life of faith

sometimes we come before God and we feel like utter failures ourselves (many times for me). i felt like one when i woke up late this morning when i had meant to wake up early. sigh.. what a start to my day! i felt like one when i see my group not responding or supporting in a way which i had hoped for. i would think to myself, ok joyce, epic fail!

and so we remember the areas which we have disappointed Him, not matched up to expectations (whether it’s our own or God’s standards) and even denied Him, just like how Peter denied Christ three times. but just as how Christ still used Peter afterwards in building his church, failures are not an end to themselves. there are certainly precious lessons which can be used by God to refine and mature our character.

i’m not promoting us to fail intentionally, in the sense of allowing them to happen just “because it’s God’s will”. the Woody Allen quote is also incomplete, it doesn’t mean that all failures are good inherently and come from our “experimenting”. there are some failures which are caused by our disobedience and sinful nature which require our repentance, and there are also failures which are beyond our control, such as unexpected failures of situations. i think the point is to recognise what are our own roles in contributing to these failures. identify what are those that are beyond my control and to accept that even then, there is God’s purpose for allowing these to happen. in any case, failures may be painful or unpleasant, but they can humble us, show us that we are humans, help us to grow, to understand and appreciate deeper the grace of God working in our lives as we receive His forgiveness and allow Him to build us up. Peter was a recipient of His grace, and it allowed him to remain humble in knowing that and it allowed him to minister to others after experiencing God’s strength amidst his own weaknesses.

this is probably a rather gloomy topic to talk about, especially when the year has just started. we will definitely fail (duh!), which is the point of the above quote that we should expect failures. and it is how we view failures in a healthy manner. how do we see our role as well as God’s role in learning from our failures? what does He want to teach us from our failures? afterall, do we use our failures to point us towards God or draw us away from Him?