The God who transforms failure
Acts 16:1-10
16 Paul went on also to Derbe and to Lystra, where there was a disciple named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer; but his father was a Greek. 2 He was well spoken of by the believers in Lystra and Iconium. 3 Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him; and he took him and had him circumcised because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. 4 As they went from town to town, they delivered to them for observance the decisions that had been reached by the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem. 5 So the churches were strengthened in the faith and increased in numbers daily.
6 They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. 7 When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; 8 so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. 9 During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ 10 When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.
Remembering back to what happened last time Paul was in Lystra (Acts 14:8-20), there was a misunderstanding and Paul was almost killed, it would be easy to say nothing good is going to come out of that place. But when Paul returned to Lystra to encourage the Christians, Paul was introduced to Timothy. A young man of whom the people of the church spoke well. Timothy had a Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father. He came from an unimportant town on the major east-west road, so he was aware of a larger world as travellers went through Lystra. He was to become one of the key people in Paul’s team of church starters and trouble shooters.
What seems to us to be a failure often becomes something extraordinary in God’s hands. God is in the business of taking human weakness and human failures and turning them around, into something beautiful in his coming kingdom. As Paul reminds his readers in I Corinthians 1:28, “God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before God.”
We see the same pattern in vs. 6-10, where God closes the doors on human plans. It made sense to expand the ministry of the church by going to the next province over (going west) and start congregations in those towns – but that was human plan was not God’s plan. God turned human wisdom on its head and the team goes where it never expected – to Macedonia.
Are we leaving room in our plans, our schemes for God to act in unexpected ways? How do we respond when God takes our plans and turns them on their heads? When have we seen God turn our failures into places for his glory to shine?
PRAYER:
O God, you redeem our failures and are revealed most clearly in our weakness. We come to you with nothing in our hands to offer to you but our failures and our weakness, we rejoice that you turn our weakness into signs of your strength and that our inability is the place where your glory shines most clearly. In Jesus’ name. Amen.