Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.”
Scripture: Luke 5:10b
Every person has experienced failure at some point in his or her life — maybe personally, professionally or morally. Some people’s failures are bigger, even more public than others.
Have you ever had a failure in life? If we are honest, all will experience failure sooner or later.
Failure is an event, not a destiny. Failure doesn’t mean you have blown everything. It means you have some hard lessons to learn. It doesn’t mean you are a permanent loser. It means you aren’t as smart as you thought you were. It doesn’t mean you should give up; nor does it mean God has abandoned you. It means you need God to show you the next step and a better plan.
When we fail, especially those we love the most, our minds become a swirl of emotions, such as embarrassment, anger, fear, shame and despair. We feel dirty and unworthy, because we acted foolishly. When we have hurt someone deeply, we want to know if they still love us or have we blown everything? Questions like this comes to mind: ‘Will they ever forgive me?’ ‘Can I ever forgive myself?’
In Luke’s Gospel, we discover how Peter felt. His failure was big and public. He denied Jesus, not once, but three times. As long as he lived, he never forgot that terrible night. Tradition says that Peter would start weeping whenever he heard a rooster crow. It also said that Peter would wake up every night and pray during that same hour when he denied Jesus.
Peter’s actions demonstrate that sin separates us from God and from God’s people. Sin isolates us so that the enemy can convince us that having made such a stupid mistake, no one wants to be around us again, ever! So we spend hours in a miserable prison of self-imposed solitary confinement, which is not our destiny! God allows us to fail in our own strength, so that we may learn that only by God’s power will we ever succeed.
Microsoft founder, Bill Gates once said, “Success is a lousy teacher. It makes smart people think they can’t lose.” All of Jesus’ disciples learned from Peter’s failure, so that they too would start to depend on God for their victories. Sometimes it takes shameful failure for us to finally wake up and see our need for God.
The great inventor Charles Kettering suggested that we must learn to fail intelligently. He said, “Once you’ve failed, analyze the problem, and find out why, because each failure is one more step, leading up to the cathedral of success. The only time you don’t want to fail — is the last time you try.” When is the last time you succeeded from recovered failure?
Rev. Marion J. Miller is senior pastor of Wesley United Methodist Church, 1201 Thomas V. Bryant Drive, Jeffersonville, IN. She may also be contacted at 812-283-3747 or via email at wesley1201@sbcglobal.net.
