A marathon, for most runners, seems long, but it is always 26.2 miles. Always. Except for the Lakeshore Marathon held in Chicago on Memorial Day weekend 20 years ago (2005). That day the 529 runners who finished actually ran 27.2 miles, one mile more than they were supposed to. Only, nobody told them so at the time. The organizers simply miscalculated where the finish line should be. In fact, the whole race was a mess, with missing mile markers and confused directions. One woman who had been leading early on got completely turned around. “I was so confused,” she said, “I wanted to cry.”
The organizer, a man named Mark Cihlar, issued an apology—kind of—on a website. “[Last-minute changes] caused us to miscalculate, and we foolishly added an extra mile—how terrible!” (Julie Deardorff, "Unwitting Marathon Runners Go Extra Mile," Chicago Tribune; 6-3-05; www.PreachingToday.com).
Life is like that sometimes. It's tough enough to get through a week, and then someone adds an extra mile—an impossible deadline, another sick child, an overdue notice on a bill, a disruption in your plans. Sometimes, you just want to cry.
So what do you do at those times? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to 2 Corinthians 2, 2 Corinthians 2, where the Apostle Paul admits feeling defeated.
2 Corinthians 2:12-13 When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord, my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia (ESV).
Paul had sent Titus to Corinth with a tearful letter, a letter Paul wrote “out of much affliction and anguish of heart” (vs.4). After delivering the letter, Titus was supposed to meet Paul in Troas, a coastal city in current day Turkey, across the Aegean Sea from ancient Greece (or Macedonia). However, Titus failed to meet Paul in Troas.
Paul was anxious to hear how Titus’ visit to Corinth went. Did they receive the letter well? How did they respond? Was the issue resolved? There were a thousand questions going through Paul’s mind.
In addition to his apprehension about the church in Corinth, Paul no doubt was concerned about Titus, as well. For all Paul knew, Titus might have fallen prey to highway robbers. As a result, Paul found no rest for his spirit. He had no peace of mind, which prevented him from preaching the gospel in Troas.
Warren Wiersbe says, “Paul had open doors of ministry at Troas, but he had no peace in his heart to walk through those doors. Humanly speaking, it looked like the end of the battle, with Satan as the victor (Bible Exposition Commentary).
No doubt, Paul felt like a failure. And…
SOMETIMES, YOU FEEL DEFEATED, AS WELL.
Don’t you? I know I do at times. You feel like a failure. You feel discouraged, because you can’t do what you really want to do.
Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State under George W. Bush (2005-2009), started college with a different career in mind, a professional music career. She majored in piano performance, but the summer after her sophomore year, she went to study and perform at the Aspen Musical Festival.
While there, she came into contact with, as she put it, “11-year-olds who could play from sight what had taken [her] all year to learn.” She knew that she could not compete with people of such innate talent, so her pursuit of a music career ended that summer.
At the start of her junior year, she changed her major from music to international relations. And the rest is history.
Rice earned graduate degrees in political science from Notre Dame and would go on to become an expert on the Soviet Union and eventually foreign policy. She served as the National Security advisor (from 2001 to 2005) and then US Secretary of State, as the first woman of color to do so (D. Michael Lindsay, Hinge Moments, IVP, 2021, pages 137; www.PreachingToday.com).
Her failure to walk through one door led her to push open a new door of opportunity. You do the same! When you feel defeated, don’t quit. Instead, push open a new door of opportunity.
Hellen Keller once said, “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us (“The Faith of Helen Keller,” Christianity Today, Vol. 38, no. 1; www. PreachingToday.com).
So, how do you overcome the discouragement of failure? How do you find that open door when another door has been slammed shut in your face? Well, you do what Paul did when he felt defeated. Take a look at verse 14.
2 Corinthians 2:14 But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere (ESV).
When you feel defeated, praise the Lord anyway! Thank God, who can turn your defeat into an overwhelming victory.
2 Thessalonians 2:15-16 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? (ESV)
None of us are sufficient for these things. None of us are adequate to participate in a victory parade, but with God all things are possible! So, when you feel defeated…
TRUST CHRIST TO LEAD YOU IN VICTORY, USING YOUR WORK.
Depend on the Lord to use your feeble efforts to accomplish His glorious plan. Rely on God to turn your loss into a win for His glory!
As Paul writes these words, he has in mind the victory parade that Rome gave to their greatest conquering generals.
To receive such an honor, their victory had to be complete, they had to kill at least 5,000 enemy soldiers, and they had to gain new territory for the emperor. When the Roman senate determined a general had met all the conditions, they arranged a victory parade, in which he rode in a golden chariot, pulled by four horses.
The conquering general wore a robe embroidered with gold. He carried a laurel bough in his right hand, a scepter in in his left, and wore a laurel wreath on his head. His officers, the senators, and the chief citizens of Rome surrounded him, honoring him with their presence. People also carried the richest spoils of war in the parade—gold, silver, weapons of every description, and costly works of art. The victorious general’s sons would walk behind their father’s chariot, sharing in his victory, with the captive enemy soldiers bringing up the rear.
Roman priests also marched in the parade, burning incense to pay tribute to the victorious army. The parade followed a special route through the city and ended at the Circus Maximus, where the helpless captives would entertain the people by fighting wild beasts. Thus, the incense for them was an aroma of defeat and death. But for the citizens of Rome, it was an aroma of life and victory (Wiersbe, Bible Exposition Commentary; Freeman & Chadwick, Manners and Customs of the Bible, pp.541-542).
What a glorious picture of overwhelming victory in the context of defeat!
In this picture, believers are the General’s sons, sharing in His victory! So we follow in Christ’s triumph, not fighting FOR victory, but fighting FROM victory.
In this picture, believers are also like incense, spreading the aroma of Christ in their life and works. To those who put their trust in Christ, they are the aroma of life. To those who reject Christ, they are the aroma of death.
Your labor for the Lord is huge! It’s a matter of life or death to a lost world around you. So don’t be discouraged when it seems like you have failed. Instead, depend on the Lord to use your feeble efforts to make the difference between life or death for those who need Him.
Chadwick Boseman, the star of Black Panther, shook Marvel fans around the world when they learned about his death a few years ago. Nobody knew that he had been undergoing treatments for stage 3 colon cancer while filming Black Panther, Infinity War, and other popular movies.
Several years previously, producers had fired him from one of his first acting jobs, so he knew something about trials and setbacks. Listen, as he shares what he learned in a 2018 commencement address at his alma mater, Howard University, two years before he passed away (show Boseman Howard University Commencement video):
“Sometimes you need to feel the pain and sting of defeat to activate the real passion and purpose that God predestined inside of you. God says in Jeremiah, “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future…
“You would rather find purpose than a job or career. Purpose crosses disciplines. Purpose is an essential element of you. It is the reason you are on the planet at this particular time in history. Your very existence is wrapped up in the things you are here to fulfill. Whatever you choose for a career path, remember, the struggles along the way are only meant to shape you for your purpose…
“When God has something for you, it doesn’t matter who stands against it. God will move someone that’s holding you back away from the door and put someone there who will open it for you if it’s meant for you. I don’t know what your future is, but if you are willing to take the harder way, the more complicated one, the one with more failures at first than successes, the one that has ultimately proven to have more meaning, more victory, more glory, then you will not regret it” (Chadwick Boseman, “Commencement Speech at Howard University,” YouTube, 5-12-18; www.PreachingToday.com).
Failure doesn’t have to be fatal. In fact, for the believer, it is often the path to the greater success of fulfilling God’s purpose for your life. Just keep on spreading the aroma of Christ in whatever you do. Keep on representing Him well even when someone or something disrupts your plans.
Becky Tirabassi, in her book Wild Things Happen when I Pray, says, “God's Holy Spirit orchestrates our lives to touch others—strangers, friends, work-related people, service-industry workers and more—if we would just open up and be ourselves. How? Be free to be in love with Jesus in front of people. Be an ambassador through whom he can introduce himself. There is a world out there, hungry and searching for Jesus and his love. Don't keep him to yourself” (Becky Tirabassi, Wild Things Happen When I Pray, Zondervan, 1993; www.PreachingToday.com).
When you feel defeated, trust Christ to lead you in victory, using your work. More than that…
TRUST CHRIST TO LEAD YOU IN VICTORY, USING YOUR WORDS, as well.
Depend on the Lord to use your faltering lips to spread His life-changing message. Rely on God to turn your plain speech into words that touch the spirit. That’s what the apostle Paul did.
2 Corinthians 2:17 For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ (ESV).
Orators in Paul’s day polished their presentations to peddle their oratory. They entertained audiences with words that tickled people’s ears to get the most money for their speeches.
Paul, on the other hand, spoke plainly, without ulterior motives, as one literally “from God.” In fact, Paul refused to accept any pay for his preaching (1 Corinthians 9:11-15). Rather, he spoke as if God were his audience in dependence upon Christ. He did not seek to impress people for pay. He chose instead to speak in a way that pleased God.
Henri Nouwen, a Dutch preacher and theologian, put it this way: “In recent years I have become increasingly aware of the dangerous possibility of making the Word of God sensational. Just as people can watch spellbound a circus artist tumbling through the air in a phosphorized costume, so they can listen to a preacher who uses the Word of God to draw attention to himself. But a sensational preacher stimulates the senses and leaves the spirit untouched. Instead of being the way to God, his ‘being different’ gets in the way” (Henri J.M. Nouwen, “The Genesee Diary,” Christianity Today, Vol. 30, no. 5; www.PreachingToday.com).
Sensational speeches get in the way to God. On the other hand, simple, Spirit-filled words change lives for eternity.
In his book You Can Make a Difference, Tony Campolo talks about a time when he was a counselor at a junior high camp. He said he had never met meaner kids in his life. They focused on an unfortunate kid named Billy who had cerebral palsy. His brain was unable to exercise proper control over his body or speech. The kids called him “spastic.” Billy would walk across the grounds of the camp in his disjointed manner, and the others would line up behind him, imitating his every movement. One day Billy asked one of the boys, “Which way is the craft shop?” The other boy twisted grotesquely, pointed a dozen different ways and said, “That way!” Such cruelty!
The meanness reached its lowest point when Billy's cabin had been assigned the morning devotions for those 150 kids. The boys voted for Billy to be the speaker. They knew he couldn't do it. They just wanted to get him up there so that they could mock him and laugh. Little Billy got up out of his seat and limped his way to the platform. You could hear the titters of mocking laughter. But that didn't stop the little guy. He took his place behind the rostrum and started to speak. It took him almost ten tortured minutes to say, “Je-sus loves meee! Je-Je-Je-sus loves meee! And I love Je-Je-Jesus.” When he finished there was dead silence. Campolo says, “I looked, and there were boys trembling and crying all over the place. A revival broke out in that camp and kids turned their lives over to Jesus. A host of boys committed their lives to Christian service.”
Campolo wishes he had kept count of how many ministers he has met as he travels across the US who have told him how they gave their lives to Jesus because of the witness of a “spastic” kid named Billy (Tony Campolo, You Can Make A Difference, Thomas Nelson, 2003, p. 40; www.PreachingToday.com).
You may feel like you’re a terrible witness. That’s okay. You don’t need to impress anybody with your words. Just speak before God in dependence upon Christ. Then let God use your fumbling words to change lives forever.
When you feel defeated, trust Christ to lead you in victory, using your work and your words. Trust Christ to use your feeble efforts and faltering speech to make an eternal difference in people’s lives.
Harvard professor and New York City pastor, Dr. Gardner Taylor, talks about preaching in Louisiana during the Great Depression. Electricity was just coming into that part of the country, and he was out in a rural, black church that had just one little light bulb hanging down from the ceiling to light up the whole sanctuary. He was preaching away, and in the middle of his sermon, all of a sudden, the electricity went out. The building went pitch black, and Dr. Taylor didn't know what to say, being a young preacher. He stumbled around until one of the elderly deacons sitting in the back of the church cried out, “Preach on, preacher! We can still see Jesus in the dark!” (Taken from Timothy George's sermon “Unseen Footprints,” Preaching Today Audio, Issue 290; www.PreachingToday.com).
Sometimes, that’s the only place you can see Jesus—in the dark! So keep on preaching. Keep on praying. Keep on working until you see Jesus when He comes in all His glory.
