Last week I preached what was, at least from my perspective, an absolute dud of a sermon.Thankfully, God is sovereign and can turn dross into diamonds.
But to call my sermon dross is to be rude to the dross.
As my boys flew down a slide at a the Golden Arches1 I drank the Heavenly Nectar2 and contemplated my latest hop into homiletical mediocrity. With my wife sitting across the table, I walked through the elemental missteps I had made in composition and delivery. I half-joked about retiring from preaching and finally venturing out into “the real world.” But my wife won’t suffer my “woe is me” misery, for some reason she thinks it best to encourage me in these moments.
Praise God for such partners in ministry. I love her. She helped me turn the failure into a friend. As much as I wanted to shake off the sense of a job done poorly, what I really needed to do was learn from the job done poorly. So I stopped, looked, and learned.
My purpose in this little post is not to disclose everything the failure revealed. It’s to simply say that when the inevitable failures come in ministry, don’t run. Let the fire of failure refine.
Wise Solomon said, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.”
Failure can be one of your most faithful friends.