by Ken Costa
Some years ago I talked to a friend who was a brilliant executive in one of the major oil companies operating in London. He was at a crossroads in his life: Should he leave his firm and instead seek ordination to the priesthood? It would be hard to explain the choice to his colleagues and peers rationally or in language that they would understand. He knew this. But above all he sensed a new direction to his life, prompted by the Spirit of God. He followed that path, hesitatingly at first, but then he saw the conviction grow. He left the oil business and began training for ordination. A new path, a new direction, and a fresh word of God changed the course of his career.
Now, many years later, Justin Welby is the archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion. As I sat with my wife in Canterbury Cathedral and watched him being installed as the new archbishop, I thought back to those conversations. I was deeply moved as I remembered God’s promise in Isaiah: “I make known the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10).
KEEPING THE FLAME ALIVE
All of us find times when we question the choices we have made and doubt the direction of our lives. When we have made decisions about our careers and are perhaps two or three years into these roles, how do we keep the flame alive? How do we ensure that we do not become complacent, lazy, or apathetic about our callings?
INVEST IN OURSELVES. It is important to invest in ourselves and in our callings. A calling is not just a kickoff but a continuous process of investing in our lives. We need to be watchful of our characters; we must examine our reactions to people and situations. Character matters more than any success at work. I find that reading a biography of someone who has faced problems and overcome them can be an inspiring way to keep on my toes at work. Taking a course on leadership development would be a positive way to stay focused on equipping for future challenges and ensuring we are keeping fresh, new perspectives on our work.
KNOW HIS WAYS. Seeking out God’s ways in our lives is a daily activity. We cannot let our hearts go astray. Psalm 95 puts it very clearly: “For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways’” (v. 10).
STAY HUMBLE. This is key to refreshing our callings. When we lay down our agendas at the foot of the cross and humble ourselves, we are reminded of who we are in Christ. As the psalmist said, “He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way” (Psalm 25:9). It is an essential requirement for keeping the flame alive that we renew our dependence on him each day. He is the keeper of the flame and the one who renews all things.
CONFESS ANYTHING DISPLEASING TO GOD. In this way we keep the flame open rather than suffocating it under wraps for fear of what might be exposed. “You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you” (Psalm 86:5).
CLAIM AN UNDIVIDED HEART. Nothing douses the flame of the Spirit as rapidly as a divided allegiance, when we mix our callings with our competitive or selfish agendas. “Teach me your way, LORD, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name” (v. 11). If I am ever asked to make a choice of whom I would follow to work, or whom I would want to emulate, it would always be those who have big, generous, and undivided hearts.
If you stay strong and humble by serving others, worshipping God, and being strong in the Word and watchful of your character, you will remain fully alive in your calling. As the writer of Deuteronomy so vividly implores us, we have a choice between “life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). After all, the choice will last forever!
SIX
CALLED TO COURAGE
EVEN IF A DECISION SEEMS EASY OR THE WAY AHEAD SEEMS clear, barriers can stop us from stepping into the callings God has placed on our lives. What holds us back? Apathy can leave us struggling to see his paths. Selfish desires can lead us in the opposite direction of that which God intends for us. Distractions can divert our attentions. Greed can cloud our judgments. Above all, however, fear can hold us back from the callings God has for us.
I know from my own experiences, and those of countless others, that fear and anxiety are apt to stalk us. Fear can come in many forms—it might be fear of personal harm, or fear of emotional distress, or fear of financial hardship. Depending on what we feel we are being called into, all sorts of fears might arise.
In this chapter, I want to focus on one particular type of fear. It’s a fear that nobody is exempt from—a fear that can cripple us even when we have our priorities correctly aligned and are wholeheartedly committed to following God’s call. This is the fear of failure. I believe this fear constitutes the greatest barrier to our callings.
But what fear bricks up, grace breaks up. Overcome the fear of failure, and we allow God’s favor to flood in and transform the future. God’s favor is the love that the Father naturally wants to show to his children. Parents want the best for their children, longing to find opportunities to encourage and inspire them. That is certainly my wish as a father for my own children. How much more, then, does God, our Father, want to encourage and inspire us? How much more does he long to break the paralysis of fear and anxiety in our lives?
Fear of failure is born of ignorance and uncertainty: ignorance of events that will shape the future, and uncertainty as to how we will react to them. In many ways, this is perfectly natural. We can’t control the future. We don’t know what is around the corner. Life, as we know from Forrest Gump’s mother, is “like a box of chocolates—you never know what you’re gonna get.”1
I cannot break through the brick wall of fear that so often stands in the way of the next move of God in my life. But God can.
Disappointments can drain us of energy and fill us with doubt about our own abilities and judgments. Failures can sometimes bring us to a grinding halt for fear of anything so crushing, so humiliating, or so hopeless ever happening again. Anxiety is exhausting because we spend a huge amount of time and energy worrying about events that usually never happen. Most of the time our worst-case scenarios don’t come to fruition, yet we rehearse them as if they are realities. A friend of mine regularly reminds me, “Deal with what you know.”
Jesus concurs! In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus made it clear that we are foolish to fret about the future over which we have no control: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34). It’s a call to all of us to live in the moment and for the day. This is not intended to make us ditch all future plans but to choose not to worry about all the angst-inducing issues that (possibly) lie ahead of us.
So how do we fight anxiety and fear? How do we deal with disappointment and dashed hopes? How do we overcome these obstacles that so often slow us down and prevent us from walking confidently into our God-given callings?
There is a passage in Exodus 15 that has radically changed my perspective on dealing with the inevitable disappointments in life. This is the chapter that records the extraordinary circumstances in which Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt. They had this wonderful dream that one day they would live in the land of milk and honey, in the land of Canaan, away from the Egyptian slave drivers. And sure enough, one of the greatest miracles of all time occurred when the Red Sea was parted and they could pass through, unscathed and free.
Yet only three days later, they started grumbling: “When they came to Marah, they could not drink its water, because it was bitter. . . . So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, ‘What are we to drink?’” (vv. 23–24). Disappointment comes quickly.
Three days earlier, the Israelites had seen God save them in the most incredible of circumstances. Is the Lord who could separate the Red Sea not the one who could also give them water to drink? But they started complaining and grumbling, much the same way we do. We have great expectations of God, and suddenly something happens and we become dogged by disappointment.
“Moses cried out to the LORD, and the
LORD showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became fit to drink” (v. 25). (God was, of course, perfectly able to change the water without human intervention, but he chose to use Moses, drawing him into the miracle and demonstrating his involvement. We work with him, and he works through us.) The episode concludes: “For I am the LORD, who heals you” (v. 26). When translated literally, God actually said, “I am Jehovah-Rapha”—the word Rapha means “I am the one who takes the bitter, and makes it sweet.”
Disappointments can be overwhelming: disappointment in ourselves for the mistakes we’ve made or the grades we failed to achieve, or disappointment in others or in circumstances that have not turned out well. These past disappointments and failures can be crippling—they hold us back, making us think twice about trusting God or taking a risk in faith.
The key to overcoming such fear is recognizing we have a God who is bigger than even our greatest failings. How often have I tasted the bitterness of disappointments, fears, and failures, only to find that, by his Spirit, sweetness arises out of them? Years after a bitter disappointment, I realize that the very failure has taught me lessons I would never have learned otherwise, and that the result was far more enriching than success at the time could ever have been.
Quite recently, I had to face the pain of acute disappointment and failure. About two years ago, a number of colleagues and I began to create a private investment fund. We rented offices; we recruited people to work on this new idea; we started raising money. Then, a few months into the new venture, it was quite clear that the market had moved against us, and we had to face a decision of whether to linger on or to cut our losses and admit failure—not an experience I’d often had before. But there it was—the heartache, the failed dreams, the unmet expectations, the disappointment of having to let people go. Still lingering was belief that it might have been able to work, if only we’d had more time and the markets had been a little more moderate. But it was the end of the road. It was hard trying to dodge the inevitable questions about how things were shaping up in the new venture. The failure was acute and the pain intense. It still is.
But I take my strength in the knowledge that Jehovah-Rapha, my God and my Savior who turns the bitter into the sweet, will take my struggle and work on me in the midst of this failure.
LEARNING TO FAIL
Failure is best faced squarely in the eye. So often we strive to make sure that, at all costs, we avoid the pain of failure—but God is larger than the biggest failure in your life. He redeems, transforms, and turns what is bitter into something sweet.
J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter novels, once said, “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”2
She went on to say,
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew. . . .
I was set free because my greatest fear had been realised and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.3
A typewriter and a big idea—out of which came Harry Potter. That was all J. K. Rowling needed. We just need those ideas that lie dormant within us to be awakened. We just need the courage to let those ideas and dreams, the callings God has placed on our lives, grow into reality whatever the circumstances.
Doubtless, we will all fail at something at some point in our lives. But we will never be failures. For that to happen Christ within us would have to fail. And he won’t. It’s a vital distinction. When we do not grasp this, we can easily spiral downward. What makes it so difficult is when we feel as if we keep on failing. Thomas Edison, faced with this frustration, asserted that he had not failed. Instead, he said, “I know several thousand ways that won’t work!”4
There’s a lesson for us here. Don’t linger on the inevitable failures. Do learn, but don’t look back, and certainly not in anger. Move on in confidence that you have God by your side.
One hears many leaders and managers declaring in a blustering tone to their teams, “Failure is not an option!” But this is wrong. Being willing to fail is an essential part of our callings.
As Christians, we are carriers of a great hope: hope in a God who is above and beyond all things, hope that places of darkness and despair might be transformed into places of life and light. But the hardest thing about this great hope is that we don’t know how it is going to play out in our individual lives. We are called to face an uncertain future in confidence, but we are not fortune-tellers. Ecclesiastes 8:7 says, “Since no one knows the future, who can tell someone else what is to come?” It is only God who sees all things and knows all things.
Whenever we step out in faith, we take a risk. Whenever we dare to hope in the face of hopelessness or dream the impossible dream, whenever we are willing to try what the world might dismiss as foolish, we are not doing any of these things in absolute assurance that our attempts will succeed. Even risks taken in the power of God are still risks! God is not an on-demand enabler who makes our every endeavor succeed. Every dreamer and schemer of the kingdom knows deep disappointment. Part of Christian faith, part of being willing to dream, means being willing to fail. It means being willing to take risks for God, in the knowledge that God is in control and we are not.
This is easy to say on paper, but in practice it can be a hard and painful lesson to learn. And once we have been burned from one risk, it can be incredibly difficult to take another. Fear of failure can stop us in our tracks. But if we’re not taking risks, then we are not living a life of faith, and “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6). Playing safe is no answer to the fear of failure; it will never satisfy.
In the parable of the talents, which we find in Matthew 25, the master rewarded the servants who were willing to risk failure to grow what they had been given. The one who played it safe, burying his treasure in the ground because he saw the master as a hard man—a ruthless bully who didn’t tolerate failure—received the master’s wrath. Those who trusted in the goodness of the master were rewarded.
What would the master have said to one of those servants if he had tried to invest the money wisely, but forces outside his control had robbed him of that with which he had been entrusted? Only a hypocrite would have punished such a faithful servant. No, a good master would have said exactly the same to the servant who had tried and failed as he did to the one who succeeded: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much” (v. 23 ESV).
To those who have taken a risk in faith and found their hopes come crashing back to earth, to those who dared to dream that God might do a new thing but have been left crushed and disappointed, Jesus, too, says, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” Well done for dreaming, for being willing to see things as they might yet be rather than as they are. Well done for stepping out in faith despite your fear and your hesitancy. Well done for daring to think that hope might not be lost.
Our failures are not failures in the eyes of God. When we step out in faith, we always triumph, whether or not we are successful on our terms.
But Jesus is also able to take our failures and mold them into something new. Some years ago I was affected deeply by the plight of the debts that the developing world owed to the developed world. It seemed wrong that irresponsible bankers and governments from these impoverished countries
should have borrowed so much. As these were some of the poorest countries, they were unable to repay the interest, let alone the capital that was owed. Sometimes the borrowing had been fueled by corruption and government greed. Every cent spent on paying off debt was a cent not spent on education and health care. These countries were trapped. To make matters worse, the debt was invariably in dollars or other hard currencies. They were unable to repay, with crippling consequences for the ordinary people who had to shoulder massive burdens for the repayment of interest.
A group of friends and Christian leaders got together to see whether we could do something. We developed an imaginative program called BONDFIRE, which would seek to raise public awareness of this problem and would print documents that looked like loan documents—and then have a massive bonfire to show solidarity for all initiatives aimed at getting lender nations to write off these debts.
I invested some money, enlisted economists to write articles, and asked theologians to give reasons why debt relief of this kind was not fueling irresponsible behavior but part of a Christian response to injustice. I confess I was rather pleased with the strong support I mustered. And yet the campaign failed. I felt this acutely. The need seemed so obvious.
There were a number of good reasons why the project failed, including our failure to persuade the public that this debt was different from an excessive personal credit card debt.
But what appeared at the time to be a failure subsequently succeeded, as several initiatives from other agencies built a better argument and had greater traction. Campaigns such as Jubilee 2000 and Make Poverty History, which enjoyed endorsements from celebrities including Bono, succeeded. Some of the most crippling debt was written off. There lay a great lesson for the decade ahead, one I have learned again and again. The most important thing is not that my project succeeds, but that good is done.