Failure Teaches

An unreasonable, irrational, and unhealthy assessment of our own ability to be independently awesome is such a difficult thing to let die, isn’t it?

We all secretly want to be the hero of our own story—able to muster up through sheer force of will, all the right answers, and all the right choices. 

And yet…more often than not, we are anything but awesome independently. All of our bluster ends in failure, which we tend to gloss over so that we can give it another go next time. But in our own strength, it really doesn’t go any better next time.

Hopefully, the failure Peter experienced in Mark 14 can be our teacher so we can learn to be dependent rather than independent, wise rather than foolish. We can choose to learn these two complementary truths: apart from Jesus, we can do nothing (John 15:5), and we can do all things through Christ who gives us strength (Philippians 4:13).