In the movie “Chocolat,” set in a traditional catholic French village in which everything and everybody is under the mayors control, a lady “Chocolatier” arrives in town.  She opens a chocolate shop but the Mayor sets up a crusade against the evils of chocolate.  He tells the priest she is the enemy and instructs him to preach against her.  He was fighting to control his repressed but “perfect” town, but many of the town’s people actually find the chocolatier a friendly confident.   Finally one day the Mayor in desperation to rid his town of the evil, decides he will break into the shop and destroy the chocolate. In his mad flurry of destruction he accidentally tastes a small piece of chocolate. As soon as he tastes it, he falls into eating as much chocolate as he could. In the morning he was caught, embarrassed, humbled and changed!   The mayor was over his denial and self-righteous efforts to control and now free to explore a new exciting life.

   The turning point was the Mayors fall into temptation, where it seems that his failure became his salvation.  How often has the failure of someone worked a work of grace in a person’s life to such a degree, that their usefulness to man and God is taken to levels which could never have been possible before the fall. 

God plans for the failure of our self efforts as much as He plans for our success in Christ. God put Adam into the Garden knowing he would fail. Sometimes more is accomplished by our failure than our victory. Pride and self-confidence can be dealt with by God and failure often opens a person up the possibility of help from others. Failure worked in Peter life after his three denials, to rid him of his self-confidence and thrust him upon the Lord.

Friend, we all hate to fail, but our failures can give us a better perspective of our weakness and our dependence upon Him and that’s the greatest lesson.