Cage of Failure

Mark Batterson

Happy weekend to you. Good to see everybody. Welcome to everybody at all four of our locations. I’ve gotta give a little shout out to Georgetown and Ballston and Union Station and Ebenezers Coffeehouse, it’s great to be together this weekend. It has already been a great weekend, we had a men’s retreat, and this might sound a little weird but it sure was fun hanging out with about 80 NCC men playing corn hole. If you don’t know what that is, it is bags. We tossed some bean bags, prayed together, hung out together and it was a great weekend for NCC guys.

Of course this weekend we continue the Wild Goose Chase. Last weekend we talked about the Cage of Guilt, next weekend we will talk about the Cage of Fear, this weekend we are talking about the Cage of Failure. I think this is where a lot of us get stuck spiritually. We experience some kind of failure, maybe it is a failed relationship or a failed business or some kind of moral failure and we feel like it is over with. Oh and we also feel like we are the only one who has ever experienced that. Well, I’ve got some good news for you.

If you have a Bible, turn to Acts 28. I’ll give you a moment to turn there. Let me set the scene. 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 as Paul prophesied though, to the captain, 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:

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.”

Now if I’m making up the rules, a shipwreck qualifies as a bad day. That doesn’t happen every day. I’m wondering if Paul is the only person in the history of humankind, it’s possible, to have experienced not just a shipwreck but also a poisonous snakebite all in the same day. This is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I think Paul should get some kind of honorary membership in the bad luck club. By the way, this weekend, Pastor Joel was sharing with the guys and he posed the question, I thought was so good, it reminds me of this story. He said, “Where are you being a victim where you need to be a hero?” See, Paul could have developed a victim mentality, like ‘woe is me, what’s going on here? God if you’re going to allow me to die by snakebite, why didn’t you just allow me to drown in the sea?’ He could have had this victim mentality. But I think 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. You see, God is able to turn shipwrecks and snakebites into supernatural synchronicities that serve His purposes.

We continue the story in verse 5:

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.

Let me state the obvious, Paul and Publius should have never met, never ever. Malta wasn’t even on Paul’s itinerary. And if Paul, a prisoner of the Imperial Regiment had requested a meeting with the chief official of Malta, do you think that’s going to happen? 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. Well, call me crazy but some of the most enlightening and inspiring parts of the Bible aren’t in the Bible, they are in the back of the Bible, in a Study Bible, in the Appendix in a section called Maps. If you turn to the back of the Bible, you will see Paul’s three missionary journeys or I would like to call them Paul’s three Wild Goose chases. What you’ll see if you look at those maps, there is hardly a straight line. It seems like Paul zigzags all over the ancient world, and if you read the account of his itinerary called 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 to strategically position Paul right where He wanted him.

Does your life bear witness to what I’m talking about? Have you ever experienced a shipwreck or a snakebite? When it happens, it is disorienting, it is painful, like ‘why am I going through this?’ and it is only afterwards that you see how God used that to get you where He wanted you to go. Honestly, if my plans had succeeded, I’d never be here, I’d still be back in Chicago. We dreamed of planting a church there. I wanted to live there the rest of my life, but sometimes your plans have to fail in order for God’s plan to succeed. When that church plant in Chicago never got off the ground, it was embarrassing. It was disillusioning, like what’s going on? Honestly, it was a failure. But I’m so grateful that the ship sunk in Chicago, otherwise I’d still have to endure those crazy winter seasons. But now I’m here, I love being here! I wouldn’t want to be any place else, so I’m grateful for the shipwreck because God re-oriented us here to DC.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you sabotage yourself. You don’t need to insight a mob against you, you don’t need to put a hole in the bottom of the boat, but I do want you to understand that often it is those slow storms; it’s those divine detours that God uses. It’s the relationship that doesn’t work out or doesn’t turn out. If anybody ought to know this, it should be us as a church. I mean, it was a closed door at a DC public school that forced us to consider some other options, and lo and behold, we land in the movie theater at Union Station. God opened up an amazing door of opportunity and it became part of our DNA, we want to meet in movie theaters, but it goes back to what seemed to be a shipwreck. I thought the ship was going down. I kid you not. Honestly at that moment, this church plant called National Community Church with a couple dozen people, I mean, the ship could’ve gone down. And if I’m being totally honest, only a couple dozen people would have known the difference. And the truth is, they could have found a much better church to plug into. We could have ceased to exist, but God had other plans. It took that closed door.

By the way, have you heard some of these rumors in the paper about the movie theaters at Union Station? Those have been circulating a little bit. We first heard about it a couple months ago. Can I give you my perspective? In 1996, God opened an amazing door of opportunity and we claim Revelation 3: What He opens, no one can shut, what He shuts, no one can open. He placed before us an open door and we walked through that open door and I guess as I see it, God is the one who opened it and He can keep it open as long as He wants it to be open. The issue is, we need to be good stewards of all of our locations. God has given us four amazing locations and in the years to come, hopefully it is five or seven or ten or twelve, who knows? But let’s make the most of the opportunities that we’ve been given. For the record, the theater has a multiple year contract and they don’t know anything about the management trying to get them out. It is a little confusing. I think there are different angles to the story, but can I tell you, I have a tremendous peace, a peace that passes understanding. We are all right, we are going to be ok, as long as God keeps that door open, lets make the most of it. And I believe this, if God closes the door, He is going to open up something even better for us. So we are going to be all right. I wanted to just share a little perspective on that.

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, 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. In a sense, I have this mental picture of 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. If you are at that place, hang in there! I believe you are going to make it to shore, and here’s what I’ve discovered in my life, 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. And I might suggest that sometimes we get so focused on getting where God wants us to go that we totally forget that God is far more concerned with who we are becoming in the process. Listen, God is going to get you where God wants you to go, that’s His business! But He’s not going to get you there until you are ready to get there, and who are you 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.

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, got less than 100 votes. Ouch. In 1858, he ran for the US Senate again and lost again. 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!  His biographies that I’ve read are some of the most fascinating to me. What may be one of the most revered persons in American history, and I can honestly say that after reading all kinds of different biographies, he would be the last person that I would want to be because he was a tortured soul. It was a tough 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 like two elections coming up, ya know? One is crazy enough, is it not? By the way, it was Martin Luther King who said, “What does not destroy me makes me stronger.” I love that. 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 here’s my question—what 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 how lived 150 years ago, but his speech before he came to take office in DC I think is revealing. I love these words, 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.” I don’t know but those may be some of the most profound historical words in our country’s history. Without His 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 keeps us going.

Let me talk to control freaks. Any control freaks here? Put those hands up. I’m not going to lie, I’m a control freak, now we put nice words to it, I’m a perfectionist, I’m a Type A personality, the truth is I want to control you!  I want to control everything! It is human nature, like I just really struggle with those things I can’t control and that’s a lot of stuff. So I think we wrestle with that, but I want to remind you of something. 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, so let me 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, yes it is an invitation, it’s a spiritual adventure, yes it is about living that life that we’ve been called to, really chasing after the Wild Goose, but I think as much as anything else, it is a celebration of the sovereignty of God. Proverbs 16:9: In his heart a man plans his course but God orders his footsteps. I want everybody at all of our locations, everybody take a deep breath, let it back out. Do that one more time, I want to hear it. It has a recalibrating effect physiologically doesn’t it? It helps us relax a little bit, and I want to suggest that the sovereignty of God has the same effect on me. When I’m in the middle of that shipwreck or when I’m in the middle of that snakebite, what I try to do is just remind myself that God is ordering my footsteps and no matter how difficult it gets, no matter how frustrating, disorienting, I need to remind myself that God is sovereign. And that gives me that sense of destiny about my life. And here’s one of the things I love about chasing the Wild Goose, life can turn on a dime. You just never know when the Wild Goose is going to invade the reality of your life and turn your life upside down. You never know how it is going to happen, how He is going to reveal His plans, but it could be one trip, one meeting, one article, one class, one conversation, one look across the room into the eyes of the person on the other side, but you never know, you never know. To me, it gives me a sense of destiny. Here’s one of the things I’ve discovered, when we originally moved to Washington D.C., we came to lead a parachurch ministry, but I’ve discovered that our reasons for going somewhere or doing something are often very different from God’s reasons for taking us there. In fact, 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 hands, 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.’

Now, how did Paul end up on the island of Malta? I want to remind you, it wasn’t the navigational skills of the ship’s captain, it wasn’t the sailing skills of the crew. They landed on Malta because of something totally out of their control, wind factor. Check out a few of these verses, if you read these chapters surrounding it, you’ll see these: We encountered headwinds that made it difficult to keep the ship on course. The wind was against us so we sailed down to the leeward side of Crete. A light wind began blowing from the South, we couldn’t turn the ship into the wind. Gale force winds continued to batter the ship. Headwinds, a light wind from the South, gale force wins, you get the point. Here’s the point, the winds seemed to be taking them off course, but it’s the wind factor that gets Paul right where God wants him to go.

Things are going to happen beyond your control. You might lose a job, someone might break up with you, economic issues, bad diagnosis, but listen, things are going to happen that you can’t control but I want to go back to a verse that is really part of the inspiration for this series, John 3:8, 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 from the South. Oh, we love it when it is the wind at our backs. Sometimes it is gale force winds in our face, and all I know is 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. In fact, you need to get to the point in your life where you trust His promptings more than you trust your plans. ‘Oh but how do I know it is the voice of the Holy Spirit?’ Well, it is like any relationship, over time. Well, although my mom still gets my voice and my brother’s voice confused! That hurts, deep wounds. No, not at all, but over time, you learn that voice, you hear that voice. In fact, it is not even the words, it is kinda the tone, then eventually you don’t even have to say anything, it is the look. It’s the relationship. It’s the same way with the Wild Goose. You get to that point where I think you embrace the uncontrollable, unpredictable working of the Holy Spirit in your life. And as I look back as my own map of my own spiritual journey, I can honestly say that I’m grateful for the shipwrecks and the snakebites. They were terrible when they happened.

Question for you. When Paul was sitting down talking with friends, telling them stories from his life, what stories do you think he told? How many times do you think he told them the shipwreck snakebite story? ‘Oh, you’ve got one? Listen to this!’ Paul could one better, like ‘Man! You wouldn’t believe this day I had!’ See, sometimes the worst experiences make the best stories. Why? Because God is sovereign, He is working and we’ve got to trust that in our lives.

Let me tell you a closing story and then I want to share one last promise with you. In 1921, the Philadelphia Church in Stockholm, Sweden sent a couple of missionaries by the names of Mr. And Mrs. Flood to the Congo, to 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 pastured a church in South Dakota and Aggie grew up and eventually attended my alma mater Central Bible College and it was there that she met D.V. Hurt and got married and eventually D.V. Hurst went on to President of Northwestern Bible College. Now, I want you to 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. 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 I don’t know if she had a single convert in all of Africa but 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 grace 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.”

You never know what might seem like a complete failure. You never know how God might use that. Here’s what I know for sure—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. In the same way, I mean, this just seemed like 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: 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 and 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. You are predestined to be conformed to the likeness of Christ. It is not just about getting to where God wants you to go. It is about becoming who God wants you to be. And if there, through the shipwrecks and the snakebites, you actually become more like Christ, then you have never 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.

I don’t know what you’ve experienced. I’m not immune to it. I want to remind you, are you breathing? Is everybody here breathing? If not, please raise your hand and we will help you!  So everybody is breathing? Ok, it means that God is not done with you yet. I want to remind you of one of our core values, it is never too late to become who you might have been. Don’t confuse a final mistake with a single mistake. God wants to take that failure and turn it into the foundation for how He uses you for the rest of your life. I don’t care if it was something that was out of your control, I don’t care if it was a bad choice you made, He is bigger than that! Don’t buy into the lie of the enemy. 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. But don’t forget it because God is going to continue to grace you if you humbly confess your sin, He is going to heal you and He is going to forgive you and He is going to continue to prepare good works for you. 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. Let’s pray.

Lord help us. Help us. I know that there are a lot of circumstances, a lot of situations, a lot of failures that people deal with and I know that it can be confusing and disorienting and frustrating and even embarrassing, but God we receive your grace and we thank You that You turn what could be final mistakes into single mistakes and you move us into the future. God I pray for those that are in tough spots, maybe it feels like the ship is going down, maybe it feels like they got a snakebite, but God I pray that You would give us the strength to hang in there. Lord I pray that You will give us that hope inside that You are going to get us where we need to go. Lord I know there are some lessons we can learn, some character that can be developed in us that can’t happen any other way, so Lord I pray that You would work your purposes in us and through us and that our lives because of it would glorify You. We pray these things in Jesus’ Name, Amen.