If you’ve experienced big failure,
in life or in ministry, or both, that’s the very-best thing that could have happened to you. WHAT? That’s right. Your flesh is very confident-it-knows-what’ll-make-you-happiest, but your flesh knows NOTHing about such things. How many times in your life has your flesh been WRONG? The genius plan of Jesus gives you opportunity to learn from your big failure, and your little failures. They’re all good, because He is good, knows what you need, while your flesh does NOT. Our biggest need is Jesus-dependency.
Why would He give you the desire of your heart — success, if the desire of your heart, is for something OTHER than Himself? The failures in our lives are carefully designed to EXPOSE our real flesh to us. And we need this, because we Christians are so self-deceived about our present badness. Leaven of the Pharisees — imagining we are followers of God, when we’re actually followers of ourselves.
Corrie ten Boom said, “You may never know how much you need Jesus, until Jesus is all you have.” When we experience failure, our worthiness is freshly stripped from us, and if it’s big failure, it feels like all we have left is Jesus, and rarely is He ENOUGH for us. Only a fresh work of the Spirit, deeply convicting us our dissatisfaction with Jesus and His imputed worthiness, can leave us content with Jesus, so we need nothing else. Ahhh.
— Dave McCarty, GospelFriendships, neediest of all for a fresh work of the Spirit, so the seculars around him might want something he has
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