Successful Failure

As a child of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, I grew up riveted by the space program to put humans on the moon. I remember being glued to the TV during the Apollo 13 disaster as Mission Control worked feverishly to bring home the three astronauts in a spacecraft crippled by an oxygen tank explosion. I recently learned that immediately after the accident, NASA estimated that there was a 10% chance of getting the astronauts back alive.

The mission has been called a “successful failure,” in that it failed to meet the objective of a lunar landing but succeeded in defeating long odds in returning the crew safely. Both the crew of Apollo 13 and controllers on the ground are credited with brilliant performances, despite mission failure. There is a similar successful failure in the Bible. We find it in Acts 17.

The Apostle Paul’s followers had taken him to Athens after an uprising threatened his safety in Berea. While Paul waited for two companions to join him, he didn’t sit around cooling his heels. Instead, he continued about the work God had called him to:

22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you. Acts 17:22-23 (NIV)

Paul then embarks on a beautiful description of this “unknown god,” his God:

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring. Acts 17:24-28 (NIV)

This is seen as a perfect template for sharing Christ with people. It’s taught as a model of evangelism. A huge success, which we can read all about in Paul’s letter to the Athenians. Wait, no we can’t. Because Paul never wrote such a letter, as he did to believers and churches in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Phillipi, Colossae, and Thessalonica. Why? Because it appears that his effort did not lead to the creation of a Christian church in Athens, although a few people did come to believe.

In earthly terms, ministry success is often (usually) measured by the number of people in church. By that metric, Paul’s effort was a failure. In God’s economy it is a roaring success because, even though he was in Athens hiding out, Paul stayed true to the purpose God gave him. I hope you can be encouraged by Paul’s successful failure.

If your efforts to be used by God to bring others to Him don’t produce the earthly results you desire, remember that you have already succeeded just by saying yes to God’s will for your life. What can be more comforting than that!

Pastor Jerry Bader

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