Feeling like a failure? Set your mind right once again.

This past week I attended teacher training up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In these tight economic times, I have abandoned my second graduate program and have, instead, chosen the cheapest possible way to renew my teaching certification. This class amazingly met one half of my continuing education requirement for just $500.

I also decided to spend the week in a rustic campground ($12 a night!) in Manistee National Forest, about 40 minutes north of Grand Rapids. As our kids get older and consequently more expensive, we are spending our limited (and decreasing) income more on them and less upon ourselves. My wife is a stay-at-home mom, although right now she is at the city market selling her vegetables, herbs, bread, and Austrian dolls. Sie ist doch tüchtig und fleißig.

So on Tuesday night in my tent, as I weathered torrential rainfall and even a tornado warning, I certainly did not feel very much like a "success" by American stands, for the rest of my 118 classmates were in hotels in Grand Rapids.

Thankfully, that night I listened to an old sermon by my pastor that touched upon the topic of success and failure. It was good to be rebuked by the Law for my ingratitude and also comforted by the Gospel, that Jesus is indeed an ultimate success by redeeming a world full of pitiful ingrates like me.

Here is Pastor James' opening from that sermon:

We might as well set it right in our minds once again. The Christian faith, being a disciple of Jesus, trusting in Him alone, is simply not a way to become successful in this world. Being a Christian does not mean that you will get on better with your spouse or your children. Yes, it is true that there are many out there who try to draw people into church with the lure that it is going to improve everything – their sex life, their marriage, their finances, their ability to raise their children, and to get along with people – that if you come to this church, you are going to become a success in everything from relationships to better health.

But another preacher, a very wise preacher, a preacher who simply cannot be faulted by any honest line of reasoning, says something entirely different. This particular preacher has already spoken to us today, for He happens to be none other that our Savior, Jesus, the Son of God. This preacher says:

Do you think that I have come to bring peach upon Earth? No, I tell you but rather division. For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

Here you see none other than the very Son of God announcing that true religion does at all not guarantee family harmony and other success. But instead it almost certainly insures disruption and division.

Another preacher whom you heard also today, to be sure he is not of the same standing as Jesus, and yet nonetheless he is inspired by the Holy Spirit, this preacher announced to you an uncomfortably long list of people of faith. The author to the Hebrews sets forth these souls as examples for us of those who held fast to the Word and to the truth of God. [...]

Actually, having an entire state park to myself, without a single other camper, was pretty cool. And I had the truth "set in my mind once again."

Listen to the whole sermon.