Failure: God's back door to success

“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.  Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all."  Psalm 34:18-19

There is a portion of Scripture in Psalm 34:18-19, that I have often gone to in times when I have felt the deep pain of loss and failure, “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.  Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.”   

Here the Psalmist helps us to remember something.  It is in the broken places, the places where we often feel crushed and afflicted we discover God’s deliverance.   That leads us to both some good news and bad news.  The bad news is this:  when we fail in our lives, it hurts and often leaves a path of brokenness, broken circumstances, broken people, and broken things. 

But here is the good news:  in His great and awesome wisdom God works through our weaknesses, our failures, and our losses to help us grow spiritually and succeed.  Most of us have Romans 8:28 committed to heart, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” 

But we often miss the importance of the very next verse in Romans 8:29, yes God works all things out for the good, but why?  “…that we may be conformed to the likeness of His Son.”   God’s desire for our lives is that we would be conformed to His Son which means to become more and more to be like Jesus.  This means we will over time grow God works in us to grow spiritually so that we may be filled more and more with patience, prayerfulness, faith, love, joy, kindness and so many of those qualities in the Bible.

But our problem is that our goals and God’s goals for our lives are often in conflict with one another.  We want safety and comfort, which are often enemies of our souls.   God wants to change us from within to be like Jesus and uses weakness and failure to accomplish that.  That perhaps will be the great story of our lives when we reach heavens doors.