I Failed The Bar: Lesson 1

So, I’ll preface this by saying this blog is the first in a string of upcoming blogs where I’ll talk about some of the lessons I learned from failing the bar exam.

I’ve chosen to share my journey after I’ve, in a sense, completed the journey because I didn’t want to “bleed” on anybody. I actually got this from Pastor Steven Furtick. As humans, preachers, pastors, and spiritual teachers go through tough situations and if they aren’t careful the raw emotions of the “not so good” moments will bleed on the people listening, or negatively affect the people who are coming to them for motivation or inspiration. I’m not saying I’m a preacher, pastor, or a spiritual teacher(AT ALL!). I’m just saying I knew that if anything good was going to come from this, I would HAVE to share the journey, but, as a representative of Christ, not give God bad PR by showing my raw emotions (cause some convos got REAL ugly...). Still wanting to remain authentic, I just needed to do my work first. You feel me?

Okay. So of those lessons I learned, here’s a major one:

Lesson 1: God moves when our faith and His will align. 

While it is impossible to please God without faith, our faith alone doesn’t move God. I mean, He’s God so if He’s going to move it’s going to be on His own volition. 

Think about it. 

We can have all the faith in the world that X will happen, but if X isn’t in the will of God and we’ve been praying for God’s perfect will to be done, do you think he would allow it? If God met all of our faith-filled, yet out of his will requests, he wouldn’t be performing his perfect will for our lives. He’d be admitting things that were permissible, but not perfect. We want perfect, not permissible. 

You can also look at it from another perspective. God is our father. As a “good-good” father, would he give something to His child out of season? Would he give a steak to His 3 year old baby? I don’t think so. No matter how much faith that baby has that their father will feed them anything they want, the father knows that the baby just isn’t ready for steak. Wrong season...bad timing.

Just like a baby, at times, we REALLY REALLY want something, but we don’t see that it’s not time for it. We then want to question and blame God, failing to see that God is just being our “good-good” father. He’s looking 100 miles down the road and we’re only paying attention to this pit stop. 

That said, it takes a significant amount of spiritual maturity to say & MEAN “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” (Job 13:15)

That scripture used to scare me as a kid. Like, “I can trust God cool....but what I gotta die for? If He’s God, can’t He do what he needs to do and not ‘slay’ me?”

I wasn’t ready.

 I didn’t truly recognize that God’s thoughts and ways are wayyy more complex than mine. I didn’t know that tough situations come to purge out the stuff I didn’t need. I didn’t realize that after singing “Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders...” He’d actually do it and have me somewhere in the middle of the ocean lost on purpose! (Haha...I mean in a way, right?!) I didn’t realize that he prunes the tree in order for it to yield a bountiful harvest. I didn’t realize that the “slaying” was a necessary grooming process transforming me into who I needed to be for HIS will.

I’m not saying that’s an easy pill to swallow. In fact, it’s a big scary one...but I’ve found that if you can just get through those first few steps of doubt and unbelief (which are undoubtedly THEE hardest steps), you’ll start to see that even though God allows “bad” things to happen to us, we can 100% trust and have faith that he will make good things come from it in HIS perfect timing! 

Timing...a whole other concept. 

Ecclesiastes 3:1 is quoted ALL the time (“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”) That’s a good one, but verse 11 is my favorite.

“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.”

We don’t know what will eventually happen, but we at least know it will be absolutely, positively beautiful in HIS timing. 

Listen, if it’s in God’s perfect will and you ask Him to let His perfect will be done in your life, then it’ll happen. No doubt about it! 

We can get tired of trusting with no results. We can get tired of pushing forward while battling an overwhelming sense of stagnation. It can get rough out here, but....

Keep exercising your faith, and when the time is right, your faith will come into perfect alignment with God’s perfect will and create the most beautiful combustion. It’ll completely blow your mind....no, seriously!