We Can Be Faithful After Failure
[Reading Time: c7 mins]
"Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness."
Lamentations 3:22-23
Failure can feel like a crushing weight. We can feel buried under guilt, shame and regret when we fail. Yet failure is a part of life; from time to time we all fail, especially when we are in unexplored territory, a situation or circumstance that we have never navigated before. That’s why learning to recover from failure is so important. If we don’t learn how to remove the debris, we remain buried by failure, stuck and unable to move forward.
In my first job out of university, I worked in the product marketing department of a national retailer. I was so happy to have landed a graduate job in marketing that I wanted to do everything perfectly. However, it was a fast-paced environment; my boss was relentless and was hard to please. I was terrified of making a mistake, and yet inevitably I did, a mistake that cost the company money. Time has faded the details about what I did wrong, but I remember the crushing feeling of failure. I remember my inner voice shouting and nagging at me, ‘Why didn’t you pay more attention? You are so stupid? What is your boss going to think of you? You are a failure!’. As I discussed the mistake with my boss, my stomach churned, my throat felt tight, and my eyes stung. As I fought to hold back my tears, I felt buried. The feeling lingered like a bad smell; for the rest of the day, I felt utterly depressed and ashamed.
None of this escaped my boss’s attention, and when she could stand it no longer, she said, ‘Leoné snap out of it! Everyone makes mistakes, learn from it and move on. If you don’t, it will negatively affect your work’. I was stunned, but I have never forgotten her rebuke. It was the kindest thing she could have said to me because it meant my failure wasn’t final; I still had work to do.
There are so many examples in the Bible of people who failed. Some were able to move past their failure through repentance and went on to do great things. Others got stuck, buried under the mistakes they made. Peter is an excellent example of someone who was able to recover from failure.
Despite Jesus warning Peter that he would deny him, Peter in his pride was adamant that he would be with Jesus until the end (John 13:37-38). However, when the moment came, Peter was under pressure, and what Jesus had foretold happened (Luke 22:54-62). On realising what he had done, Peter was crushed by his failure to stay faithful. His pain was made worse by Jesus’ death. After this, Peter did what we often do when we fall and are unsure how to move forward. He returned to what he did before he met Jesus. For Peter, that was fishing, but Jesus met him in the middle of his pain and restores him back (John 21). Three times he asks Peter if he loves him, and when Peter responds ‘yes’, he tells him to feed and take care of his sheep (John 21:15-17).
Peter may have failed, but he found not only forgiveness in Christ but also his commission. His failure had not disqualified him from the work Jesus was calling him to do. If we turn to Christ in our failures, big and small, we too will find forgiveness and the courage to keep doing what God has called us to do. God used Peter mightily as a founder in the early church; he preached a sermon where 3000 people came to faith (Acts 2:41). Peter wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t stay down when he fell. With the help of Jesus, he got back up, he kept going, and we can too. That’s what faithfulness in the face of failure looks like. We can be faithful after failure because God is faithful.
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