Is Failure Fatal

All day long the devil had been assaulting the ramparts of my life’s castle. All day long I had successfully battled against the enemy of my soul. Then, in a moment of inattentiveness, I failed.

Throughout the day I had waged a noble battle only to let victory slip through my fingers at the last minute. You’ve been in this spot before too, haven’t you? (Please say, yes.)

It was about midnight before I could sit down by the fire and regroup. Oh sure, I’d confessed my sin to the Lord, but I was raw inside. I needed a salve for my soul, a haven for my mind, a respite from my wounded emotions—so I retreated to God’s Word.

Mark 16:7 surfaced: The angel at the empty tomb said, “Go, tell His disciples and Peter....” That was the phrase I needed: “and Peter.”

Mark reports that God had His angel single out one disciple. One follower well-acquainted with grief over his sin. One friend languishing in the debacle of failure. One man whose eyes were bloodshot for reasons he’d rather no one else knew about. One soul sitting alone in a dark room, staring at the dying embers of his fire. One disciple living in heaviness, silence, and weighted with the burden of his defeat and embarrassment.

“Make a special point,” the angel instructed, “to tell Peter that Jesus wants him to meet Him in Galilee.”

God doesn’t erase failure. He doesn’t fill the silence with angels singing. There are no trite platitudes. He doesn’t extract us from the tribulation. But He does declare unabashedly and without reservation that nothing can separate us from Him (Rom. 8:38-39).

Not even failure.

Failure isn’t easy to talk about, live with, or get over. That’s why they call it failure.

But, as Sir Winston-the-bulldog said, “Failure is never fatal.”

However, it can be incapacitating if you don’t accept Father’s invitation to rejoin Him in the noble cause of life.