Monday, August 29, 2022 Some material taken from God? What Happened?
O God, You have rejected us. You have broken us; You have been angry; O, restore us. You have made the land quake, You have split it open; Heal its breaches, for it totters. You have made Your people experience hardship; You have given us wine to drink that makes us stagger. Psalm 60:1-3
What Happens When We Fail?
For all of us, failure is a part of life. We fail many times over the course of our lives – some small failures, and some big ones that change our lives or the lives of others around us. David was no stranger to failure. He led the armies of Israel 200 miles north of Jerusalem and while they were so far out of pocket, the army of Edom decided to attack. Since most of David’s army was so far away, the small army of Edom marched into Isreal with no resistance. And it appeared that tiny little Edom was about to conquer Isreal.
David was a conquering king. His army had conquered the Philistines and Moab. David himself slew the giant Goliath. He was used to winning and failure was hard for him to swallow. He knew he had made the mistkes that led to this failure but he also knew that God is a God that takes our failures and turn them into good. He truly makes beauty from ashes.
When we experience failure in our lives, the first thing we need to do is to try to figure out what we did wrong and learn from it. David realized he did two things wrong:
He moved without God’s direction or God’s support.
David made a decision about what he needed to do with his armies and did not pray about it first. Some may think that it is silly to pray over every little detail of our lives, but God cares about every detail in our lives and He wants us to go to Him with it all. Every decision we make shoulbe be filtered through Him and His word, no matter how trivial we think it is. Making the wrong decision, or running ahead of God will only bring us more problems.
God is not afraid to let us fail, and if He allows failure in our lives, it does not mean He doesn’t love us. It can be hard to wrap our head around things sometimes in regard to this. When we experience difficult circumstances, failure, or we make a wrong choice and suffer consequences, it can feel like we have been forgotten by God – or that He does not think we are worthy enough to help us. Neither one is true. He always cares about every little deatil of our lives and He never leaves our side. Even in all the bad places, He is there with us. God gives us promises and the proper path to receive them. Doing the right thing the wrong way is doing the wrong thing.
He forgot about his weakness – Edom.
Edom will always be there – lurking in the shadows and looking for the moment it can march into our lives uncontested. Edom stands for all the weaknesses we thought we had conquered – drugs, alcohol, pornography, spending, inappropriate relationships, or whatever it is for each of us. We all have some kind of Edom in our lives that can take us out if we don’t stay vigilant. We can never conquer these things in our own power. The only failure we ought to fear is a failure to cling to our faith in the Word of God.
It reminds us of these TRUTHS:
With the shield of faith, we can quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
But thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.
We are flesh. We will fail and probably often but our true victory can be found in the Lord. He is where we defeat our Edoms and He is the One who raises us up out of the ashes of defeat to make us whole again for His kingdom and His glory.
LC
