For story is where we learn and hear from God and from others. As others have said story is the language of the heart. This part of my story begins in 1980 when I became a follower of Jesus. I was in the Air Force as a Security Police K-9 Officer. I was trained as a drug dog handler. I had just been transfered from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana to Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, Japan. After arriving at Kadena I met a fellow K-9 officer who was a Christian. She was one who seemed to be quite different from the Christians I had grown up around. She had a much more personal revelation of Jesus in her life and that intrigued me like nothing else. I had been raised in Church, but had never really understood, or even wanted to understand, who Jesus is. God used her to introduce me to who Jesus is. After being around her seeing her life and testimony God began a stirring in my heart that led to my commitment to follow Jesus. After that God put me on a very fast track in serving Him. I was able to learn and understand the Bible fairly quickly. After only a few months I was teaching a Bible study in our Air Force Barracks. This fellow K-9 Officer and I later came to fall in love with each other. We came back to the states where my parents lived and we were
married in Santa Barbara, California. After our marriage I was discharged from the Air Force and returned to live with her in Okinawa, Japan.
A Christian couple who were mentoring us encouraged me to pursue full time Christian ministry. I also was feeling that God was calling me to serve him in full time ministry.
So I made a decision to go back to California to attend Bible College in Sacramento.
This was the beginning of what I will call my journey of failure.
Because in my rush to “serve God” or as John Eldredge has put it in one of his books“to rush into the field”.
I left my wife of only a few months unprotected in a foreign country all by herself, where she fell into temptation with another man. Which eventually led to our separation and then to our divorce.
As I look back on these events I can see how my impulsive decision led to failure in both our lives. I had used what God had said without applying wisdom and the counsel of others to my decision. At the time I was thinking I was doing the will of God.
Yet I had left my brand new wife of only a few months in a foreign country unprotected. She had no one to fight for her to protect her, and to battle for her heart. As I look at it now I did not have men who were close enough to me who could give wise counsel. Men who could help me understand and interpret my decision more clearly. I was not even looking for any more guidance for I had determined this was what I should do right then. In my selfishness in doing what I thought God wanted me to do I did not clearly see what was ahead or even plan for it. I am not saying I should not have gone into full time Christian ministry. It would have been a more wise choice if I would have chosen to wait. I might have waited until later which would have allowed me to bring my wife back with me.
This decision affected my entire life and the lives of many others. For since I was divorced I could not be a Pastor in the denomination of the Bible College I was attending, which was what I thought God wanted for me.
I begin with this part of my story because it illustrates that we all have made choices that have led to what we see as failure in our lives. We make decisions sometimes based on what we consider a Godly calling without asking for clarity, or finding men or women who can speak into our lives and hearts to determine more clearly what is the next step for us to take.
 I have always been one to be impulsive, rush into doing things without thinking. God has put other men in our lives to help us see more clearly. It is much better to ask for wisdom from God and the counsel and insight of others before we make major life decisions. The growth of our hearts comes from the wisdom that God gives us. Solomon asked for a wise and discerning heart. May that always be our request of God to give each of us a wise and discerning heart.

We find that wisdom is spoken of many times in the book of Proverbs. It also says to look to many counselors before we go to war. We are in need of hearing wisdom from God and from others. We also are in need of truly listening and hearing the voice of God in our hearts. We will need to be attentive listener’s allowing the Lord to speak to us and guide us on the path to the next step in our journey.

My journey has seemed to be one failure after another.
There was real failure and many perceived failures. These failures have been one of the major guiding forces for my life. The wounds that have been caused by these failures have been something that has defined me for a long time.
I have gone through many jobs, quit some and even was fired from one. Even today I have a hard time when I miss a bill payment or forget to tell my wife something important
What journey have you been on in your walk with God to this point?
Does any of this speak to your heart? What do you do when you fail?
Each month I hope to bring some insight and wisdom for all of us in dealing with and seeing our failures in a different light.
The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4 16-18 says this: “Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary light affliction is producing in us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things unseen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
Let us not lose heart no matter how we feel about our failures. God wants to rescue, restore and heal your heart.