In this world, we are surrounded by failure, but we are told to have courage because Jesus Christ said, “I have overcome the world.”
Romans 8:35-39: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
“But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
We see Christians being slaughtered for their faith and in the next verse, we see them conquer, even when they were being killed. What looks like failure to us is different in God’s kingdom.
Failure in our eyes not in God’s
Stephen was a gifted leader in the church, and defended Christ passionately and ended up getting stoned which would look like a big failure to people. If Stephen would have toned down his language a bit and not been killed, then he would have made more friends and had more opportunities to proclaim the gospel, do signs and wonders, and a lot of other good work.
God’s Plan
Stephen’s death scattered the church to Judea and Samaria and beyond, as the Lord had told them to but they hadn’t done it. Stephen’s death impacted the hard-hearted Pharisee who went on to become the greatest apostle ever. Stephen’s death looked like a failure but he was being obedient unto death to the One who had died for him.
God got the ultimate glory in Stephen’s death and weaved everything to make it all fall in place. What seems a failure in the eyes of your boss, God will use to make it a thing of worth and value.
Humility in Failure
When there is failure we respond with humility (James 4:6) and then only we can find what we are looking for in our lives. We needed a Savior because we could never succeed in saving ourselves. Our best works are foolishness in the eyes of God and only when we admit that we are a failure we can find redemption through Christ’s salvation.
Conquerors through Christ
Pride is our biggest enemy and it can crush us because we depend on our works and achievement and not on the finished work of the cross. We have to kill our pride and be defined by our identity in Christ. God purchased us by His precious Son’s blood and we belong to Him and even if we fail, in Christ we are not failures but more than conquerors.