There are a lot of experiences that happen in our life that make it easy for us to be thankful; getting that promotion, your wedding day, a new child in your family, or even a yummy meal! But is it possible to see the grace of God in and be thankful for your failures?
Working in campus ministry definitely has its ups and downs. There are moments of great joy when you lead a student to the Lord or when you see a student leader faithfully invest their lives in others. There are even whole seasons where your ministry is growing and everything is going according to plan. Those are definitely wonderful times of rejoicing and expressing excited gratitude before the Lord! But, to be quite honest, that was not my season for the last two years of my ministry. We went through a serious “drought” in our ministry that we just couldn’t understand. We tried everything (we knew to try) to come out of it, but we ended the year feeling broken and confused. We didn’t know what to do.
This confusion led our staff team to buckle down in prayer and seek the Lord for direction over how we should steward this ministry and how we should act in times of “drought”. We consistently prayed together week after week pleading for the Lord to speak and teach us how to start anew. I am happy to say that the Lord answered our prayers and began to teach us HIS strategies for changing this community.
To this day, I am extremely grateful for “failing”. Failing led me deeper in understanding my need for Jesus and the wisdom of the Father. If my plans would have worked, I would have built MY Kingdom on campus rather than God’s Kingdom, and that is something that I never want. I want to see His Kingdom come and His will be done, and I am ready and willing to go through whatever is necessary to be on the right path towards that. My question for you is:
What has God shown you through your failures?
How can you give God glory for his ability to turn your failures into tools to build His Kingdom?
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