Failing Faithfully: Isaiah 6:1-13 - 26th Sunday after Pentecost

My office bookshelves are lined with dozens of volumes about growing the church and reaching new generations. Their authors lead massive congregations which have defied the odds and brought thousands to faith in Christ. 

But there is one book that stands out from the rest: it’s entitled FAIL, and it’s written by a pastor whose experiences of ministry failure inspired him to organize the Epic Fail Pastors Conference, which brought together pastors, missionaries, and church leaders whose dreams of bringing people to faith in Christ went down in flames.

But ministry failure is not as uncommon as you might think. For 40 years, Moses struggled to lead God’s people through the wilderness and died without before bringing them to the promised land. God called prophets to urge his people to repent of their wickedness. Sadly, the people did not repent, and many of these prophets were murdered by their kings or their fellow Israelites. 

When God calls the prophet Isaiah, God tells him point blank that no one will listen to him. He will call God’s people to repent, and they will not. Consequently, their cities will be destroyed, and they will be carried off into exile.

This begs the question, if God knows the outcome, why does God still send Isaiah? Is God somehow denying Isaiah the ability to be successful? And why is Isaiah still willing to go?

The answer to those questions lies in the fact that God’s mission in the world does not follow a human blueprint of success. 

Think about it: God’s creative project in the Garden of Eden was a disaster, and things got so bad that Noah had to build an ark so that God could start over. And that’s only the opening chapters of Genesis! The rest of Scripture follows a similar pattern: God reaches out, and some people obey. Some repent. Many do not. And it goes on like this even now. 

Consider this: the name Israel, in Hebrew, means “wrestles with God.” To me, that is a perfect descriptive for our relationship with God, and God’s relationship with us. God does not struggle to be faithful, but God does struggle with us. “I have wept in love for them, they turn away,” God cries. We refuse to repent and live transformed lives. In no way is this struggle clearer than in Jesus Christ, crucified by the very people he came to save, crying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.”

But many struggles are not anyone’s fault. Not yours, and certainly, not God’s. We work hard and we pray hard, but do not receive what we hope for. Death, decay, and evil keep closing in around us. You don’t know what God is doing. So, how do you keep on going? How do you not get discouraged?

Please understand: the Christian life isn’t one of triumph and success, but one of struggle.

As much as I would love for our congregations to be as full and as prosperous as they once were, would that “success” draw us closer to Christ and make us more Christ-like? 

As much as I would love for every prayer to be answered as we hope, do we know better than God what is right and best?

Isaiah’s faithfulness will not result in a dramatic spiritual revival among God’s people. Instead, Isaiah’s faithfulness will demonstrate God’s refusal to reject the very people who rejected him. Isaiah’s personal struggles with God will keep on his knees, day after day, night after night, seeking God. That what faithfulness looks like in you. 

In the end, we are not called to success. Success is something we define. We are called to faithfulness. And it is impossible to know God’s faithfulness apart from struggle and failure. 

I believe that we must embrace the struggles we are facing right now. Any time you work hard and invest yourself into a ministry in which hardly anyone shows up; any time you pray diligently for someone, and the outcome is not what you hoped; any time you help someone and they are not healed or changed; you should not take that as a sign that God has deserted you. You are, instead, in the company of the prophets, of the apostles; and most of all, in the company Jesus. Just as he wept over the city of Jerusalem, longing to draw near to them, he longs to draw near to you. Just as he wept at the tomb of Lazarus, he bears the fulness of your sorrows in his heart. 

God uses struggle and failure to draw near to you. God uses struggle and failure to teach you, discipline you, and reshape you so that you will be faithful and accomplish all that God desires for you.  Regardless of whether your acts of faithfulness bear the fruits of worldly success or not, the seeds to the Kingdom of God are being planted, and they will bear fruit in God’s time and in God’s way. 

Blessed are those who struggle, blessed are those who fail, blessed are those who cry out to God. For that is the moment when God’s repentance and healing and transformation begin.