God Made Me Fail

My wife just said, "What's that article title all about?" I responded, "You'll have to read to find out." If she has to, then you can read it as well.

The time had finally come. All my hard work had finally paid off and crescendoed to this moment. As my sneaker lay down on the stone Promenade, he raised me up to face what I had been working for through the past four years - the University of Alabama student center.

I made it to college. (The picture above is the day this happened. If you look at me now, you’ll find me with a beard and more wrinkles on my forehead. I don’t have the “I became President of the United States and aged 100 years in 4 years syndrome, but I feel much older in many ways).

In my head, the tough parts were over. I would never have to face another ACT exam. I wouldn’t have to worry if I was going to be valedictorian or not. I would never have to worry about asking a girl to prom. And the biggest one, I knew what career path I wanted to go down – medical school. I was going to grow up, become an orthopedic surgeon, get married to a beautiful woman, make a lot of money, and enjoy the fruit of my labor like Thanos after snapping the world out of existence. I was going to leave college with lifelong friends and experiences. I would reminisce on my time in college as a fruitful season.

God made me fail in almost every single aspiration I had.

Six years later, my life looks almost nothing like what I thought, and what I planned. I am no longer on the path to medical school. I graduated with a degree in English and research. I don’t live in Tuscaloosa. I’m moving from Nashville to New Orleans. I have a master of business and am about to finish a master of divinity, and I’m on the route to get a Ph.D. from seminary. I’m going to be the kind of doctor that cannot give out medicine, but instead, one some people will make fun of for being snooty or useless anywhere outside a classroom. I did marry a beautiful woman, but did not come through the path that I thought. I believed I would be on staff at my church for years, yet after a snap of my fingers, God led us in another direction.

God made me fail…and I am all the better for it.

When God causes our plans to fail, it’s because they do not accord with His plans. He has to destroy the Tower of Babel in our lives and confound our human logic so we have to turn to Him. “For the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish” (Psalm 1:6). Our ways will not stand. They cannot stand. They will wither away like the grass, easily torn up by the wind or cut down by the mower. God owns the full right to detonate the bomb on our plans, our thoughts, and our ways. His ways are higher than ours. His thoughts are much greater than our thoughts.

We can get too full of ourselves with what we want to do. We can fill ourselves up with our egos and ambitions like anyone can with Texas Roadhouse rolls and cinnamon butter. Our biblical heroes are not exempt from this sickness except the three persons of the Godhead themselves.

Joseph was not the most self-aware, humble person in Scripture. Joseph believed he would live with his father and brothers, one day to rule over them. Instead, he found himself a prisoner, slave, house manager, accused assaulter, prisoner, and then finally second-in-command over all Egypt. Why? For God to humble him, to show him that what man means for evil God uses for good, and to preserve his family and the line of Israel.

Jonah is not the example in following what God said. Jonah strove to make his path and not go to Nineveh. What did God do? Appoint a storm to cause the mariners to cast lots; appointed the lots to force Jonah to confess his guilt in the judgment; appointed a fish to swallow Jonah whole and spit him back near Nineveh so he could complete God’s plan and proclaim repentance and faith in Yahweh to the Ninehvites so they would turn to him.

Prior to his conversion, the Apostle Paul had every reason to follow his path. “If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” (Philippians 3:4-6). He had it all. Yet, Jesus literally stopped him in his tracks and blinded him so he would have to see differently and recognize he could literally no longer go on the same path he was on.

Yet, he was better for it. He exclaims that whatever gain he had, he counted it as loss in comparison to knowing and following Jesus (3:8).

When God causes our plans to fail, it is so He can show that He is God and remind us that we are not. We cannot even claim to be a junior god or god-in-training. God has to humble us so then one day He can exalt us with the Exalted One.

We can get mad at God for our plans not working. I know people in my life who are mad about certain aspects of their lives not working out the way they wanted. You know people in your lives who have responded the same way, or maybe you’re that person. Maybe the job you wanted didn’t line up. Maybe the property you wanted was out of your price range and you had to settle. Maybe you are tired of all the change in your life and instead want things to be stable, but it feels like it is always out of reach.

No matter what it is, we have all felt like this. In truth, I felt like this for a long time during college. I still feel like that now as my family is in a transitional season. I wonder why certain pieces did not fit into the puzzle. I wonder why God led us on the path with the steps that He did.

Why didn’t He just send Joseph to Egypt and give him command without the time lost with his family? Why didn’t He soften Jonah’s heart immediately and give him a love for the Ninehvites? Why didn’t He use Paul’s position as a Pharisee to make changes among them instead of becoming an outcast and subject of suffering? Why didn’t He allow me to finish my college in person? Why didn’t He allow me to create lasting friendships? Why did He want me to return back home for a few years only to move again? Why didn’t certain job opportunities work out? Why am I on this winding road? Why am I constantly being put in a state of weariness and tiredness?

I theoretically know the answer, but my heart does not always want to functionally believe it.

My failure caused me to follow Jesus.

My failing turned into following.

I can’t take credit for my life. The good things. The growth I experienced. The people I would never have met. God has been with me every step of the way before I knew it. He has comforted me in His Spirit after He opened my eyes in grace-filled faith.

What I thought was failure wasn’t failure in God’s eyes. God used it to refine me in the steadfastness of trials, to test the genuineness of my faith.

I failed in my plans so I could follow Jesus and His plans.

I can attest that my walk with the Lord is stronger, deeper, and different than it was six years ago. But it is not because I became some type of theological ninja or God jolted me up into the heavens with Him like He did with Paul and John.

It is because He helped me follow Him.

My failure became His success, which then He imputed to be my success in Christ.

The next time you are frustrated at failing at something or life not working out the way you wanted, take a breath and pray to God. Ask Him to give you a heart of faith and trust to follow Him.

“God made me fail” turns into “God molded me into His adopted child, His apprenticed follower.”

I am ever grateful for this failure. I pray you would be as well.