The Gift of Failure

“God, I want everything You have for me.”

As I approached the sunset of my 30’s, this was a prayer I had never prayed. There aren’t many who would’ve known. By all appearances my life was in bloom but I had been operating on an “I’ll plan it and then trust God to bless it” approach. Over time and cycles of successful execution, I believed my plans and strategies were biblically literate and effective. Almost subconsciously, I began to slip into a results-driven mentality with little room for prayerful contemplation, discernment or encounter. I believed in God wholeheartedly but compartmentalized my trust in Him. Risk was out of the question and so was surrender. If He asked me to take a risk that made me feel uncomfy I’d resist. I usually defaulted to what Proverbs 14:12 refers to as a way that appears to be right.

In retrospect, I had yet to experience the failure of my own plans and I needed to in order to develop some sobriety around my blind spots. And I needed a fresh dose of humility to propel me toward the 20/20 vision only the Holy Spirit could have for my life.

In 2018, I experienced the implosion of a core creative relationship I had invested in for four years. In hindsight it was not the Holy Spirit but my unyielded dreams that led me down this path. I spent four years like Jonah, in the belly of a beast of my own making. Those years were filled with striving, conflict and chronic sickness due to stress. When all was said and done the failure of this creative partnership was God’s kindness to both of us. I was spit out of the chaos and onto the shores of God’s wide mercy.

John 3:8 says “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.”

On the heels of failure I caught the winds of the Spirit into my own Nineveh, a new creative partnership in Redding, CA. As a Nashvillian, living in a sea of creatives, I felt exiled as I traveled into unfamiliar territory. Little did I know, I’d encounter God like never before on the backside of my failings as this three week trip would change the entire trajectory of my life.

One evening in Redding I was praying and heard “You don’t have everything I want for you.” As I entered contemplation with God, I realized fear and control had demanded the seat of my heart for far too long. Then and there, I yielded to God in total surrender. The years to follow, would become the most healing, adventurous and beautifully surprising years of my life but nothing rivaled the increasing intimacy I experienced with God as a result of this life-changing trip.

Hindsight in the hands of God can be the doorway to clarity and looking back I desperately needed the gift of failure to clearly see the fork in the road between trust and control.

Consult the biblical narrative and you will find the fathers and mothers of our faith yielding to divine interruptions and learning to surrender their systems of control to trust God’s sometimes mysterious and counter-cultural ways. They learned to yield to a force far greater than their own understanding and the cultural current to build a life on the solid foundation of God as the reality of all realities.

The Holy Spirit (third person of the Trinity - One with God the Father and Jesus the Son) never gets it wrong. He knows more than you and I do and will guide us into all truth if we are willing to listen.

“God, I want everything You have for me.” If this is your prayer, buckle up for an adventure with God. I can’t wait to see where the Spirit leads.

Tanya Godsey
FREEDOM MOVEMENT
Director of Spiritual Formation