All of us want success. All of us need success. If you don’t care about doing something well, you are in sad shape. You are in trouble if you don’t want to succeed at something.
And yet the problem is that we are our own worst enemies. We defeat ourselves time and time again. We take whatever successes we have, and we dash them to the ground and leave them in the dust. At the end of the day we feel like failures rather than the successes God created us to be. Even the folks who act like they are successful, who brag about their successes – deep down many of them are just putting on a front to hide the real truth, that they feel like failures.
We defeat ourselves by taking the things we achieve and turning them into losses. We hurt ourselves by snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And, more than that, we let others defeat us because we permit our neediness to steer us to the wrong people. We go to the court of public opinion to get satisfaction, but we listen to the negative reports only. We choose to fail. We set ourselves up for failure.
We need to learn from what God did when He sent the child Jesus to be born among us. In Jesus, born in Bethlehem, God affirmed us; in Jesus we can become what God wants us to become, what we want to become.
I
When I was seventeen, I had been studying the piano for several years, and my teacher thought I was ready for a competition. Now you need to know that a piano competition is not merely a glorified recital, where they applaud you just for showing up and stumbling through your little musical number. A piano competition is an awesome, intimidating thing, where you play before a panel of judges looking at you over their spectacles, with what you are sure is a horrified look, and you can see their pens poised to scribble their caustic comments about your fumbling musicianship. It was that to which my piano teacher wanted to send me. And so she did, having informed me that in order to participate I would have to learn a thing called Concertstueck, composed by one Carl Maria von Weber. Are you impressed?!
I worked on von Weber’s Concertstueck. I worked on it day after day, for weeks and weeks. It was a fiendishly difficult piece. It had huge rolling arpeggios; it included vast sweeping chords. But somehow I stretched my fingers and got the piece in my brain. I was ready for competition day.
But not quite. Not quite because there were some issues I had not reckoned with. First, I had practiced only on our little rickety upright at home; I had never sat down to a concert grand piano before. I never dreamed that would matter. And second, I made the mistake of sharing what I was going to do with some friends, among them a young lady in whom I was interested. I never dreamed that this young lady would answer my interest by showing up to hear me on competition day. I didn’t have a clue what was about to happen to me.
When the day came, I sat and listened to three or four other young pianists bang and clatter their way through von Weber. What a lot of noise they made! What an uproar! What a show, bobbing and weaving on the piano bench, throwing their hands high in the air at the end of each phrase! Not for me, I thought. I don’t emote. I don’t go wild. I’ll knock out this piece. I was ready.
My turn came. I adjusted the bench. I stretched my arms. I nodded to my accompanist, and I hit the keys. Plunk! I hit the keys again. Thud! That huge concert grand piano had the stiffest action I had ever encountered, and I could not play. I did not have the strength to play a piano like that! I didn’t know that pianos resist you and feel like you are lifting the Titanic. My performance was a woeful, wallowing, weighty waffle through von Weber. The piece was barely recognizable. I left the platform mortified, a total failure.
But it got worse. As I fled the hall, trying to keep my eyes forward so that I would not have to see the triumphant smirks of all the other competitors, out from behind a pillar she stepped. She whom I had wanted to impress, she who had come all this way just to support me. The last person in the world I wanted to see at this moment. And she said, so sweetly, “I think you did great just to show up.” Trying to be kind, I guess, like what you say to a two year old who scribbles a picture and wants to hang it on the refrigerator – oh, how nice, but what is it? Essentially she said to me, “Oh how nice, but what was that you played? Certainly not von Weber’s Concertstueck?” I died a hundred deaths. Wouldn’t you? Don’t you? Don’t we?
Because, you see, we don’t see success even when we achieve it. We downgrade our successes to ashes because life has more challenge in it than we expected. More than that, in our neediness there is always someone who can get to us, someone whose approval we really need, and if it isn’t there, we are devastated.
But I tell you today, when God sent Jesus, He taught us something about success.
II
Go with me to a strange place for a Christmas sermon. Go with me to Mt. Carmel and to that wonderful Old Testament scene where the prophet Elijah has faced down the 450 priests of Baal. It’s quite an achievement. 450 performing priests, putting on a show to get their god to wake up and do something at the altar atop Mt. Carmel. But Baal is a no-show, and so Elijah calls on the God of Israel, who not only consumes the sacrifice on the altar, but the water around the altar, and then the altar itself. A moment of great triumph. Elijah won the prophet competition, hands-down.
But there was a little followup test. Elijah had told Ahab, the king of Israel, that until after this showdown there would be no rain in the land. There would be drought as long as Elijah called for it. That too had happened. Elijah is two for two. He won the prophet competition and he got the drought. So now it is time to end the dry weather, and Elijah goes back up on Mt. Carmel to ask the Lord for rain. He prayed for rain, and, guess what? It did not come. Again he prayed, and it was dry. Three times, four times, five times more. Nothing. Six times Elijah asked for the cooling waters, and nothing happened. He was beginning to panic. But one more plea, and finally a little cloud appeared, no bigger than a man’s hand, a sign that rain might finally come. That tiny cloud, a sign of the presence of God, at last.
So what does brother Elijah do now? How does he treat this moment? By sitting down under a broom tree and whining at the Lord. By throwing himself a pity party and asking to die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” In the very moment when Elijah had accomplished so much, he wants to fade away into nothing. Why? What is going on with him? The same thing that goes on with us. The same issues that we face.
A
Notice, first, that Elijah had not recognized that he had accomplished something. Just because he didn’t get everything he wanted, and just because he didn’t get it when he wanted it, he thought of himself as a failure. He had whipped the priests of Baal into submission; he held back the waters until the land repented. He did much. But because he could not get the rains to come at his command, on his timetable, all those accomplishments faded away. He felt nothing but misery.
I’ve spoken before of perfectionism. It is demonic, isn’t it? If we cannot do something well, we don’t want to do it at all. If we cannot be superstars, we don’t want to play the game. If we cannot command things to happen when we want them to happen, we think of ourselves as worthless. But we are not worthless. We are simply incomplete, we are immature, we are not finished. Give God the praise for what He has done through us, and do not complain about what has not yet been done. In its own time and in its own way, it will be done.
Just because you have not yet achieved all that you think you should – just because you didn’t end the drought on schedule – just because you couldn’t handle the heavy action piano – just because you didn’t ace that final exam – just because you didn’t get that promotion – just because you have not found work – just because any of that, you are not a failure. That is not your whole story. You are a creation of God, on your way to being more than you are now, yes, but right now, right here, you are a glory and a joy! You are a delight to the Father! Do not turn your successes into ashes. Give God praise for what He has done in you.
B
But notice also that Elijah’s problem was compounded because in his equation there was somebody he just had to please. There was somebody without whose approval anything he did would mean nothing. That somebody was beyond pleasing, but he had to do it. Jezebel, the queen, whose very name has become a synonym for evil, had a hold on Elijah’s spirit. It was irrational, it didn’t make sense, but there it was; he had to please Jezebel, and if she didn’t like him, it didn’t matter what anybody else said. When Jezebel spoke disapproval, threatening to kill him, Elijah shuddered from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. He had to have her wood word, and was not going to get it. That is total misery.
Who is there in your life that you just have to satisfy? Is there someone who leaps into your mind every time you try to achieve something, and you hear a negative voice, your mind conjures up disapproval? Is it a parent, who seems so accomplished that you can never measure up to what he has done? I know young people who flounder in school, and they may not even know why, but it has something to do with never being able to compete with Dad, who is such a professional, or with Mom, who is so capable. If you cannot satisfy their standards, you don’t want to try at all. Or is it a brother or a sister, the one whose name the teachers throw up to you, “Oh, you are Johnnie’s sister – I expect you to be just as good a student as he was.” Is it the person who held your job before you got it, and now everybody says, “We didn’t have this problem when Mary was here.”
Is it – and it often is – that person with whom you clash so often, that person with whom you often disagree, that person who just plain bugs you? Isn’t it interesting how we just have to win over that one person, and even if there are a hundred others who affirm us, we think of ourselves as failures if we don’t get that one in our corner? We let one opinionated individual have control over us. Amazing!
So poor old Elijah – he cannot please Jezebel! He cannot win over Jezebel! She remains hostile. Oh, Elijah! Don’t you see? She will never be in your corner. But Elijah in his neediness cannot stand it that this one person, on whom he has a fixation, is out to hurt him. And so he gives up. He surrenders, and turns to dust and ashes everything he has done.
III
But wait. The story is not over yet. Because God sees Elijah in his misery, and our God is not about to let any one of us destroy himself. God is not going to permit us to enjoy spiritual sickness. Twice Elijah is touched by an angel and fed, strengthened, and off he goes to the mountain again, to a place where he can think.
It’s one of the finest passages in all of the Bible. It says that Elijah stood and thought about who he was. And as Elijah saw all the hubbub of his turbulent life, he saw an earthquake, he felt unsteady. But the Lord was not in the earthquake. Next Elijah felt the winds blowing, the winds of change. But the Lord was not in the wind. And when the earth settled and the window died down, Elijah felt the heat of a refiner’s fire. But the Lord was not in the fire either. Where was the Lord? The Lord was in the sound of sheer silence; or, as one translation has it, the Lord was in the still small voice. And when Elijah heard that still small voice, that sound of sheer silence, he began to grow. He settled. He found his direction. He discovered his purpose. Elijah found himself. All because Elijah heard a still small voice.
How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given. For God imparts to human heart the blessings of His heaven. No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin, where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.
Brothers and sisters, the stillest smallest voice God ever used was the whimper of a newborn infant in a borrowed manger in Bethlehem. But that voice echoes through the centuries, and speaks to us.
A
That still, small voice, the voice of the little Lord Jesus, tells us that God has noticed our plight, and that He cares about us. It tells us that God has understood our incompleteness, God has heard our plaintive cries, and has come to live as we live and feel what we feel. We are caught up in our own immaturity. We are pained by our own inability to do what we think we ought to do. But in this infant almighty God, whose accomplishments are past telling, who has created a thousand thousand worlds, who slung the very stars into space – this God limited Himself to frail human flesh. This God became an infant, dependent on others to take care of Him. This God will grow as a child, needing guidance and instruction; this God will be an awkward youth, He will be a young man working to find His identity. This God knows what it is to feel incomplete, immature, and unfinished. In Jesus Christ our God is accepting our incompleteness and is telling us that we are not failures. We are not hopeless. We are not beyond repair. We just need to grow.
That still, small voice, the infant voice of Bethlehem, tells us that God loves us and affirms us. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” We are not failures. We are just incomplete. God understands.
B
And that still, small voice, that infant’s cry, that incredibly fragile thing in Mary’s arms, is saying something else as well. He is telling us that the only one we have to please is Him. His is the only voice of approval we need to hear. His is finally the only “well done” that matters. What friends may say and what enemies may think is no longer the point. Here in this stable lies the very Word Made Flesh, and when with meek hearts we receive Him, we gain all our strength. That is all we need to take heart. Follow Christ, please Christ, and everyone else falls into place.
Conclusion
Oh, there is good news! There is good news for every one of us, who, like Elijah, feels a failure. We just cannot see what we have accomplished for looking at what we have not accomplished. Good news for every one of us, who, like Elijah, has a nemesis, someone whose approval we need before we can move ahead. There is good news! Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere.
Go tell good news on your Mt. Carmel, where you acknowledge what you have done, good and bad and strong and weak, whatever it is, and see that Jesus understands. He too is weak and lowly of heart, and in Him you will find rest unto your souls. Go tell it on your Mt. Carmel.
Go tell the good news on your Mt. Carmel, wherever there is somebody you have to satisfy. That boss, that teacher, that parent, that friend, that negative voice down inside you have heard for years – go tell that voice to buzz off, for you have heard another voice. You have heard a still, small voice, the voice of Jesus. And He says, “You are my child, you belong to me.” No other help I know, nothing but the voice of Jesus. He is the one I must satisfy, He is the one whose word is true, He is the one whose love came down at Christmas, to embrace us and strengthen us and make us whole.
Go tell that on every Mt. Carmel in your life, where you have not become all you need to be – but you are what you are by the power of Christ, and you can do all things through the Christ who strengthens you. Go tell that on the Mt. Carmel of your secret anguish, for there is one who gave up the splendors of heaven to live with you in the dust.
He loves you. Go tell. He loves us. Go tell. Jesus Christ is born – born to embrace us. Go tell that. It’s the best news ever.
