Sermon: Strategies for Interfacing with Babylon Without Becoming Assimilated (Part Six)
Prepare Now for Failure Dealing with Obstacles, Setbacks and Detours
#1795B
David F. Maas
Given 14-Dec-24; 39 minutes
description: (hide) We must embrace failure as a tool for spiritual growth. Scriptures from the Psalms, Proverbs, Romans, and James illustrate that trials and failures are essential in shaping character, building faith, and reinforcing dependence on God. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford discovered that all failure can be considered steppingstones to ultimate success. While God allows His people to experience failure, He realizes that through mistakes they develop iron clad godly character. If God's people can monitor these failures and spiritual nose dives through a prayer journal, they can assess strategies to get back in sync with God's purpose for their lives. Believers need to anticipate inevitable failure, accepting it as a part of God's plan, using it to refine their character and strengthen their faith.
transcript:
Greetings brothers and sisters from Colton, California, at the crossroads of the mighty California inland empire.
Psalm 37:23-24 The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD, and He delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; for the LORD upholds him with His hand.
The Amplified edition adds the following details: “The steps of a [good and righteous] man are directed and established by the LORD, and He delights in his way [and blesses his path]. When he falls, he will not be hurled down, because the LORD is the One who holds his hand and sustains him.”
Let us go to Proverbs 24:16 where David’s son Solomon echoes this important principle:
Proverbs 24:16 For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked shall fall by calamity.
The Amplified edition offers these additional significant details: “For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises again, but the wicked stumble in time of disaster and collapse.” Solomon, in this verse, differentiates the pathways of those who live their lives focused over the sun with those who live their lives under the sun. As Richard implied last Sabbath, both groups of people—God’s called-out ones as well as the rest of humankind—have plenty to learn from Solomon’s wisdom, from the second wisest man who ever lived, attaining his wisdom from multiple mistakes and nosedives as well as spiritually mature choices. Please turn over to another of Solomon’s gems of distilled wisdom.
Proverbs 16:3 Commit your works to the LORD, and your thoughts will be established.
Proverbs 16:9 A man’s heart plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps.
The Amplified enlarges on this concept: “A man’s mind plans his way [as he journeys through life], but the LORD directs his steps and establishes them.”
This verse brings to my imagination Almighty God’s role as a protective parent, picking up his mistake-prone offspring as they skin their knees and bloody their noses, at times forcefully pulling them back from foolish and rash decisions. We parents understand that our children will inevitably stumble and fall 70 x 7 times—to the 70th power. Making mistakes and solving problems has been the lot of all of God’s called out spiritual children, but unlike most of mankind living under the sun, God’s saints must pass the spiritual tests of the spiritual curricula, becoming problem solvers and building godly character—as Richard pointed out last week, the most difficult task we will ever encounter.
Without the Ephesians 1:13-14 impregnation of God’s precious Holy Spirit deep within our nervous systems, we, as God’s called-out saints, are hopelessly vulnerable and helpless, prone to continually fail. But if we do not use this precious resource, we are like the hapless individual who put his hand to the plow and looked back (Luke 9:62). I have learned over the years that one of the things God detests is spiritual timidity or failing to use the spiritual gifts He has awarded us, failing to edify our spiritual siblings.
As God’s children, we must value the lessons we learn from failing continually, with the goal of attaining unshakable, unflappable, inflexible, unwavering godly character—the only thing we will take through the grave.
Back in 1966, I prepared a speech for Spokesman’s Club Ladies Night in Minneapolis. I tried to memorize it verbatim, basing the idea on an April-May 1966 article written by one of my former colleagues, Dale Schurter, entitled “Prepare for Famine” (available now in the Herbert W. Armstrong virtual library), urging that God’s people take concrete precautions for a potential coming world famine. I decided to put a clever twist on this subject, urging God’s people to prepare for obstacles, failures, and mistakes, developing a plan B for recovering from certain, inevitable downfalls common to all of God’s called-out saints.
Five minutes into the speech I started to develop the same kind of panicky feelings as the apostle Peter, when he saw the rising whitecaps on the Sea of Galilee. Embarrassed beyond measure, I had to leave the podium prematurely, and later hear Sherwin McMichael’s detailed autopsy of what he termed “the failure.” Since that time, I have experienced many more embarrassing nosedives which I thought I would never live down. The biggest mistakes and blunders in my continuing conversion process occurred after my John 6:44 calling and baptism.
God has given all of us minds enabling us to think, plan, and to evaluate, but He does not always give us charge over the outcome of our plans. Proverbs 16:9 says, “A man’s heart plans his ways, but the LORD directs his steps.” Sometimes those steps move sideways, or backwards over a circuitous detour (as he led our bewildered and confused forebears on the Sinai). Sometimes God steers us away from horrendous unseen obstacles while we mistakenly think He is thwarting us or not answering our prayers. Proverbs 16:25 (repeating Proverbs 14:12) suggests, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”
Is it possible that if we always received what we prayed for and set our minds upon, it would lead to death? Jeremiah 10:23 affirms, “O LORD, I know the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.” He implies that without God, man’s plans (without the protective guidance of His Holy Spirit) end in failure and ruin.
Many individuals have come to realize this important lesson. Swedish composer Hilding Rosenberg once told conductor Herbert Blomstedt, “I have learned over the years sometimes to have more gratitude for the things that did not come my way.” Often the reason they do not come our way is because something better is coming around the corner. A former dean of faculty at a Midwestern university, Dr. Anthony Forbes, once stated, “Every experience, good or bad, when probably evaluated, can become the starting point for greater growth.” The key factor in enhancing growth is evaluation, assessment, and appraisal of experiences. When God gives us detours or when we fall on our nose, we must learn to evaluate or appraise these vital point events and seek to learn valuable lessons from them.
Back in the spring of 1986, Jack Bulharowski gave an insightful speech to the North Hollywood Graduate Club, explaining how he systematically put together a written log after each airplane flight, noting the things that went right and the things that went wrong, providing valuable, accumulative, inductive data which could possibly save his life and the lives of his passengers on future flights.
This insightful message, coupled with an inspiring article by Blair Lamb, titled, “Why Should You Write Your prayers” (accompanied by many personal excerpts) published in the December 4, 2014 blairblogs.com, triggered a burning desire to experiment with my own electronic prayer log, beginning in the spring of 2018, right after Passover, systematically assessing the roller coaster ups and downs of the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes grueling, sometimes downright frightening sanctification process, including how daily prayer petitions were answered in the affirmative or perhaps scuttled for a superior and wiser solution, more closely aligned to the will of God. I am now in the seventh year of electronic journal-keeping, along with the already established habit of daily journal writing since the fall of 1971, 53 years ago.
Writing down our prayers and God’s responses helps us to better remember, providing a valuable record we can go back and refer to later. In my daily electronic prayer journal, I color the urgent plaintive petitions in red, what I consider affirmative responses in green, and purple for the frequent Proverbs 16:9 adjustments and detours. The purple roadblocks, obstacles, or detours provide necessary insightful data as to how I can re-align my spiritual trek with Almighty God’s purpose.
In this sixth installment of “Strategies for Interfacing Babylon Without Becoming Assimilated,” titled: “Prepare Now for Failure: Dealing with Obstacles, Setbacks, and Detours” my specific purpose is to persuade God’s people to enthusiastically embrace failure and nosedives as necessary prerequisites for both physical growth under the sun and spiritual growth—over the sun.
The apostle Paul assures God’s people experience the same trials, tests, and temptations which are the common property of all mankind. Permit me to read I Corinthians 10:13 from the Amplified Classic Edition:
I Corinthians 10:13 For no temptation (no trial regarded as enticing to sin) [no matter how it comes or where it leads] has overtaken you and laid hold on you that is not common to man [that is, no temptation or trial has come to you that is beyond human resistance and that is not adjusted and adapted and belonging to human experience, and such as man can bear]. But God is faithful to His Word and to His compassionate nature not to let you be tempted and tried and assayed beyond your ability and strength of resistance and power to endure, but with the temptation He will [always] also provide the way out (the means of escape to a landing place), that you may be capable and strong and powerful to bear up under it patiently.
The apostle Peter adds further encouragement, assuring us that fiery trials purify and strengthen our faith. In I Peter 4:12, we are cautioned not to be “surprised at the fiery ordeal which is taking place to test us [that is, to test the quality of our faith], as though something strange or unusual were happening to us.” Earlier in this epistle, he assured God’s people “that [the genuineness] of our faith may be tested, [our faith] which is infinitely more precious than the perishable gold which is tested and purified by fire. [This proving of our faith is intended]to redound to [our] praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) is revealed” (I Peter 1:7 Amplified Classic Edition).
In Jesus Christ’s parable of the clever servant in Luke 16, He stated that the people of this world are shrewder in dealing with their contemporaries than the people of light. Even though God has selected the foolish, lowly, and undistinguished people of the world (I Corinthians 1:27-31), He insists that His chosen people increase their wisdom and savvy by continually exercising the earnest payment of His Holy Spirit.
Significant people of the world have learned to successfully cope with failure, absorbing the lessons as steppingstones to greater success. In his June 12, 2020, article in Panorama Magazine, “Failure Can Make You Stronger,” Grant J. Everett proclaimed that “Perfecting a skill through trial and error—whether it’s cooking, building something with our hands, tuning a car or anything else—is different to falling flat on your face. It took Thomas Edison 3,000 attempts to create what has become the modern light bulb and his legendary grit only made his success more satisfying— and inspirational. Edison approached this project with the mindset that each setback was simply an opportunity to refine his ideas. If his plan had been to complete the project by lunchtime, then he may have given up, like many of his contemporaries.” Similarly, Soichiro Honda, founder of the Honda Motor Company proclaimed that “Success is 99% failure.”
In her May 21, 2023 article, “Ten Signs That Failure is Actually a Blessing in Disguise,” Kristen Butler asserts that Henry Ford’s failures led to better car designs, stating “we may be shocked to learn that Ford’s first company failed, as did his second, and even his third automobile line. He was rattled by consumers’ complaints and nearly lost his business trying to figure out the problems with the vehicles. The beauty of all of this was that he built a product that he was confident in because he dedicated so much time and effort. When he finally worked out all the kinks, Ford was sure that he would be successful, and he was. We learn to build confidence in ourselves when we pick ourselves up and do what needs to be done to save our sanity.
Winston Churchill, perhaps the greatest orator of the English language, credited his remedial class instructor, Robert Somerville, who thoroughly drilled him in the patterns and structure of grammar, rhetoric, and composition, reminiscent of Professor Higgins drilling of Eliza Dolittle.
In preparing for this message, I discovered a plethora of articles focusing on the subject that failure, roadblocks, and detours can be considered a blessing in disguise, including:
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Failure Can Make You Stronger by Grant J. Everett Panorama Magazine, June 12, 2020
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God is Ordering Your Steps—If You Let Him by Jennifer Leclaire
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Reasons to Trust God in the Detours of Our Lives by Kristen Wetherell
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When Life Gives You Detours by Dr. Tony Evens October 29, 2018
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Discovering God in the Detour by Ron Bennett
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Ten Signs that Failure is Actually a Blessing in Disguise by Kristen Butler May 21, 2023
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Ten Hidden Blessings in Failure by Steve Mueller February 8, 2020
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Recognizing and Appreciating Blessings in Disguise by J. Marie Novak May 2, 2024
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Failure: Blessing in Disguise by Tiffani Tirta Chanjaja
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Overcoming Obstacles in Your Spiritual Battle by Emmanuel Abimola
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Twelve Lessons from Paul on Persevering Through Adversity by Jannah Esplanada.
I have endeavored to distill the four most significant commonalities of these articles and fortify them with scriptural support. In his informative article, “Overcoming Obstacles in your Spiritual Battle,” Emmanuel Abimola declares that:
1. God allows obstacles in our lives to shape our character and cleanse our motives.
Romans 5:3-4 (AMP) And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance, and perseverance character, and character hope. And endurance (fortitude) develops maturity of character (approved faith and tried integrity. And character [of this sort] produces [the habit of] joyful and confident hope of eternal salvation.
The Amplified Classic Edition offers the additional details: “Moreover let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance.” The apostle Paul proclaims in this passage that God purposely uses failure to build our character. Failure does not automatically grow our character until we view it with the right over the sun perspective, proactively responding to it correctly and ascertain God’s purpose for it and yielding to the results.
2. God purposely allows obstacles and trials so we can develop faith in His perfect timing, just as Father Abraham and Mother Sarah had to learn to avoid the tragic shortcuts that has led to a permanent state of war in the Middle East.
The apostle Paul encourages all of God’s saints to “not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up,” assuring believers that if they remain steadfast and patient, that plodding perseverance in good works will lead to a reward in God’s timing (Galatians 6:9).
Jesus’ half-brother James used the analogy of a farmer patiently waiting for a crop, proclaiming, “See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains,” illustrating the need for patience as we, as God’s called-out saints, await God’s blessings and ultimate fulfilment of His plans (James 5:7-8). Earlier in his epistle he had counseled us to learn to profit from trials, proclaiming, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing (James 1:2-4). We have in essence climbed the summit of the ascending fruits of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23, the iron clad self-control of godly character.
3. God uses our failures to enable us to see our sin and feel the dreadful painful consequences so that we may intensely hate sin and law-breaking of all kinds. The holy and spiritual law represent God’s immutable and our future DNA as spirit beings and offspring of Almighty God.
Psalm 97:10 teaches that those who profess to love the Lord must hate evil or law breaking as a prerequisite for being delivered out of the land of the wicked. The Amplified Classic Edition renders this passage: Psalm 97:10 says, “O you who love the Lord, hate evil [not embrace it as the woke politicians in the land of Jacob’s offspring have done]; He (Almighty God) preserves the lives of His saints (the children of God), He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked.”
Proverbs 8:13 echoes the same sentiment, proclaiming “The fear of the LORD is to hate [and utterly detest] evil; pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth I hate.”
In Amos 5:15, we learn that the receiving of God’s grace is contingent upon hating evil and law-breaking. Let me read this passage from the Amplified Edition: “Hate evil and love good and establish justice in the [court of the city] gate. Perhaps the LORD God of hosts will be gracious to the remnant of the Joseph [that is, those who remain after God’s judgement].”
Sadly, during these past four years, the governments of the offspring of Jacob have been cursed because dominant political parties in the United States, Canada, Britain, and New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, at least until recently, have embraced laws praising deplorable sexual perversion and infanticide. Despite some hope for change and repentance, evil is the default mechanism on the mind of the flesh, common human nature is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can it be.
Every departure I have ever made from God’s law (sins I have committed or mistakes I have made 50 or more years ago) has led to immense pain and hurt which has endured a lifetime and will for the most part be with me until my death. As I have stated in previous messages, Dave Maas has not lived a charmed life, but neither has Austin Del Castillo, my spouse Julie, or all our beloved siblings out in Phoenix, Fort Mill, Louisburg, or Cincinnati. Looking at the continual prayer requests on the website, I would prefer not to trade trials with any sibling in Christ.
Let it suffice to say that we have endured health problems such as diabetes, cancer, or heart disease, some of us have been injured in car accidents or industrial accidents (I have been struck twice as a pedestrian and have metal hardware in my bones as a result). We have endured financial setbacks and losing jobs because of the Sabbath. Many have lost spouses to death and divorce. I think the most dreadful trial I have endured in my tenure in God’s church is the loss of my precious firstborn son Michael.
If I had known what would occur after 58 years, I may have been more cautious in counting the cost before my baptism in 1966. The multiple roadblocks, detours, and setbacks have forced a continual recounting of the cost which seems too expensive to continue. Foresight is 20/400 while hindsight is 20/20, or as I can say after my cataract operation four years ago, 10/15—able to see small print on a pill bottle and long distance, across the Mojave and Sonora deserts, sighting ocotillos and saguaro cactuses from miles away.
The final but most important point of why God allows failure, obstacles, roadblocks or detours is that:
4. When we fail, we finally realize how desperately we need Almighty God, having hit rock bottom we come to the end of our own puny resources (or as Bill Onisick pointed out our own puny faith) and are forced to cry out for help, leading God to draw us closer to himself. If failure was not continually present in our lives, we would see no need to draw closer to our Lord, Savior, and Bridegroom because we mistakenly think everything is fine and dandy in our lives.
But thankfully, when failure will inevitably come, it reminds us that we need God’s help and grace to accomplish certain things in our lives which we cannot in our own strength. Please turn to Zechariah 4 as we begin to wrap this message up. Please permit me to read this passage from the Amplified Edition.
Zechariah 4:6 Then he [the angel sent from the Lord] said to me, “This [continuous supply of oil] is the word of the Lord [which all of you have on your laps in front of you] to Zerubbabel [prince of Judah], saying, ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit [of whom the oil is a symbol], says the LORD of hosts.
DFM/jjm/drm