
2010 Guest Director