“Cage of Failure”

from the book "Wild Goose Chase" by Mark Batterson

Sunday, November 14, 2010: Acts 28:1-10

Introduction: FAILURE. It is part of life. Maybe when you were a kid you got picked last to play a game, and it felt like failure. Maybe you got an “F” on a test. Maybe you felt like you failed when someone broke up with you. So many events in life can end up in what feels like failure. The question is, how will we respond after we have experienced this failure?

Up to this point in our series we have talked about 4 of the 6 cages that can entrap us: the Cage of Responsibility, the Cage of Routine, the Cage of Assump-tions, and then last week we talked about the Cage of Guilt. Today we are going to talk about the Cage of Failure. I think this is where many people can be tripped up spiritually. It is challenging to deal with failure; people don’t like to fail. Maybe it is a failed relationship, or you have failed at a job, or have had some kind of moral failure. The problem with failure, is that when we fail, we feel like we are the only one who has failed. The good news, is that at some point in life, we all have failed in some way. Let’s talk about how we can keep from letting this be a cage in our lives.

I. Divine Destinations- (Acts 28:1-10; Romans 8:28)

a. Setting up the story- Today we are going to focus on the book of

Acts, chapter 28. Let me set the stage: Paul is a prisoner on board a ship bound for Rome, and for about two weeks, they experienced the perfect storm, and finally their ship sinks. It crashes on some rocks. But just as Paul had prophesied to the captain of the ship, not one prisoner or one sailor loses their life. Everybody makes it to shore and I’m sure Paul is wet and hungry and exhausted and that’s where we pick up the story in Acts 28, verse 1, and let’s read up to verse 4: “Once safely on shore, we found out that the island was called Malta. The islanders showed us an unusual kindness. They built a fire and welcomed us all because it was raining and cold. Paul gathered a pile of brushwood and as he put it on the fire, a viper snake, driven out by the heat, fasten itself on his hand. When the islanders saw the snake hanging from his hand, they said to each other, ‘This man must be a murderer, for though he escaped from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live.’”

If you were on a ship, and it shipwrecked, that would qualify as a failure. You would not be arriving at your intended destination. Then on top of that, we see that Paul gets bitten by a viper snake. This is not a good day for Paul. At this point, Paul could have developed a ‘victim mentality.’ He could have felt ‘woe is me.’ He could have asked God: “God, if I’m going to die by a snakebite, why didn’t you just have me drown at sea?”

But like Paul, we need to see these situations as opportunities for God to glorify Himself in a unique way, and that’s what’s about to happen. God is able to turn shipwrecks and snakebites into supernatural synchronicities that serve His purposes. Let’s continue the story in verse 5, all the way to verse 10: “But Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects. The people expected him to swell up or suddenly fall dead, but after waiting a long time and seeing nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and said he was a god. There was an estate nearby that belonged to Publius, the chief official of the island. He welcomed us to his home and for three days entertained us hospitably. His father was sick in bed, suffering from fever and dysentery. Paul went in to see him and, after prayer, placed his hands on him and healed him. When this had happened, the rest of the sick on the island came and were cured. They honored us in many ways and when we were ready to sail, they furnished us with the supplies we needed.”

b. Turning failure into victory- Let me state the obvious, Paul and Publius should have never met. Malta wasn’t even on Paul’s itinerary. And if Paul, who was a prisoner of the Romans, had requested a meeting with the chief official of Malta, do you think that would have happened? There is no way that meeting is going to happen. It took a shipwreck to strategically position Paul at this exact latitude and longitude, and it took a snakebite to set up this DIVINE APPOINTMENT with Publius. The shipwreck and the snakebite weren’t part of Paul’s plan, but when you chase the Wild Goose, God may just use a shipwreck or a snakebite to set up an island-wide revival.

Only God could orchestrate these kinds of circumstances. As you read the Book of Acts, you discover that some of Paul’s destinations were planned, but many of them weren’t on Paul’s itinerary. For example, Paul ended up in Athens because a Jewish mob in Thessalonica ran him out of town. Paul traveled to Troas because the door was closed to Bethinia, and of course Paul landed in Malta because his ship sank in the Mediterranean. Athens, Troas and Malta weren’t places that Paul planned on going, they were detours. But I might suggest that they were divine detours. They weren’t part of Paul’s plan but God used what seemed like detours, what seemed like failures, to strategically position Paul right where He wanted him.

Does your life bear witness to what I’m talking about? Have you ever experienced an event like a shipwreck or a snakebite? When it happens, it is disorienting, it is painful, and you wonder, ‘why am I going through this?’ and it is only afterwards that you see how God used that event to get you where He wanted you to go. The truth is, if the plans I had made had succeeded when I went to Colorado, I would not be here right now. I always felt that God was calling me to Colorado, and so when I got the opportunity, I went. But it didn’t work out; it seemed like a failure. But God used that experience to prepare me for what I would do here at Community Presbyterian Church in Long Beach. God had other plans. It took that closed door to open the one He wanted for me.

Here’s the deal, when things happen in our lives that are jarring or disorienting, a shipwreck or a snakebite, it rattles the cage. You get a bad diagnosis or a pink slip or divorce papers and what happens is those things cause the compass needle to spin in our lives and we’re wondering which way is up? What is God doing? But I think it is in those situations that we need to realize that the Bible says it rains on the just and the unjust. Bad things do happen to good people, but here’s the good news, as Paul reminds us in Romans 8:28- “All things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to His purpose. It is not that we are immune to all these things that happen, it is that God can use them for His purposes and that’s what we hang onto.

II. Getting us to where God wants- (Proverbs 16:9)-

a. Hanging in there- If you imagine the scene after the ship was wrecked, you might be able to imagine Paul hanging onto driftwood in the Mediterranean until they finally make it to shore. And by the way, sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is hang in there. It might not feel like it when you are just hanging on, but the more theological word for it is PERSEVERANCE.

Sometimes the worst thing that happens to us can turn out to be the best thing that happens to us, because God has a way of using those things to lay a foundation in our lives and to prepare us for what He wants.

Sometimes we get so focused on trying to get where God wants us to go that we totally forget that God is far more concerned with who we are becoming in the process. God is going to get you where God wants you to go. That is God fulfilling His will! But He’s not going to get you there until you are ready to get there, and who you are becoming is far more important than where you are going. So it is in these situations that God is working His purposes in our lives.

Illustration: In 1809, he was born into poverty in a one-room log cabin, 16 by 18 feet. In 1816, his family was evicted from their home and he had to work to support them. In 1818, his mother died. In 1831, he failed in business. In 1832, he ran for the state legislature and lost. In 1832, he lost his job and wanted to go to law school but couldn’t get in. In 1833, he borrowed money to start a business and was bankrupt by the end of the year. He spent the next 17 years of his life paying off that debt. In 1835, he was engaged to be married but his sweetheart died and his heart was broken. It was devastating to him. In 1836, he had a total nervous breakdown and was in bed for the next six months. In 1843, he ran for Congress and lost. In 1849, he sought the job of land officer in his home state and was rejected. In 1854, he ran for the Senate and lost. In 1856, he sought the vice presidential nomination at his party’s national convention, and got less than 100 votes. In 1858, he ran for the US Senate again and lost again. So let’s make a summary of this: poverty, eviction, mother dying early in his life, failing a business, losing his job, losing several times while running for public office, having his fiancée die, a nervous breakdown…There are many people who would have given up any hope of succeeding at anything with far less happening…..BUT, in 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States of America.

Talk about the cage of failure! If anybody should have gotten stuck in that cage it would have been Abraham Lincoln!

b. The assistance of the Divine Being- If you were to read the

biographies of Abraham Lincoln, you would see that he was a tortured soul. He led a very tough life; a life full of setbacks and sufferings and failures, but those things prepared him for this thing called the Civil War, and if it weren’t for Abraham Lincoln, we might have just had 2 elections instead of one! Martin Luther King once said, “What does not destroy me makes me stronger.” Lincoln lost 40 pounds while he was in office. He hardly slept. When his son died, he became incoherent and could hardly discharge his duties. Dale Carnegie, in his biography said, “Year by year, his laughter had grown less frequent, the furrows in his face had deepened, his shoulders had stooped, his cheeks were sunken, he suffered from chronic indigestion, his legs were always cold, he would hardly sleep, he wrote habitually on his face the look of anguish.”

So what do you think kept him going? What allowed him to survive the personal and national crisis that he was at the center of? I think a lot of it is that he never lost his sense of destiny. It is very hard to know what was going through the mind of someone that lived 150 years ago, but his speech before he came to take office in DC I think is revealing. He said, “I now leave not knowing when or whether ever I may return with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being whoever attended him, (referring to the God that Washington worshipped,) without the assistance of that Divine Being, whoever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail.” Those may be some of the most profound historical words in our country’s history: Without God’s assistance, I cannot succeed. With His assistance, I cannot fail. I think there is this sense of destiny. And I think it is the thing that kept him going, and needs to keep us going.

Here’s a question: Are any of you control freaks? I know that in many areas of my life, and my family’s life, I am a control freak. It is human nature to want to control our environment, our relationships, our life! But the truth is, that is hard to admit, we don’t have control over a lot of things. You are not in control, and that can stress you out until the day Jesus returns. OR, I think you can get a little bit of perspective and not let it stress you out.

Let me tell you something that hopefully will help to take a little pressure off of us. If you think that one misstep, one mistake, one failure can frustrate the providential plan of Almighty God, then your God is way too small. I’m amazed at my ability to put myself on par with God and think that somehow, I can frustrate His omnipotent plan. God is bigger than that. I think the Wild Goose chase, this great spiritual adventure, is about living that life that we’ve been called to, but even more it is a celebration of the sovereignty of God. Proverbs 16:9 tells us, “In his heart a man plans his course but God orders his footsteps.”

Stop for a moment and take a deep breath. Now take one more. For many, this seems to be a silly exercise, but the truth is, it really helps to recalibrate us physiologically. It helps to relax us a bit. It helps us to slow down our thinking and our planning. When in the middle of a shipwreck, or when in the middle of a snakebite, the best thing to do is to remind ourselves that God is ordering our footsteps and no matter how difficult it gets, no matter how frustrating, no matter how disorienting, we need to remind ourselves that God is sovereign.

III. Sense of Destiny- (John 3:8)

a. Out of your control- When we remember this truth, that God is

sovereign, then we can indeed have a sense of destiny about our lives. At just the right time, God will reveal the next part of His plan for us. He probably won’t reveal a lot of the plan, just enough to keep us moving forward, just enough to keep us guessing, just enough to keep us trusting in Him! God always has ulterior motives. There are always reasons that we are unaware of, and that again can be a little stressful to us, but isn’t it great that we have a heavenly Father that always has our best interests at heart. Sure, it might involve some things that are painful or difficult, but the truth is, that’s how God gets us where He wants us to go. God always has omniscient reasons that we are unaware of. I mean, as the ship was going down, as the snake was biting his hand, Paul had to just throw his hands up in the air and say, ‘God where are You and what are You doing?’ I think God probably would have said, ‘Hang in there a little bit longer Paul because I want you to meet this guy named Publius. In fact, his dad has dysentery and you need to go heal him and guess what, everybody on the island is going to come to you and you are going to have a captive audience and the gospel, the good news, is going to spread over an entire island because of what you are experiencing.’

Things are going to happen beyond your control. You might lose a job, someone might break up with you, economic issues may come about, you may receive a bad diagnosis. Things are going to happen that you can’t control.

b. God’s plan revealed- In John chapter 3, verse 8, Jesus said this:

“The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear it’s sound but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” In other words, if you are born of the Spirit, if you put your faith in Christ, the Spirit of God takes up residence in your life, you begin that Wild Goose chase, and what happens is this—you aren’t going to know where you are going or what is coming most of the time, and that’s a good thing! It’s right where God wants you to be. See Jesus likened the workings of the Wild Goose to the wind. Sometimes it is a light wind, and sometimes it is gale force winds in our face. Think about this, resisting the Wild Goose is like spitting into the wind. So what you need to do is, you need to begin to cultivate that moment-by-moment sensitivity to the Spirit of God.

Let me tell you a CLOSING STORY and then I want to share one last promise with you.

STORY- In 1921, the Philadelphia Church in Stockholm, Sweden sent a couple of missionaries by the names of Mr. And Mrs. Flood, to the Congo, (which is modern day Zaire), and they went with their one-year-old son, and their project was to set up a missionary compound in the jungle. In fact, they used machetes to get back into the area where they were going. Their first year there, they didn’t see a single convert, the area was very hostile. They actually went with another missionary couple named the Ericsons. The truth is, people looked to the medicine man and to witchcraft for spiritual guidance, but there was one little five-year-old boy that used to come to the back door of the Flood’s house and he would sell chickens and everyday, Mrs. Flood would tell him about the love of Jesus. Shortly after he started coming to their house, Mrs. Flood gave birth to their second child, a little girl named Aggie, and 17 days after she gave birth, Mrs. Flood died and Mr. Flood was absolutely broken. He decided to take his son back to Sweden and gave Aggie to the Ericsons, and left and never returned to Africa. The Ericsons raised Aggie for a couple of years. She was their only child. Then when Aggie was about three years old, Mrs. Ericson died. Mr. Ericson lost it emotionally and spiritually and he gave Aggie to two American missionaries named Arthur and Anna Burge, and three days later, Mr. Ericson died. It was later discovered that the villagers had poisoned him to death. The Burges then returned to America and pastored a church in South Dakota and Aggie grew up and eventually attended Central Bible College and it was there that she met D.V. Hurt and got married. NOW STICK WITH ME HERE, BECAUSE THERE IS A PROFOUND POINT TO BE MADE!

Eventually D.V. Hurst went on to be President of Northwestern Bible College. Now, fast forward 30 years… D.V. and Aggie Hurst attended the World Pentecostal Conference in London, England. About 10,000 delegates from around the world were gathered at Royal Prince Albert Hall and one of the speakers that night was Ruhigita Ndagora, the Superintendent of the Pentecostal Church in Zaire where Aggie’s parents had been missionaries. And he informed the audience that night that there were hundreds of churches and 110,000 baptized followers of Christ in Zaire. And as he spoke, Aggie did a little mental calculating and afterwards, spoke to him through an interpreter and she asked if he knew of the village where she had been born, and he said he grew up in that village. In fact, he said, ‘I used to go to the back door of the Flood’s house and sell chickens and she would tell me about Jesus, and one day I accepted Christ.’ He said, “Shortly after that, he died and her husband and son left and she had a little girl named Aggie and I’ve always wondered what happened to her.” Through the interpreter, Aggie said, “I’m her.” And he began to sob uncontrollably. They embraced, held each other for several minutes and finally he said, ‘Just a few months ago, I placed flowers on your mother’s graVe on behalf of the hundreds of churches and thousands of believers in Zaire. Thank you for letting your mother die so that so many of us could live.’ WOW!!

Conclusion: YOU NEVER KNOW HOW, WHAT MIGHT SEEM LIKE A COMPLETE FAILURE, IS SOMETHING GOD TURNS INTO A GREAT ACCOMPLISHMENT. God has the ability to turn our failures into someone else’s miracle. Isn’t that what He did with Paul? Shipwreck, snakebite, but it turned into a miracle for everybody on that island. The shipwreck, to Paul, seemed to be a complete failed mission, but you never know how God is going to turn it around and use it for His purposes. Romans 8:28 says, “We know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose. For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to His likeness, the likeness of His Son so that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.” You are going to experience some shipwrecks and some snakebites along the way. Failure is part of life. But I want to remind you that God is going to get you where God wants you to go. More importantly, He is going to make sure that you become who He wants you to be in the process. And if there, through the shipwrecks and the snakebites, you actually become more like Christ, then you will have not experienced failure in your life. Those things can’t cage you, they actually become the platform for what God wants to do in your life.

You know what the enemy is going to do, when you experience another failure, the enemy is going to want you to throw in the towel altogether, to forget it. Maybe you are in a tough spot right now, but my prayer is that God, through His Holy Spirit, would give you that unshakeable sense of destiny. He is not done with you yet. I believe I can say prophetically and biblically that your best days are in front of you. I claim that for every follower of Christ. Your best days are in front of you. Amen.