ApprehendingGrace.com

Six Temptations of Failure, Day 6 of 6

Temptation # 6: Living in Fear of Failure
Sometimes we overreact to failure and build walls around ourselves and our activities so that eventually we wall ourselves in and no longer live in the freedom God has given us. Instead, we live in fear that we will fail again. So we essentially stop living. Sure, we’re still breathing and walking and talking, but the life has gone out of our life. Failure is a part of life, friends. We cannot build ourselves into such a safe place that we will not experience it, and to try to do so places limits around us that diminish our lives.

Fear ultimately leads to living a life characterized by legalism. We make rules and regulations to govern our lives and build a hedge of protection around ourselves to keep from ever being hurt again. Most of these new rules aren’t biblical. God never tells His people to stop stepping out in faith. These barriers you erect to prevent future failures all too often separates you from God and His best will for your life.

Fear is the antithesis of faith. Fear is believing that Satan will win instead of believing that the outcome will be what God has said it will be. Choose to believe God, friends. Engage your faith and live life to the fullest.

It occurs to me that perhaps I seem uncompassionate in this blog. Trust me, friends, I have compassion for those experiencing failure. Been there — done that. Refused to buy the T-shirt and don’t want to go back to have another opportunity to do so. But I also know that the temptations listed in these blogs are Satan’s way of binding us to the failure and blinding us to the plans God has for us.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29:11

God desires to give us freedom. God desires for us to be whole. God desires to make something great out of your failure and mine. Let’s resist Satan’s bait and trust God for the good stuff!

Six Temptations of Failure, Day 5 of 6

Are you still with me? So far we’ve covered the following temptations:

1. Believing that You are the Failure
2. Allowing a Failure to Spread its Branches
3. Making Inappropriate or Unintentional Vows
4. Blaming Others

Only two more to go. I pray that God is speaking to your heart as you read this series of blogs.

Temptation #5: Avoiding Others
In the midst of a failure, you may be quite tempted to avoid others because of feelings of humiliation.

First, know that the feelings of humiliation are probably totally inappropriate. Humility is a good thing; humiliation is a bad thing. Experiencing a failure may be humbling, but you should not feel humiliated by it. You tried something and it didn’t go as planned.

Repeat after me: “Everyone fails.” It’s a part of life. There’s no reason for you to feel humiliated. And everyone makes mistakes. If a mistake on your part lead to the failure, it wasn’t your first mistake and it undoubtedly won’t be your last. Learn to live with not being perfect. Only God is perfect and you’re not God.

So resist the temptation to avoid others – you need them to love you as you recover from the failure. You need people around you who will regularly remind you about the great talents and gifts God has given you, and about how special you are to God and to them. You need people to love you. Trust me, avoiding friends is debilitating and will prolong your recovery process.

And perhaps most importantly of all, the world needs to see how a confessing Christian deals with failures and setbacks in their lives. This might be the most important message that your life could ever deliver to the watching world around us. Hiding your failure and avoiding the world will never get that message across. It’s like burying your talent in the sand.

If you’ve avoided others lately, let me encourage to right now think of someone you will call later today or tomorrow. Or perhaps you can reach for the phone right now. Go for it!

Six Temptations of Failure, Day 4 of 6

Temptation #4: Blaming Others

Taking responsibility for our actions is an important step in our emotional and spiritual maturity. Guard yourself against placing the bulk of the blame on someone else for everything that is wrong in your life. Doing so has several consequences:

• It changes the way you think, eventually causing to think of yourself (consciously or subconsciously) as a victim.
• It stunts your emotional and spiritual growth because it cheats you from learning what God wants you to learn from the experience.
• At some level, you are lying to yourself and others. God does not honor dishonesty.
• On a practical level, you’re not fooling others and you will develop a reputation as a blame-shifter and someone who lacks integrity.

It’s no fun shouldering the responsibility for a failure, but when it is appropriate, don’t hesitate to do so. Remember, don’t let the failure define you or spread it’s branches, but do accept the responsibility for your mistakes. Then take these actions:

• Ask God to forgive you if there was any sin involved.
• Ask others to forgive you if you committed any wrong against them.
• Ask God (and perhaps others) for His leading in the current situation and future situations.
• Let it go. Don’t carry the failure with you into the future. Leave it in the past. Don’t let a failure take root or spread it’s territory. It’s time for God to begin a new work!

Six Temptations of Failure, Day 3 of 6

So far we’ve looked at two temptations we often face when we experience failure: The temptation to believe that we are the failure instead of properly identifying the event or situation as a failure, and the temptation to allow the sense of failure to grow until we believe that we can’t do anything right. Both temptations can have debilitating affects on our lives. Let’s look at a third that can also impact our lives for years beyond the failure.

Temptation #3: Making Inappropriate or Unintentional Vows
Sometimes when we fail, we are so intent on not having it happen again that we make inappropriate and/or unintentional vows. Those vows can take on a life of their own and begin to define us in ways that we don’t want to be defined. Let me give you two examples:

• Perhaps your marriage failed and you were so devastated by it that you said in your heart, “I’ll never let anyone be able to hurt me like this again.” That’s a vow and God honors our vows. Years later you may wonder why you are so unhappy in your next marriage. The answer may be because you are not making yourself vulnerable to your spouse – after all, if you allow yourself to be vulnerable again, you may be hurt again.
• Perhaps you have a business that failed and in the aftermath of the failure you vow that you will never take a financial risk again. Years later you may wonder why you find yourself in a position that gives you no fulfillment and brings little income. Perhaps it’s because you resisted trusting God when He made another position available that required you to take a reasonable risk.

In the midst of a failure, guard against the temptation to make rash statement and inappropriate vows. Our words mean things and vows have authority that only Christ can break. Don’t let rash words that you have spoken define your life. If you find that you have made inappropriate vows, specifically renounce them before God in the name of Jesus. Ask Jesus to free you from the vow.

A friend shared this story with me. She’s given me permission to share it with you.

“As a child, I did something that turned out to be a big mistake. My mom wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to explain that it was an accident. I vowed in my heart never to tell her anything again. Nearly fifty years later, the vow was still in force…I have spent a lifetime accepting blame without speaking truth and a lifetime ‘never telling [anyone] anything of any importance.’ But now Christ has broken that vow, and freed me to share more openly than ever before.”

Renouncing vows are worth the effort!

Six Temptations of Failure, Day 2 of 6

Yesterday I started a 6-part blog about the temptations of failure. The first temptation we looked at was the temptation to believe that you are a failure. It’s a lie. Don’t believe it. Believing it leads to the second temptation.

Temptation #2: Allowing a Failure to Spread Its Branches
Once you start to buy into the lie that you yourself are a failure (instead of seeing the truth that you are loved by God who continues to delight in you, despite the fact that you have experienced some things that didn’t work the way you intended), the next step for many is believing that you “can’t do anything right.” The first lie has taken root and has begun to spread its branches into every area of your thinking.

This one always shocks me when someone says it, simply because it’s such a blatant and bogus lie! Of course you can do MANY things right! You probably did a pretty good job at taking a shower and getting dressed this morning! This week you may have cooked some good meals or balanced the checkbook or made a sale or made a good decision. You probably did LOTS of those things and many others very well.

Every professional athlete experiences a “slump” from time to time. Home run king Babe Ruth also held another record — the one for most strike-outs. Thomas Edison tried 5,000 different ideas before he invented a workable light bulb. The prophets Elijah and Jeremiah both despaired that all of their efforts and all of their ministry didn’t produce any change in the lives of those they preached to. Each of these great people, when they were in their slump, could have bought into the lie that they can’t do anything right, but history shows it isn’t true.

If you’re ever tempted to believe this lie, step back and say as Jesus did, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” Then sit down and make a list of ALL the things you did right today. Did you ask for God’s help at all? That’s doing something right. Did you pray or read your Bible? Those are things you did right. Did you call a friend when you were overwhelmed? That was a good decision. The list could go on, of course, but make your own list. Walk through your day in your mind and list everything you did right, even the small things.

I’m serious! Do it! You’ll begin to see that the sentence “I can’t do anything right” is a foolish one.

Six Temptations of Failure, Day 1 of 6

Blogs by nature are generally supposed to be short. I’m not good at that. I’ve written an article that I’m confident is a message that many people need to hear. Rather than subject you to the reading the article as a very long blog, however, I’m breaking it into six smaller blogs.

Now, on to an introduction and temptation #1.

Six Temptations of Failure

Failure. It’s such an “ending word.” At least it sounds that way to me. In God’s economy, though, it is anything but an ending word. It is the beginning of something great that God wants to make out of the situation and those involved in it. God’s Word says:

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.
Romans 8:28 (NRSV)

If you love God and are pursuing His purposes for your life, when you experience failure you can know that God is going to begin to make something good out of the situation. Failure isn’t necessarily from Satan – God allows us to fail to bring about growth in our lives. He uses our failures to teach us things, to conform us to the image of Christ, and to show forth His glory. That’s part of the “good” that God works in our lives.

But when God begins to make something good, we can also know that Satan tries to foil His plans. One of his favorite tactics, especially in failure, is to misdirect God’s people with enticing alternatives. Failure carries with it many temptations, all of which have the potential to stop us in our tracks if we don’t resist them.

Bringing goodness – or even greatness – out of failure is God’s specialty. Bringing defeat and death is Satan’s specialty. Whether we embrace the greatness or the defeat is up to us. In this blog, I hope to debunk many of the temptations the enemy uses to entice us away from God’s plan when we experience failure.

Temptation #1: Believing That You are a Failure
I hope all of you have heard the phrase “failure is an event, not a person.” I’ve heard it from many people, but I think the first was Christian motivational speaker Zig Ziglar. Failure is the event that didn’t go as planned; it is not the person who planned, implemented or participated in the event.

One of the first things Satan throws in our face when we experience a failure is the lie that we are the failure. On the surface it would seem like a hard sell for Satan – after all, who wants to think of themselves as a failure? The truth, though, is that for many of us it’s easier to believe the lie that we are a failure than to hold on to the hope of success. Scripture says “hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Proverbs 13:12). When we experience a failure, it’s easy to lose hope. If we allow the failure to define us instead of applying the word “failure” only to the event, it’s easier to believe that we are the failure instead of holding onto the promise that God has something better for us.

The truth is that God made us uniquely for His purposes. Holding on to His truth requires actively engaging our faith. Believing the lie that we are a failure doesn’t require much of anything from us. Experiencing a failure takes the wind out of our sails and lowers our resistance to temptation. Although it is debilitating and painful, believing the lie can be the path of least resistance. Believing the lie is easier than holding steadfastly to the truth that God has something greater for us. Believing the truth requires that we expend the emotional and spiritual energy to actively engage our faith – to say “God will prevail on my behalf.”

Tomorrow’s Temptation: Allowing a Failure to Spread It’s Branches

Note: you can purchase each of the books discussed in this blog simply by clicking on the name of the book.

Having graduated with my masters a few weeks ago, I have been thinking a lot about “what’s next?” I want to pursue more speaking and writing, but I don’t think that’s the whole picture and I don’t have many answers to that question. I am, comfortable resting in God as He unfolds things before me, yet “what’s next?” keeps reverberating in my mind. It’s created in me a more watchful state about opportunities that might appear on the horizon (at right in front of my nose).

It’s also had me thinking very specifically about what I’d like my life to be. I am regularly and eagerly praying “Lord, Your will, not mine – where can You best use me in Your kingdom,” but I am also thinking through what I would like to do in this next phase of my life and asking God to fulfill those dreams.

With that as a backdrop and having been released from “required reading,” I’ve read three fiction books in the past month (!). Interestingly, each has lent its perspective to the process and has made a strong impression on me. Curiously, I didn’t choose any of these books:

• My husband, Phil, picked the first book – one that had been sitting in our library for quite some time and neither of us had read yet. It didn’t appeal to me at first, so I laid beside my bed and it stayed there several days – until I was leaving for an appointment and wanted to something to read should I have to wait. I quickly grabbed the book and was out the door.
• A few days after finishing that book, I picked up another book at the retreat house I stayed at for a couple of nights. Having read Scripture and a devotional book, meditated, prayed and worshipped, I felt ready for something lighter and found a basket of books. I picked up the one by an author I had read a book by almost thirty years ago.
• Finally, two weeks ago, Phil stopped at a discount store and for only $1.99 they had a copy of the first book in a six-book series by my favorite fiction authors. Who could resist such a bargain! Being side-lined a bit after my knee surgery, I’ve had plenty of time to read it.

I’ve provided this detail because it’s so interesting to me that I truly had little to do with choosing the books I read, and each has challenged me in the same way, while weaving stories across three continents and sixty years.

Can you say “God speaks?” One of the way God speaks to us is by the repetition of a theme – it comes up in a conversation with a friend, then we read an article that touches on the same topic, then our Scripture reading that day reinforces the message…or perhaps we just read three books in a row with the same message. Clearly, God is speaking.

Each of these books has made me very aware of the blessed life I lead and even more aware of how warped my definitions of a “blessed life” and “success” are. But I’ll get to that. First, a little about the books I’ve read:

Safely Home, by Randy Alcorn, was the first book I read. It is a story about a Chinese man, educated in the United States and on the fast track to becoming a professor and famous thinker of his time. He is also a Christian and upon returning home, he finds all opportunities closed to him…except that of a lock maker. He becomes the best lock maker, living a life that challenges the reader to make sense of the world in which we live and the purposes of God in one man’s life. “Is this the day I die?” the lead character asks every day as he lives for eternity instead of for himself.

Secret Believers: What Happens when Muslims Believe in Christ, by Brother Andrew and Al Janssen, is the fictionalized account of real people who live in Muslim countries and come to faith in Christ. How are the people in the story to fulfill their calling to strengthen the Church when it is illegal for the Church to exist? It is a story about how believers live, struggle, and glorify God when the place to which they are called is hostile toward them and their faith.
    
    

Jerusalem Vigil, by Bodie & Brock Thoene. The Thoenes are masterful authors of historical Christian fiction. Jerusalem Vigil is the first book in the Zion Legacy series and begins with the creation of Israel is a nation. Jews and Christians attempt to make their home in the war-torn city of Jerusalem as neighbors on all side seek to destroy the nation before it has a chance to live. It is a gripping novel about the lives of those transplanted from safety to a place requiring all they have to give and more – all the compassion, all the strength, all the love, and most importantly all the faith.

In all cases, the main characters lived with great fear and sadness. In all cases, the main characters redefined for me the phrase “blessed life” and the concept of “success.” Both have little to do with circumstances and everything to do with perspective. I am blessed to serve God in my circumstances. Success is a life lived for God with integrity and purpose…regardless of whether that life is lived out in a place my “dreams” would never take me, or exactly in the place my dreams would take me.

I’m reminded of what Paul said:

²⁰For I live in eager expectation and hope that I will never do anything that causes me shame, but that I will always be bold for Christ, as I have been in the past, and that my life will always honor Christ, whether I live or I die. ²¹For to me, living is for Christ, and dying is even better.
          Philippians 1:20-21 (NLT)

²⁰I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. ²¹For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. 
          Philippians 1:20-21 (NIV)

As I recall, there is also that phrase in the Bible about sharing in Christ’s sufferings:

¹⁷Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
          Romans 8:17 (NIV)

Wow…we are His children IF we share in His sufferings. And sharing in those sufferings is living for Christ, seeing Him exalted in our bodies. Somehow I think that message gets lost in American Christianity. Lord, forgive us.

Can you pray this simple prayer with me?

Lord, continue to shape and mold my understanding of success and blessing. I submit to Your will for my life…where ever it leads.

On Monday, a blog about destiny…..hmmm, I see a theme here!

¹⁸Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison.¹⁹When such a person hears the words of this oath, he invokes a blessing on himself and therefore thinks, “I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way.” This will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry. ²⁰The LORD will never be willing to forgive him; his wrath and zeal will burn against that man. All the curses written in this book will fall upon him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven. ²¹The LORD will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for disaster, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law.
          Deuteronomy 29:18-21

Whew! I read this passage and my first thought was “I need to write a blog about this.” My second thought was…”what in the world would I say?”

You see my first thought came from a place of understanding that many slide backwards in their faith from time to time and the condemnation they feel as they try to come back to the Lord can be great. Let me say here as at the begining, as strongly as I can: If you are on your way back to the Lord, any condemnation you feel is not from the Lord and is totally inappropriate. The Lord is not the author of condemnation, Satan is. The Lord is the author of conviction – that is, bringing about a heartfelt sorrow for our sins that is accompanied by a desire to turn away from those sins and by taking steps to do so. That’s from the Lord. Condemnation, on the other hand, tends to immobilize us in guilt and keep us from taking steps toward reconciliation with God and others. Conviction motivates us to change. Condemnation immobilizes us, keeping us from change.

Yet we read here in Deuteronomy 29 that God will bring disaster on those who have turned away from Him and go their own way to the extent that “the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven.” Where is there room for repentence and reconciliation with God? Where is there room for a renewal in our relationship with God if we have fallen away?

That was my dilemma as I considered blogging about this passage. My goal for ApprehendingGrace.com is to help each of us apprehend – grab hold of – what God has done for us and what He wants to do in us and for us. Where is that message in this chapter? To use King Solomon’s phrase from Ecclesiastes, is my whole purpose just “a chasing after the wind?”

It can’t be. I know that God accepts the prodigal. I know that He watches for the prodigal’s return. Yet somehow it’s not satisfying enough for me to simply explain away this Deuteronomy 29 passage with the often used phrase of “we’re under the New Covenant, the covenant of grace.” Yes, we are under the New Covenant, in which God promises salvation to all who would come to Him in humility and sincerity and ask for His forgiveness of their sins and Lordship in their lives. Still, God’s Word remains true and this passage sure doesn’t seem to provide much wiggle room for anyone who has backslidden.

So you understand my conundrum. My approach was to set all that aside and keep reading. (When in doubt, keep reading. Pause to pray, but keep reading.) Am I glad I did! You see, Deuteronomy 30 is a continuation of Deuteronomy 29. Our chapter divisions weren’t in the original writing and they don’t always seem to make sense. They make it possible to refer to specific portions of Scripture, but we shouldn’t allow verse or chapter divisions interrupt the train of thought of the original writers. Read with me portions of Deuteronomy 30:

¹When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come upon you and you take them to heart wherever the LORD your God disperses you among the nations, ²and when you and your children return to the LORD your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, ³then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. ⁴Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the LORD your God will gather you and bring you back… ⁶The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live….⁹…The LORD will again delight in you and make you prosperous, just as he delighted in your fathers, ¹⁰if you obey the LORD your God and keep his commands and decrees that are written in this Book of the Law and turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
          Deuteronomy 30:1-10

If we turn from God, as described in Deuteronomy 29, God will surely bring those disasters upon us. But when we return to the Lord, He will restore us. It really is as simple as that…and yet it’s not just that simple. It’s really much better than that!

I love so many verses in this passage: “Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back.” No matter how far we have strayed from God, now matter how badly we have been conquered by our enemies, God will meet us in that place and will gather us in His arms and bring us back. Wow! He will bring us back. I play a role, of course – I have to determine in my heart to love God and obey Him. But having done that, He will bring me back. He will do the heavy lifting. He will conquer the foes who have conquered me during my time of disobedience. Hallelujah! What a gracious God we serve.

Not only will He bring me back, He will circumcise my heart so that I am able to love Him all the more. Further, He will take delight in me. The word translated “take delight” is literally “rejoice over” or “take great joy because of.” It totally blows me away that the Creator of all things we see (and don’t see) around us and of every distant galaxy and star, the King above all kings, the One who holds the universe together, will be delighted in me. He will take great joy because of my love for Him. If we could truly grab hold of just this last point, our lives would be revolutionized. Why should I care what opinions others hold of me? Why should I become discouraged because I can’t do all that I’d like to do? Why should I…? I shouldn’t. The King of Glory delights in me simply because I love Him.

Oh, Lord, may all who read this know that they know that they know how much you love them. And may You circumcise our hearts that we may love You more.

²⁰But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?” ²¹Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?
          Romans 9:20-21

³For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.⁴Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function,⁵so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.⁶We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith.⁷If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach;⁸if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.
          Romans 12:3-8

Are you happy with the way God made you? Or do you long for a better singing voice, or greater organizational skills. Do you wish you had curly hair or straight hair or more hair? In my family, my siblings always thought I had all the brains and I always thought they had all the common sense. None of us were happy with the way God had created us. (Now just for the record, I didn’t get all the brains and they didn’t get all the common sense. I’ve come to understand that as an adult, but childhood images of one’s self can be hard to shed.)

God has created each of us uniquely to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us. He has custom-made us to fill the hole in the universe that He created for us to fill. If we don’t fill it, it will just be a void – a place in time and space that is empty, waiting for the perfect fit to come and fill it.

We have such a tendency to be dissatisfied with ourselves, when what we ought to do is celebrate that we are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God for His purposes (Psalm 139:14, Genesis 1:27, Ephesians 2:10).

I cannot fulfill God’s purposes for me when I am wishing I were or trying to be someone else. That either makes it really crowded in the space that God’s created for them or makes my space seem ill-fitting. But when I celebrate and grow in the person God has made me to be, my space begins to feel just right for me. In fact, my space probably expands a bit because I fill it so well.

How insidious is this desire to be other than we are! While writing this blog I began to look up a Scripture. It was the Ephesians passage I referenced above. But I didn’t know it was in Ephesians. So I started using the search feature in my Bible software. In the meantime, I asked my husband for help. He immediately gave me the reference I was looking for. The words that came out of my mouth next are the exact opposite of what this blog is about! Aargh! I immediately said, “I wish I could do that.” Well, yes, it would be nice to have the recall of Scripture that my husband has. But God hasn’t wired me that way. I have read and studied Scripture as much as he has. I have applied myself to memorizing it as he has. But unless I continually review those memorized passages they are easily lost from the front of my mind. He, on the other hand, has probably not reviewed Ephesians 2:10 lately. He just learned it once and now he knows it. He just knows where to find whatever it is he is looking for. And the truth is I’m jealous of him because I have to research to find those passages that I already know or once knew. I need to keep a good concordance or search feature nearby. Does that make him smarter than me? No, it just means he was created differently and for different purposes. And instead of wishing I were like him, I want to pursue the place God has uniquely created me for.

There is a flip side to all of this. Just as we ought to celebrate and grow into the person God created us to be, we ought to be very careful to not try to fit anyone else into a slot that God has not created for them. Phil and I served as co-pastors for a short time. We work very well together. Where one of us is strong, the other is weak and vice versa. We submit to one another according to our areas of strengths and God’s leading. During the time that we were pastors, our supervisors tried to force each of us into roles for which we were not created – roles in each of our areas of weakness. It made for an exceedingly difficult experience for all of us. In fact, the affect it had on Phil and I was that it made us feel like failures and doubt the abilities God has given us. We were not, in fact, failures. We were just the proverbial square pegs being required to fill the round holes. Had we been given the freedom to let Phil fill the holes that he was created to fill and me fill the holes that I was created to fill, the needs of the church would have been met as God intended them to be.

When we force someone into a role that God has not designed them to fill, we not only are working against the plan of God for that person’s life, but we are assisting in making them ineffective for the Kingdom of God. As a coach, we ought to look for the best in each person, celebrate it, water it and nurture it.

So this week, my goal is to do just that – in myself and in others. Lord, let me celebrate the woman you have made me to be, trusting that you have created a perfect hole for me to fill. Let me also see others as You see them, celebrate who they are, and encourage them to grow into the person you’ve designed them to be.

I invite you to join me in celebrating God’s creation – you, me and those around us – uniquely created to fulfill God’s purposes.

He does not need to transplant us into a different field, but right where we are, with just the circumstances that surround us, He makes His sun to shine and His dew to fall upon us, and transforms the very things that were before our greatest hindrances into the chiefest and most blessed means of our growth. No difficulties in our case can baffle him. No dwarfing of your growth in years that are past, no apparent dryness of your inward springs of life, no crookedness or deformity in any of your past development, can in the least mar the perfect work that He will accomplish, if you will only put yourselves absolutely into His hands and let Him have His own way with you.
                                         Hannah Whitall Smith (1832-1911)

Quoted from page 45 of The NIV Worship Study Bible; published by Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, MI; copyright 2000 by The Corinthian Group, Inc., Dana Point, CA.