God loves to turn crucifixions into resurrections. And things that you think are absolutely hopeless, that no way could possibly ever work out, God loves to turn that around. How does God take a minus and turn it into a plus? How does He take the negative things in our lives that are bad or unpleasant and use them for good? The way God turns a minus into a plus is He makes a cross out of it.
I've been thinking about how God loves to turn crucifixions into resurrections, I thought it would be good to talk about failure and how God uses failure in our lives to make us more effective as individuals. We learn far more from failure than we do from success. Personally, I really haven’t learned a whole lot from success, but I’ve learned a lot from failure. Those who know me have heard me say many times, that I’ve tried more things in church that didn’t work than that did. I possibly could write a best-selling book entitled – 500 Ways How To Not Grow a Church. If you don’t want to call it failure just call it getting an education. This being my approach to failure it makes me one educated preacher. Seriously, we really do (or should) learn from our failures.
God’s love and care for us don’t exempt us from getting an education through failure. We must face the fact that we will fail and make mistakes in our lifetime. God does that for many different reasons. He has allowed for failure. In fact, He included it in the equation for life and living.
Many times you may feel like Job in Job 17:11 where he says “My days are past, my plans are shattered and so are the desires of my heart.” Have you ever felt like that? Life isn’t a chain of unbroken victories. We all have failures. We all have mistakes and downtimes. There’s a predictable pattern that you find in your life and that is that at times you will have a defeat and then disappointment, then discouragement, then depression (“What’s the use?” You become apathetic.) Then comes despair (“Why even go on serving or trying?”). You must learn how to deal with failure without letting it devastate you.
Maybe you’ve recently felt like all your endeavors have brought you nothing but failure. It’s time to realize that failure can bring us to a place of triumph and victory.
Remember it looked pretty bleak and hopeless on the night before resurrection morning. Defeat can quickly turn into victory and gloom can quickly be replaced with joy. Have you settled for defeat and failure? Why? We serve a risen and victorious Savior. Because He lives we live also. Because He is victorious we too are victorious. It is all about the right perspective. How is yours?