Failure: A Channel for God’s Mercy and Power

At times, we all face failure in our personal, professional, and ministry lives. Failure can become a powerful ally when we allow God to transform something bad and unpleasant into something good and useful for our growth, and for God's glory. To help us understand failure, I will look at the life of Peter.

Failure is needed to reveal blind spots. When Jesus told his disciples that they would suffer many things from the religious Jewish leaders and be killed, Peter rebuked the Lord by saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You” (Matthew 16:22). In response, Jesus said, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me, for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.” Peter's failure revealed his temporal values and what he needed to know about himself and about the Lord. On another occasion, as Jesus faced His crucifixion, Peter boasted about his bravery when he said, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death” (Luke 22:33). We know the rest of the story about the denial of Peter and the crowing rooster. Failure taught Peter, and can teach us, that we are not as courageous as we thought, and we need to see life and circumstances from God's viewpoint, not ours.

Failure is valued by the Lord. He knows that apart from failure, we would have little need for His forgiveness, His communion, and His help. Psalm 103:10 tells us that God does not deal with us according to our sins or reward us according to our failures. In the same way Christ forgave Peter's repeated failures, he will forgive ours. It is encouraging that Jesus prayed for Peter's faith that his faith would not fail (Luke 22:32a), and as our sympathetic High Priest, who ever lives to make intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25), our Lord prays that our faith would not fail in the midst of temptation. Besides, Jesus had a purpose for Peter's failure, which was to strengthen the brothers once he turned again (Luke 22:32b). Likewise, the Lord will even use failure to ultimately accomplish his purposes in and through us. Failure teaches us humility, and confronts us with our limitations and need for God's grace and help.

Failure is used by the Lord. Peter is restored to the Lord in John 21, and in spite of his failures, Peter becomes the first preacher of Christ's new Church and 3000 souls were saved from his first sermon.

He also became the leader of the Church in Jerusalem and the author of 1st and 2nd Peter. John Mark deserted Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey. But later, he became a valuable asset to Barnabas, was sought by Paul and called “profitable” to him for the ministry (2 Timothy 4:11), and penned the Gospel of Mark. Failure is a great teacher. Don't let failure define you; let God use it to refine you so that we realize how much we desperately need God and to cause us to overflow with gratitude for all that God is and all that He does.

Failure is the channel to showcase God's mercy, grace, forgiveness, and power. Jonah fled to obey God's call on his life and found himself in the belly of a large fish. But God supernaturally rescued Jonah and recommissioned him. In spite of Jonah's dismal failure the first time around, God still wanted to use him, and the result was 120,000 people turned to the Lord. God used Jonah's failure to proclaim His great mercy in response to sin. Moses failed before he ever started his appointed ministry by killing a man and trying to cover it up. Rahab was a harlot. David was a murderer, an adulterer, and a schemer, yet God chose to bring His own Son through the lineage of Bathsheba and her son Solomon. Our failures have consequences, but our God is an expert at creating purpose out of chaos, beauty out of ashes, and accomplishing His will, even through our failures.

God's ultimate goal is to make us like Christ, and anything that moves us closer to that prize, including lessons we learn through failure, brings Him pleasure and glory!