How God Recycles our Lapses into Learnings
I baked a batch of scones the other day, but they came out all wrong – too small, too flat, and a bit of an embarrassment. Not something that I could hand around.
This was an upsetting experience, but also a helpful one. It prompted me to do some comparison of recipes and to access some tips and techniques which I hadn’t thought of before, even for a straightforward bake.
I used a general purpose flour and worked it a bit, like bread dough, folding and chafing to give it structure before dividing in ‘rustic cuts’.
And the next batch came out really well.
This was a small, everyday kind of mistake, and its lesson was hardly life-changing.
Life gives us all kinds of failures and mistakes, but the big lesson is about letting God make them profitable for His greater purpose of shaping us.
Instead of seeing the latest mistake as negative, just something to apologise for, we can embrace failure as a learning point that brings change.
This lesson was spelled out was back in Israel’s up and down history by the prophet Azariah who declares, speaking for God:
“King Asa and all of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, listen to Me! God responds to you as you respond to Him: If you are with the Eternal, then He is with you. If you look for Him, then He will let you find Him. But if you abandon Him, then He will abandon you. So learn from the mistakes of your ancestors.” (2 Chronicles 15:2 Voice)
We don’t always need a prophet to get us back to hearing God. For us, it’s a “Come, Holy Spirit and teach me —what is your wisdom?” moment.
And that wisdom often comes through God’s Word which the Holy Spirit uses as His starting point as He leads us.
Paul writes to his apprentice, Timothy:
“There’s nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another — showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.“ (2 Timothy 3:14 MSG)
Salvation is much broader than spiritual repentance and belonging. Our growth and maturity comes from understanding that the Holy Spirit can redeem any of our failures as a learning experience and opportunity to seek His wisdom and grow in it…
King Asa’s lesson was about getting back to listening to what God us saying. Add to that Timothy’s lesson and we have the way God has given us to tune in to His voice.
We just need the resolve to make our next mistake a ‘pause and listen’ moment around the question: “Lord, what are You teaching me here?”