What does the Bible say about failure?

The wicked man is now warned against the folly of lying in wait against the dwelling of the righteous (v. 15), with the object of gaining plunder from him. "For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again" (v. 16). The wicked may think at first that his evil designs have succeeded, but in the end will find himself defeated, often by sudden calamity.

Let us grant that some poor fellow you know has stumbled and fallen. He may have been converted, but not walking near the Lord, Satan has tripped him up, and he has come down. You think he is not genuine. Let me tell you, that at bottom, that man is perhaps much better than the man who has never come down. He will be a better man after he came down than before it. When the devil's maid-servant met Peter in the high priest's palace, she tripped him up, and he came down, and denied his Lord. He, no doubt, went out of that court feeling, It is all up with me; and everybody else might well have said, We shall never hear of Simon Peter again. But you hear of Simon Peter again — a great deal more. Three days after he met his Lord and Saviour in resurrection, and got the sweet sense of His forgiveness, and seven weeks afterwards we find him preaching on the day of Pentecost, when three thousand men and women were converted. I know what the devil said then: "I wish I had left him alone in the high priest's palace; the breaking of him has been the making of him." Peter had been picked up by the never-failing grace of the Lord. He never could have preached like that if he had never fallen. Satan often does the Lord's work without knowing it.

The Lord Jesus told Peter that Satan had desired to have "you" (a plural word), that is, all the disciples, that he might sift them as wheat. To sift wheat is to remove the chaff from the kernels. The disciples were "wheat," but needed fleshly "chaff" removed from them. Certainly all the disciples were deeply tried that night: in fact all "forsook Him and fled" (Mt.26:56). But it is Peter alone to whom He says, "I have prayed for you (singular) that your faith should not fail." The King James Version reads, "I have prayed for thee," which is singular. Modern English uses the word "you" for either singular or plural, but the original is singular. A special need was present, which the Lord fully discerned, though Peter did not. Yet it is good to observe that the eleven (Judas having gone out) were wheat from which of was necessary that the chaff should be separated through their experience of failure. The Lord Jesus, as the faithful Advocate, prayed for Peter before his fall. Certainly then Peter's faith did not fail, though he failed. Indeed, his faith in Christ was more strengthened by this experience that taught him to have "no confidence in the flesh" (Phil.3:3), and after that he was fitted to "strengthen his brethren" (v.32).

But, blessed be our God, "all things work together for good to them that love Him." The death of the Philistine champion, and the sixteen months' sojourn in Ziklag; the cave of Adullam, and the house of Achish — all worked for David's good. The Lord makes the very failure of His children to yield them blessing, inasmuch as it leads them to seek more prayerful vigilance of spirit, and a closer walk with Him. If our stumbles teach us to lean more implicitly upon God, we shall still thank Him, however much we may have to be humbled at the remembrance of them. Humbling as David's Ziklag experience must have been to him, we may be sure he would not have been without it. It taught him more of the deep reality of God's grace and faithfulness; it enabled him to see, that when brought down to the very bottom of human things, he could find God there in all the fullness of His grace. This was a valuable lesson, and it will be our place to learn from it also.

In the last letter that I received from a valued friend, now with the Lord, he wrote, "A RUNNING HOUND NEVER LOOKS AT ITS TAIL." He was referring to Philippians 3:13-14, "This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." I shall never forget the trite saying, there is a volume of wisdom in it, as will be understood when it is seen that the reaching forth in the verse is the word that describes a hound at full stretch. But the Christian who is continually looking back, and brooding over the past and mourning over his failure, is like a hound that has ceased to run and is feeding on its own tail, if such a thing can be imagined. Nothing vitiates a man's spiritual energy like brooding on the past; nothing hinders him in the heavenly race like this, and it matters not whether it is his sins or his sorrows that he broods over, the brooding itself is fatal to all spiritual growth and strength. Both are dishonouring to God, for if a man broods over his sins he doubts the grace that abounds over them all; if he broods over his sorrows it is probably because he is at war with the will of God. Both sin and sorrow should humble us and make us walk in lowliness of heart before God, and not proudly or boastfully; but there is grace for the sin, and there is sympathy for the sorrow, so that while we feel them, and feel them deeply, we are not to be overwhelmed by them but find our God and His resources in Christ Jesus greater than both, and finding this press onward to the place from whence the grace and sympathy come.

AFFLICTION is sometimes, alas! THE RESULT OF OUR OWN FOLLY. We constantly reap what we sow. And yet how graciously God can bring blessing out of even such circumstances. Where He does not directly rule, He can and does overrule for our blessing. God did not rule Peter’s fall, but He over-ruled it for signal blessing to His impulsive warm-hearted servant.

Revelation gives quite a different line of truth. It is not enough, that hearts of individuals should be moved with wonder at the person of the Lord Jesus Christ seen on earth, or should understand what they have in Christ so as to have fellowship with the Father and the Son. But here on the earth, with girded loins, the servant must know the fellowship of the sufferings of His Son. Here is John thrown out of all service and association with Christians, alone in Patmos, apart from all that had been a comfort to him. Here is John cut off from all he might take sweet counsel with, yet everything is stamped with the character of service. No Patmos for John, no Revelation for us. We are accustomed to measure service by what we call fruits, and we connect fruit with what can be seen. John's service was not such; it was simply doing what God had given him to do. So with my character as a servant of God. Am I a servant? Can my Master make a mistake? Have I committed faults? and cannot my Master set them right? Keep up the place of obeying God under all circumstances, knowing that while serving Him, everything, even failure, shall work together for good. I can speak with divine certainty, if you are an obedient servant, that you are where God has put you. All must go right because your Master is there. But I have failed. I say to Him, "Master, I have failed, and must leave all things to Thee." Confess all to God, leave all in His hand, and serve Him still.

No doubt grace can and does act in the case of a Christian now, even where he might have slipped seriously aside, but where there followed deep and thorough repentance, and the sense of forgiveness which the Spirit grants. This would become the last starting point, so to speak, and grace if it went back beyond it would use it for good. Not only is He faithful and just to forgive and cleanse, but He loves to bring him who has failed when restored into a better condition than he had ever known before. Witness Simon Peter at the end of the Gospels and the beginning of the Acts. And so it will be with Israel in a future day. But self-judgment, wherever it is thorough, wherever there is a vindication of God against one's own sin, always brings one in the measure of the repentance into a corresponding measure of depth in God's grace never possessed before. There are few things more common than to see a person converted in what may be called a superficial manner. Where this is the case, there is commonly a falling into open failure of one kind or another, sometimes a shameful break-down, by which the man really becomes nothing less than a bag of broken bones, thoroughly brought to nought in his own eyes. After this, when grace has lifted him up, he will be incomparably humbler and will have a more grateful as well as chastened sense of what God is than he had when first converted. Hence, although it be a shame to him that he required such a humiliating process, it is the triumph of divine grace to use his folly for putting him that is restored into a better condition than before he went astray.

We have written, "roots," for we may discern a variety of causes, yet they all sprang from one main cause. The tap-root, if so we may call it, of the whole disaster was found in disobedience to the word of God.

To be dependent on results as a motive-spring of action and service is a great snare. The fact is we ought to find sufficient attractiveness in Christ alone to enable us to preach for fifty years without seeing a convert—if this were the will of God. On the other hand, since God does send forth His servants with definite results in view, absence of results should be a matter of gravest concern and exercise. It is perfectly true that what Christ values is not success, but faithfulness. “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:21, 23). At the same time, be it remembered that the faithful servants were also the succesful ones. Faithfulness and success in the parable go hand in hand.