Help! I Feel Like a Failure by GREG PHELAN for The Gospel Coalition
I’ve been working on some projects that are just not moving forward. My boss has recently shut some of them down, and I can’t help but feel I’ve wasted a lot of time on things that failed. This is difficult, because I prayed diligently and worked as hard as I could on them. How can I let go of this frustration and feeling of failure?
If I’ve experienced anything the last few months, it’s consistent failure. As my available time has shrunk in half, the unforgiving limit of 24 hours in a day has shut down more projects than I even realized I was working on. In my case, and I suspect I’m not alone, failure is a central part of life these days.
For many of us, work is shot through with “supply shocks”: we have less time, less access, less capability, less support—and more demands—than ever before. At the same time, we may carry more responsibilities for aging parents or sick relatives or children out of school. Our work—both formal and informal—requires more of us, but from fewer resources than before.
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On our own, we can’t do more with less. Our work goes unfinished. Our tempers get the best of us. Our words are harsh and unkind. Hopefulness evaporates. The inward curve of our souls turns deeper.
God made us finite and our world is broken. A boss shutting down a project is but one picture of that. We won’t escape failure, but we can find hope in it.
Our Failure Isn’t God’s Failure
First, what looks like failure to us—what might be failure on our end—could be something else in God’s economy. Consider the first martyr. Stephen, rising star and gifted leader in the church, gave an impassioned defense of Christ and got stoned. Surely it looked to some like a long-term evangelistic failure.
