The Necessity of Failure |
| Posted by Mark (mark) on Nov 24 2008 |
We live in a world of winners and losers, strong and weak. Everything teaches us to find our niche, our strength, that we might excel in that area and surmount the hill of excellence. All around us the seemingly eternal struggle to be the best is omnipresent. Our identity becomes so intertwined with these judgments of weak and strong, that we come to largely measure life in terms of success or failure. We enjoy success and detest failure. Men and women willingly sacrifice their hearts on the altar of compromise each day, just to taste the sweet nectar of triumph. We are obsessed with it as a culture. And the more I think on it, the more I realize how it has damaged my life, and skewed my relationship with God.
You see, the more I have tried to live this Kingdom thing, and the more Christ has rooted Himself in my heart, and I in His, the more I have found failure to be a frequent companion. It is not my only companion, but it is there along with my ever present weakness, which I never really understood—or accepted. There have been days when it was obvious to me, the harder I tried to make something happen—anything for that matter—the more likely it was to blow-up in my face.
This predicament was a severe affront to me at first. I was thoroughly couched in the spiritual terms of victory bandied about amongst the charismatic circles: overcomer, destiny, prosperity, warrior, dominion...and so many more. Though servanthood was thrown about too, I had no visceral understanding of it; I’m not sure anyone in those circles did—not in leadership anyway. I find it revealing to look back on the oft-used phrase servant leaders. It seems a cruel oxymoron to me now, as our definition of a leader was thoroughly defined by strength, and measured by success in all the wrong terms (size of congregation, money, power, anointing etc.).
Coming from this world of strength and hype, to a place of profound failure and weakness, was, to say the least, unsettling for my soul. In actuality, it was quite bitter at times, and ugliness I was not aware of often vomited forth from some unknown recess in my heart, provoked by the turmoil of it all. With the benefit of hindsight I have gradually come to see this process as necessary, and even good. I think I may even see it as a victory of sorts (how unmerciful irony is); a victory that He has worked in me, and in my weakness, which is an important distinction. I even find myself arriving at a once foreign conclusion: maturity requires failure.
This is not to say that I have arrived at maturity; but in assessing what little maturing has taken place in my heart, I can clearly see the vital role failure played in it. I think I could have wandered through the halls of victorious charismatic Christianity for a lifetime and never matured, for failure is simply not accepted there. Instead, we just rationalize it away somehow or another—The enemy made me do it, but I’ll overcome eventually. This is the year of abundance and victory (just like last year and the year before that). Don’t be discouraged, keep giving for eventually God will come through. Don’t give up, we can only please God with faith; there is always a reason for the delayed victory or promise, and something else to do before the ultimate breakthrough; but there is no peace, at least I never found any that lasted there.
And this, in my opinion, is the foremost value of failure: it teaches us to trust in who God is, rather than what we think He should do, or is going to do. It teaches us to trust who He is, rather than trusting for success. I think failure helps us let go of the delusion that we’re trusting God, when in truth we are only hoping God will do what we think He needs to do, in order for us to have success. I think it reveals how deeply we trust in our strength and ability to discern what is right, rather than in who He is. I think it strips away the facade of trust in God, which, when exposed to the light, is thinly veiled humanism wrapped in a blanket of insecurity. I’m not sure how many more ways I can say this, perhaps just this: religion is about success, and requires strength; the Kingdom is about communion, and requires failure to strip away our religious striving and self-righteousness, that we might truly know His love.
We can’t know His love in our strength, because our strength is founded upon independence. It is in weakness and surrender we find communion. I needed a big dose of failure to learn that lesson, and probably still need more. But I have found as I begin to trust who He is, the peace that surpasses all understanding begins to creep into my heart, because I know on some level that no matter what happens, He still loves me and is with me, and He can redeem all things. I think that is the true power of the kingdom, and I think it is the victory we all truly desire.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as though I seek out failure these days, but then, I don’t really seek success anymore either; I think both are false destinations. Instead, I’m learning to simply live my relationship with Jesus in the midst of life; I’m learning to press into Him in both failure and success. In my opinion, this permeation of the Kingdom worked deeply throughout our lives, is a far better destination than chasing the ghosts of success. And if failure helps us to see that, then how can we live without it?
Last changed: Nov 24 2008 at 7:55 PM
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