Have You Been Singled Out By God For Failure?

26 Mar Have You Been Singled Out By God For Failure?

Have you ever felt as though you were singled out by God for failure?  That you cannot get your life to go the way you want it to, and when you do the things that should fix it, they don’t work? That instead of things getting better, they get worse?

I have been so puzzled from time to time that no matter what I do to try to correct the things that have gone wrong, it seems that – like playing a game of chess – there is someone on the other side of the board countering my moves, neutralizing my efforts.

Of course, there is someone on the other side of the board of life countering my moves… the apostle Paul said in Ephesians 6:12, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

But why doesn’t God help? It often feels as though He has left me alone to fend for myself.  That is not true, of course.  But it often feels like it. So, what can we tell ourselves when we begin to feel that way?

3 Things To Tell Ourselves When We Feel Alone

1. We are loved – personally, emotionally, deeply and profoundly – by God.

• See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God(1 John 3:1).
• Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him(Psalm 103:13).
• When the prodigal son returned home, his father embraced him warmly, threw a party for him, and restored him to his place of honor as a son (Luke 15:20-24).

So, love cannot be the issue.

2. We are gifted and destined for impact.

• We have been given a spiritual gift, which is divine enablement for service, which God expects us to use (1 Peter 4:10).
• We have been created for good works, which God prepared before we were ever born that we should walk in them (Ephesians 2:10)

So, God’s willingness to use you cannot be the issue. So what is the issue?!?

3. We may have been singled out for the privilege of earthly failure that God might give us spiritual success.

James 1:2-4 makes it clear that “trials” are God’s primary method of transforming us into mature, complete Christians.

So, how does that work? How can the trial of prolonged failure give us spiritual success? 

3 Things God May Want To Do Through the Process of Prolonged Failure

1. Refine us of our primary weaknesses

Many of us have a primary weakness in life that the enemy exploits to neutralize God’s will in our lives.  It could be arrogance, anger, fear, lust, greed, pride, insecurity, or a host of others.

It is helpful for us to be brutally honest with ourselves and with the Lord to perceive and admit to our primary weakness, which is a vital step in allowing the Lord to transform us in that area.

As we repent of our weakness and become malleable in God’s hands, He can begin to dissolve it, giving us greater freedom and joy.

2. Transform our capacity to love.

God wants us to truly love our spouse, our family members, our coworkers, our neighbors, our fellow Christians, and even the strangers we come in contact with in the course of a day.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8a says, “Love is patient, love is kind and is not envious; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails…”

Prolonged failure can be a powerful influence to either cause our relationships to deteriorate, or hopefully to sensitize us to the need to love others with a biblical love.

3. Deepen our grasp of vital spiritual truth

Eternal Perspective: Cultivating an eternal perspective is one of the most important things a Christian can do. 

Until we view the things that happen to us with an eternal perspective, we will continually misunderstand what God is doing in our lives, and misinterpret His motives.

Prolonged failure can be a powerful influence to lead us to a consistent eternal perspective.

Spiritual Warfare:  Closely related, and worth repeating, is the necessity of viewing life through the lens of spiritual warfare. 

Until we grasp, and keep in our conscious minds, the fact that there is someone on the other side of life’s chess board who is countering our moves in an attempt to neutralize God’s will in our lives, we will be vulnerable to his strategies to deceive and defeat us.

Prolonged failure can be a powerful influence to lead us to a consistent awareness of spiritual warfare.

Conclusion It is not in this world that we reap the full benefits of a life of faith and obedience, but in the next.  So, we live for the next. One of the most helpful things I’ve ever read was by 16^th Century author Daniel Defoe in his book Robinson Crusoe,

“God will often deliver us in a manner that seems, initially, to destroy us.”

If we can lay that truth over all the hard things in our lives, especially prolonged failure, it can give us hope and endurance to allow God’s refinement process to transform us from impure ore to pure gold.

Remember, this will all likely take time.  We grow, we don’t catapult.  But, this is what God wants to do, and will, as we respond to his refining process and accept His right to give us earthly failure in order to give us spiritual success.

Help spread the message, “Like” my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/maxanders.author and invite your friends to do the same. If you know someone you think may find this blog valuable, please forward it to them. I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at max@maxanders.com. I try to answer all emails, but, if not, I may address in future blogs the questions/issues you raise.

Share this Blog