Failure

Failure is something we live with every day. Sometimes the fates conspire and we are driven into a screaming heap. A bit like the mental patient visited by his Chaplain.

"I see God in everything", he said,

"How wonderful, so do I", said the chaplain.

"Yes, but that's why I'm here", replied the patient.

It's a natural human desire to find ourselves on the winning side. None of us want to be failures. We all want to go with the strength. So, we try to align ourselves with the right team, the right company, the right friends, and even the right church. We like to go with the winners, those who are making it. We do it because we don't want to be failures ourselves, so we make sure that we succeed with the succeeders.

The older we are the more we are confronted by our failures. We try to hide them, even refuse to recognize them, but they just lurk in the background waiting to give us our regular cringe. We might have dropped out of school, dropped out of Uni., missed that right person to marry; all those dreams we had which never came to anything; wasted time and energy that never amounted to anything. We may be like Esau who chose a mess of pottage instead of God's will. We chickened out and chose the wide road; satisfaction before service. A life totally wasted, of no value, a failure? Maybe, but then maybe not.

Our God can turn anything around; He is the Sovereign God of grace. He can take a wasted life and give it purpose, give it direction. The purpose life is to know him, and if we are ready to seek after him, then he will direct us into the right path. He always has something for us to do no matter how often we may have bombed out. Know this also, there is nothing that has occurred in the past that cannot be used to God's glory. He can take our failures and instruct us through them. In his hands, our past lapses become the building blocks for a wonderful new life. Certainly for our life of service here, but also our life of service in the heavenly realms.

Such is the grace of God. He forgives us, he accepts us, he trusts us ..... always. Has our life been wasted in failure? In Him, yesterday, today and tomorrow is never wasted.

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