Failure or Faithfulness?

One of the things about faith is it is designed to grow over time. When I started working on Faith Maps almost a decade ago, I began with the belief that faith was something you either have or you don’t. So when I came to something I was trying to believe for, I thought it was first dependent on God’s will, but then fully dependent on if my belief was strong enough and if I had what it takes to bring it about. What I did not understand is that some situations are designed to develop you as a person. So sometimes there is a failure involved.

I thought failure automatically meant that God was not involved. If the situation did not turn out as I had prayed for then the answer was no, and maybe I should not have walked that road in the first place. But then I began to study some Old Testament stories in ways I had never saw them before. Like with Moses. Did you know that Moses tried at age 40 to go and deliver the Israelites and totally bombed? Acts 7 tells us Moses knew his purpose at age 40, and he thought the Israelites would understand what he was doing, but they did not. Instead of being grateful for his efforts, they were upset with him, and because in an effort to protect an Israelite he had killed an Egyptian, he had to flee from Egypt and live in exile for the next 40 years.

At age 40, Moses jumped, no questions asked to go do what he believed was the will of God, but his efforts fell short of his purpose. The thing is, his 40 years in exile prepared him for the last 40 years of his life, for a season when he would be living in the victory of God’s deliverance. So exile actually allowed Moses to develop some important skills he would need when he led Israel out of Egypt. He became a shepherd which historically has been a training ground for God’s people. King David was a shepherd, even Jesus is referred to as the Great Shepherd. Also the place God met Moses in the burning bush was the exact same mountain that Israel came back to after God delivered. So Moses spent time learning the terrain of the area God would lead His people after they came out of Egypt. The Bible does not give too much detail about what all Moses did in his exile, but even his father-in-law came to help in those final 40 years. That season of seeming failure was vital for Moses.

That’s something I didn’t realize about faith. There may be a time God allows us to live in failure. A time where it may even feel like God did not deliver us. I’m sure when Moses tried to deliver the Israelites at age 40 and wound up in exile, that must have been devastating. To have tried to do the will of God and to have failed so completely, would had to have been a very confusing season for Moses. And yet, God was even there.

I love this story, because I think it has so much to offer us today as we are living out our faith. One of the big lessons being that failure doesn’t necessarily equate our lack of faithfulness. Sometimes we have given God our best efforts and landed in a situation we do not associate with success. It’s easy in that moment to think less of ourselves in that season. But if we have sought the will of God in our lives and have ended up in a situation that looks like failure, it may simply be that God has us in a preparation season.

So maybe in this season as we are wondering why, we should ask God what He needs us to learn here, to seek His face, and to draw near to Him. The thing about God’s plan is it will not always make sense to us especially from a physical perspective. Sometimes He is drawing us into more of His spiritual plans, and that often puts the physical success on the backburner, but will develop us to look more like He wants us to look.