How Should I Think About My Failures?

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:05.000 | Emanuel, a listener in London, writes in, "Hello, Pastor John.

00:00:08.800 | How should Christians handle failure?

00:00:10.760 | For example, failure at school or at work, not necessarily failures that are sinful,

00:00:15.880 | per se.

00:00:16.880 | How does the Bible address this issue, or does it?"

00:00:21.200 | It does.

00:00:22.200 | And it does in at least a couple ways.

00:00:25.520 | I'm sure more, but two that I thought of.

00:00:29.920 | And I'm thinking of positive, hopeful ways that it addresses Emanuel's issue.

00:00:37.000 | The first thing the Bible wants to say is that all of us have failed.

00:00:42.240 | None is without failure.

00:00:43.800 | If you think you haven't failed, two things are true of you.

00:00:47.880 | One is you're blind to your failures, and the other is you probably haven't taken enough

00:00:53.080 | risks to try enough hard things so that you'd be aware of your failures.

00:00:59.160 | So the first thing the Bible says about that, about those failures, is that there isn't

00:01:06.600 | any sinless failure.

00:01:09.160 | I know Emanuel asked about, "What about failures that don't involve sin?"

00:01:12.320 | So the first thing, I'm going to go there.

00:01:14.080 | I know what he's talking about.

00:01:15.800 | But the first thing I want to say is that there aren't any.

00:01:20.200 | Now that's devastating news and wonderful news.

00:01:25.600 | Because the gospel exists for all failures.

00:01:31.880 | This is freeing because we don't have to figure out whether we have sinned or not in a failure.

00:01:43.020 | We can just assume we did.

00:01:45.600 | I mean, isn't it wonderful that David prayed in Psalm 19, "Father or God, declare me innocent

00:01:53.980 | from hidden faults."

00:01:56.560 | In other words, David knew that he could confess his sins all day long, and at the end of the

00:02:03.560 | day there would be some he didn't know about.

00:02:06.720 | And I want to say that the Bible calls us to love God with all of our heart, and none

00:02:11.600 | of us has ever done that perfectly, and therefore every failure we've ever had of the simplest

00:02:16.880 | and most innocent kind has sin mixed in with it.

00:02:20.800 | And the good news of the Bible is that is not destructive to us.

00:02:25.680 | We have the gospel.

00:02:26.680 | We have the forgiveness of sins through the blood of Jesus.

00:02:31.480 | That's the first thing.

00:02:32.480 | The second thing is that, yes, there is a kind of innocent failure.

00:02:41.000 | Things that are owing to our natural incapacities and opposition from outside, and the Bible

00:02:50.800 | has wonderful news about this.

00:02:53.800 | I find great encouragement in this.

00:02:56.420 | The way the Bible addresses this, at least the way that I've chosen to address it, is

00:03:02.000 | from 2 Corinthians 12, 7 to 10, where Paul talks about his weaknesses.

00:03:07.520 | And I think we could all agree that if you fail at something, it's either owing to your

00:03:13.280 | own weakness, and I'm not thinking about sin here now, it's either owing to your own weakness

00:03:19.160 | or to other people's opposition.

00:03:22.400 | And both of those are addressed here.

00:03:25.040 | So here's what he says.

00:03:26.120 | This is 2 Corinthians 12, 7.

00:03:29.920 | To keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations,

00:03:36.040 | a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being

00:03:42.560 | too conceited.

00:03:43.560 | Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take this away, and that it should leave me.

00:03:49.400 | But he said, "My grace is sufficient for you.

00:03:52.280 | My power is made perfect in weakness.

00:03:54.560 | Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ

00:04:02.680 | may rest upon me."

00:04:03.720 | This thorn incapacitated him in some way that frustrated him.

00:04:08.680 | He wanted to do things, and he couldn't do them, and he was made weak.

00:04:13.120 | Verse 10, "For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses."

00:04:19.560 | And then he adds, "insults, hardships."

00:04:21.920 | So he knows there's certain things that he's failed at or cannot do, not just because he's

00:04:26.900 | got an internal thorn weakness, but there are external hardships and insults and persecutions

00:04:32.600 | and calamities.

00:04:34.240 | And then he says, summing it all up with the word "weak," "When I'm weak, then am I strong."

00:04:39.920 | So just here's a few things to notice.

00:04:42.540 | Even though Satan may be involved, he's not in control here.

00:04:46.800 | This thorn is to keep Paul from being conceited.

00:04:50.120 | That is not Satan's goal.

00:04:51.640 | That's God's goal.

00:04:52.640 | We know God's in control here using this thorn.

00:04:56.000 | The second thing to notice is that Christ cares—what he cares about in life is not

00:05:03.600 | mainly our achievements for Christ, but our dependence on Christ.

00:05:10.960 | My grace is sufficient for you.

00:05:14.220 | My power is made perfect in weakness.

00:05:18.840 | Christ's aim here is not that we overcome all our weaknesses and never fail.

00:05:24.560 | His aim is that we trust him for his grace in our weaknesses, which implies in our inability

00:05:32.420 | to do what we'd love to do.

00:05:34.120 | We might wish we could make an A, or we might wish we could earn more money, or we might

00:05:38.960 | wish we could run faster, or that we were more pretty or taller or something, but he

00:05:45.080 | just wants us to not be devastated by our weaknesses, but rather display the peace-giving

00:05:53.480 | sufficiency of Christ.

00:05:56.600 | And then notice, he wants us to be content with our limitations.

00:06:02.880 | For the sake of Christ, then, Paul says, "I am content with weaknesses."

00:06:08.520 | And I'd like to go further and say that we can pray—and I've done this, and I think

00:06:16.600 | I might have said this on a previous podcast, I don't know, but it's worth saying again—we

00:06:21.520 | can pray that our failures not only leave us content in Christ, but that Christ uses

00:06:31.120 | them to wonderfully advance his cause and produce successes that we couldn't have had

00:06:41.560 | if we had been more successful by overcoming our weaknesses.

00:06:46.880 | Here's the example I used.

00:06:48.880 | I read slowly, and my memory is not that great.

00:06:53.640 | So I left academia.

00:06:55.120 | I quit teaching college, in part, because I knew I could never be a great scholar.

00:07:00.680 | I read too slow, I remember too little.

00:07:04.400 | And I often was sad about that and self-pitying about that, which was sin, and I should have

00:07:10.680 | listened to this text quicker.

00:07:12.980 | But now what I realize is, okay, I fail at reading fast, I fail at remembering a lot,

00:07:22.000 | so what should I do?

00:07:23.200 | I should ask God, "Maximize who I am in this weakness for your glory."

00:07:30.280 | And so I discovered, well, I could take a small part of the Bible, and I could analyze

00:07:36.400 | it enough so that I dug out of it riches that I could then proclaim, and people have gotten

00:07:44.400 | help from my limited ability, because I've made myself look at small chunks of literature

00:07:53.560 | instead of big chunks of literature, like whole books that I haven't had time to read.

00:07:58.600 | So my point is, when it comes to failure, the Bible has two words.

00:08:04.000 | Number one, the gospel covers the sins mixed in with all our failures.

00:08:09.560 | And number two, if we trust Him, His sovereign grace will be sufficient, and He'll even turn

00:08:17.440 | the failures into gospel successes.

00:08:21.080 | That's a great way to end.

00:08:23.320 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:08:24.520 | And I usually try to close each podcast with a recommended episode that we've recorded

00:08:27.740 | in the past that relates to the topic at hand.

00:08:30.400 | And today, this discussion about failures reminds me of a podcast we recorded by the

00:08:33.840 | title "Is Discouragement a Sin?"

00:08:36.640 | That was episode number 137, and you can find it in the archives.

00:08:40.200 | So how do I know if I love God, or do I just love loving God?

00:08:44.440 | There's a subtle but profound difference between those two, and Evan writes in with an important

00:08:48.320 | follow-up question from a podcast discussion we started earlier.

00:08:52.080 | We'll be back with that tomorrow.

00:08:54.120 | Until then, I'm your host Tony Reinke.

00:08:55.360 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:08:57.480 | [END]

00:08:57.980 | 1. Is Discouragement a Sin?

00:08:58.980 | 2. Is Discouragement a Sin?

00:08:59.980 | 3. Is Discouragement a Sin?

00:09:00.980 | 4. Is Discouragement a Sin?

00:09:01.980 | 5. Is Discouragement a Sin?

00:09:02.980 | 6. Is Discouragement a Sin?

00:09:03.980 | 7. Is Discouragement a Sin?

00:09:04.980 | 8. Is Discouragement a Sin?

00:09:05.980 | 9. Is Discouragement a Sin?

How Should I Think About My Failures?

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