The Purpose Of Failure

Chapter 2 God's Perfect Plan for Those Who Have Failed There are many brothers and sisters who feel that because they have sinned and failed God at some time in their past lives, therefore they cannot fulfill God's perfect plan for their lives now. Let us look at what the scriptures have to say on this matter, and not lean on our own understanding or our sense of logic. Notice first of all how the Bible begins. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, Genesis 1.1. The heavens and the earth must have been perfect when God created them, for nothing imperfect or incomplete can ever come forth from his hand. But some of the angels whom he had created fell away, and this is described for us in Isaiah 14.11-15 and Ezekiel 28.13-18. It was then that the earth came into the condition described in Genesis 1.2, formless, empty, and dark. The rest of Genesis 1 describes how God worked on that shapeless, empty, dark mass and made something so beautiful out of it that he himself declared it to be very good, Genesis 1.31. We read in Genesis 1.2-3 that the Spirit of God moved over the earth and God spoke his word, and this was what made the difference. What is the message in that for us today? Just this that no matter how much we may have failed or made a mess of our lives, God can still make something glorious out of our lives through his Spirit and his word. God had a perfect plan for the heavens and the earth when he created them, but this plan had to be set aside because of Lucifer's failure. But God remade the heavens and the earth and still produced something very good out of the chaos. Now consider what happened next. God made Adam and Eve and started all over again. God must have had a perfect plan for them too, which obviously did not include their sinning by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But they did eat of the forbidden tree and frustrated God's original plan for them, whatever that plan might have been. Logic would now tell us that they could not fulfill God's perfect plan any longer. Yet we see that when God came to meet them in the garden, he does not tell them that they would now have to live only on his second best for the rest of their lives. No, he promises them in Genesis 3.15 that the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent. That was a promise of Christ's dying for the sins of the world and overcoming Satan on Calvary. Now consider this fact and see if you can reason it out. We know that Christ's death was part of God's perfect plan from all eternity. The lamb was slain from the foundation of the world, Revelation 13.8. Yet we also know that Christ died only because Adam and Eve sinned and failed God. So logically, we could say that God's perfect plan to send Christ to die for the sins of the world was fulfilled, not despite Adam's failure, but because of Adam's failure. We would not have known God's love shone on Calvary's cross were it not for Adam's sin. That baffles our logic, and that is why the scriptures say that we should not lean on our own understanding, Proverbs 3.5. If God worked according to mathematical logic, then we would have to say that Christ's coming to the earth was God's second best plan. But it would be blasphemous to say so. It was part of God's perfect plan for man. God makes no mistakes. But since God is almighty and eternal, and since he knows the end from the beginning, and since he is always silently planning for us in love, human reasoning fails when we try to explain his dealings with us. God's ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts. The difference between them is as great as the distance between heaven and earth, Isaiah 55.8.9. So it is good for us to set aside our clever reasonings and logic when trying to understand God's ways. What then is the message that God is trying to get through to us, right from the opening pages of the Bible? Just this, that he can take a man who has failed, and make something glorious out of him, and still make him fulfill God's perfect plan for his life. That is God's message to man, and we must never forget it. God can take a man who has failed repeatedly, and still make him fulfill his perfect plan. Not God's second best, but God's best plan. This is because even the failure may have been part of God's perfect plan to teach him a few unforgettable lessons. This is impossible for human logic to grasp because we know God so very little. It is only broken men and women whom God can use, and one way he breaks us is through repeated failures. One of the biggest problems that God has with us is to bless us in such a way that the blessing does not puff us up with pride. To get victory over anger, and then to be proud of it, is to fall into a far deeper pit than the one we were in. God has to keep us humble in victory. Genuine victory over sin is always accompanied by the deepest humility. This is where repeated failures have a part to play in destroying our self-confidence, so that we are convinced that victory over sin is not possible apart from God's enabling grace. Then, when we do get victory, we can never boast about it. Further, when we have failed repeatedly ourselves, we can never despise another who fails. We can sympathize with those who fail because we have come to know the weakness of our own flesh through our own innumerable falls. We can deal gently with the ignorant and misguided since we ourselves are beset with weakness, Hebrews 5.3. Hearing such a message, the logically minded man can then say, Then let us sin all the more, so that good may come. Romans 3.7.8 LB answers such a man with these words, You say my dishonesty brought God glory by pointing up his honesty. If you follow through with that idea, you come to this. The worse we are, the better God likes it. But the damnation of those who say such things is just. No, we do not preach that we should sin so that good may come. Neither do we say that we can take advantage of God's grace and keep on disobeying God deliberately and defiantly and still avoid repeating what we have sown. No. But we do say that human logic cannot grasp the grace of God to fallen men. Nothing is impossible for God, not even to bring us into his perfect will after we have failed miserably and repeatedly. Only our unbelief can hinder him. If you say, but I have messed up things so many times, it is impossible for God now to bring me into his perfect plan. Then it will be impossible for God because you cannot believe in what he can do for you. But Jesus said that nothing is impossible for God to do for us if only we believe. Let it be done to you according to your faith is God's law in all matters, Matthew 9 29. We will get what we have faith for. If we believe that something is impossible for God to do for us, then it will not be fulfilled in our lives. On the other hand, you will discover at the judgment seat of Christ that another believer who had made a greater mess of his life than you nevertheless fulfilled God's perfect plan for his life. Just because he believed that God could pick up the broken pieces of his life and make something very good out of it. What regret there will be in your life in that day when you discover that it was not your failures, however many they may have been, that frustrated God's plan in your life, but your unbelief. The story of the prodigal son who wasted so many years shows that God gives his best even to failures. The father said, quickly bring out the best robe for one who had let him down so badly. This is the message of the gospel, a new beginning, not just once, but again and again, because God never gives up on anyone. The parable of the estate owner who went out hiring laborers, Matthew 20, 1-16, also teaches the same thing. People who were hired at the eleventh hour were the ones to be rewarded first. In other words, those who had wasted ninety percent, eleven-twelfth of their lives, doing nothing of eternal value, could still do something glorious for God with remaining ten percent of their lives. This is a tremendous encouragement to all who have failed. The reason the Son of God was manifested was to undo, dissolve, the works the devil has done, 1 John 3-8, Amplified Bible. That verse actually means that Jesus came to untie all the knots that the devil has tied in our lives. Picture it like this. When we were born, we could say that God gave each of us a perfectly rolled ball of string. As we began living each day, we began to unroll that ball of string and we began tying knots into it, sinning. Today, after many years of unrolling the string, we despair as we see the thousands of knots that we see in it. But Jesus has come to untie the knots the devil has tied. So there is hope even for those with the most knotted strings. The Lord can untie every knot and give you a perfect ball of string in your hands once again. This is the message of the gospel. You can make a new beginning. You say that is impossible. Well then, it will be done to you according to your faith. It will be impossible in your case. But I hear someone else whose life is worse than yours saying, Yes, I believe that God will do that in me. To him too, it will be according to his faith. In his life, God's perfect plan will be fulfilled. In Jeremiah 18, 1-6, God spoke his word to Jeremiah through a practical illustration. Jeremiah was asked to go to a potter's house, and there he saw the potter trying to make a vessel, but the vessel was spoiled in the hand of the potter. So what did the potter do? He remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make. Then came the application, Can I not O...deal with you as this potter does? was the Lord's question, verse 6. Fill in your name in those dotted lines, and that would be God's question to you. If there is a godly sorrow in your life for all your failures, then even if your sins are like scarlet or red like crimson, not only will your heart be made as white as snow, as promised under the old covenant, Isaiah 1-18, but God promises even more under the new covenant, I will not remember your sins anymore, Hebrews 8-12. Whatever your blunders or failures, you can make a new beginning with God. And even if you have made a thousand new beginnings in the past and have come to failure, you can still make the one thousand and first new beginning today. God can still make something glorious out of your life. While there is life, there is hope. So never fail to trust God. He cannot do many mighty works for many of his children, not because they have failed him in the past, but because they will not trust him now. Let us then give glory to God by being strong in faith, Romans 4-20, trusting him in the days to come for the things which we considered impossible up until now. All people, young and old, can have hope, no matter how much they may have failed in the past, if only they will acknowledge their failures, be humble, and trust God. Thus, we can all learn from our failures and go on to fulfill God's perfect plan for our lives. And in the ages to come, he can show us forth to others as examples of what he could do with those whose lives were total failures. In that day, he will show what he could do in us, through the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus, Ephesians 2-7. Hallelujah. Amen and Amen. You have been listening to the audiobook recording of The Purpose of Failure by Zach Poonen.