Successful Failure

I hate to lose!  From the time I was a kid, until this very day, nothing bothers me more than losing.  One time when I was just a kid, I was playing catch out in the front yard with some friends, when my mom heard me say a cuss word.  She came running out the door and asked me why I said that particular word.  My response was very simple, “I missed the ball.”  Although I’ve cleaned up my language from my days as a filthy mouthed 6 year old, I still hate losing.  In my head, losing has always equaled failure.

As a church planter, I operate in a world in which failure happens at a pretty high clip.  While I’m never going to be ok with the idea of failing, I’ve come to grips with what I think is a very important truth, one that is currently helping me maintain my sanity.  That truth is this…God’s idea of success is different from mine.  And at the end of the day, I’d rather be successful in His eyes more than anyone else’s, including my own. 

Most of us operate from a worldly perspective of success.  It doesn’t matter if you’re in the marketplace or the church, we are all guilty of using what I believe are incomplete metrics for measuring success, these metrics are not all together wrong, they’re just incomplete.  I’d like to see more of us, including myself, add an additional and I believe more important metric to the equation…obedience. 

Solomon’s Porch may never become the church I dreamed it could be, but if this adventure comes to an untimely end, this one thing I will always know…I was obedient to the call.  While I spend many nights praying/stressing over numbers, finances, and the success of our outreaches, God asks one thing of me…be obedient.  You’ve got to admit, using the world’s standards, the cross looked like a huge failure.  The Son of God was dead.  But little did they know, Jesus’ act of obedience was about to change the world. 

As I’ve chewed on these thoughts the last few days, I’ve come to this conclusion.  It is impossible to fail, if we’re obedient to the Lord.  This doesn’t guarantee Solomon’s Porch will flourish.  It doesn’t mean you’ll get every promotion.  It simply means, when you walk in obedience, in God’s eyes, you’re already successful.  Our obedience to God means that no matter what, we always win!