All His Always

Failure don’t define who we are

The story of Thomas Edison, he is a partially deaf.

“Your tommy is too stupid to learn”, a teacher of Thomas Edison said it to him.

He failed 10K times to light up a bulb.

“I never failed. I just found 10,000 ways that wouldn’t work” said Thomas. Of people who give up too soon he said, “Many of life’s failures are people who gave up too soon.”

Sometimes, people tend to overlook the setbacks and only see the end success.

We think that the person is lucky, in a right place and right time. Or just smart. Or just talented.

We forgot that the Lord is sovereign, and everything is part of His plan.

There are circumstances in our lives that we cannot control.

It’s human nature to be content because of the circumstances, and not because of God.

God loved us because we are his sons and daughters, not because we succeed or failed.

A quote says “You are the same person after your loss, as you were before your loss.”

It is the strength of the character that enables us to get up and keep moving when we failed.

But how do we find strength to move forward? Ask it from the Lord.

Philippians 4:11-13

11 I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

Failure is a gift from God

Failure can be a result of:

Your own actions

Other people’s actions

Circumstances beyond our control

OR Combinations of the three

 Benefits of Failures in our lives

Deepen the relationship with the Lord, as he comforts when mourning in our mistakes

Mourning during failures humbles us and puts us in touch with humanity. A reminder that we cannot control all things, and realize that God is the master of beginning and ending – a sovereign God.

Without sadness, we would probably never have the guts to admit our mistakes. When you admit your mistakes, you may be surprised how others can forgive you.

Failures are opportunity from God to grow and learn from your mistakes.

2 Corinthians 12:9

9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

Failure is used by God to accomplish His purposes

Jonah’s story

(Jonah 1:1-17)

Lessons are:

Really God is in Control – from waves of the ocean, and to the big fish that swallowed Jonah.

Even Jonah’s small moment of disobedience to God can be a blessing for those around him.

By God’s power, even our poor service may accomplish everything that God intends.

God sees us beyond our Faults and upcoming Failures

Simon Peter’s story

(Luke 22:31-34)

Lessons are: 

Right before the prediction, Jesus says “..strengthen your brothers.” Jesus is certain that Peter is going to fail, but it doesn’t keep him from assigning Peter the test to strengthen his fellow disciples.

Jesus sees us beyond our faults and even our upcoming failures. Jesus sees Peter’s strength in faith and compassion, and will be the one to build his fellow disciples even he will fail along the way.

Failure as an encouragement for us

We know our weakness and how many times to fail to live up to God’s standards. We are sinful, yet God sees beyond our fault and failures – because he sees us fully.

My Project, a gift from God

It’s been a year since I received my project Anti-FA Sensor. This is an answered prayer from God because he gave me an opportunity to learn more, grow more, and stay longer with my GRID family. This project is my breakthrough as a software developer engineer, a first project that I’ve handled from the scratch – from conceptualizing, designing, coding, up to execution. A project that boosted my confidence, that I can finally build and own a project with great promises, and with great responsibility. I thank God every day for granting me this opportunity, and I really felt that He blessed me with people that guided my journey.

An incident with a blessing of flags

Weeks before we rolled-out the project, there are already signs from the Lord. Without me knowing, there is an unexpected output from the system that will bound to happen – a disaster that would strike not only my Anti-FA Prevention team members, not only with GRID, but an incident that would also affect the performance of whole Trend Micro as a company. God did not forget to send out flags to me but only to ignore them. Flags that if checked thoroughly and watched carefully, could prevent the incident from happening. These are my flags:

Delaying the addition process - the final part of the system where we add content in GRID is not properly in place. This delay us to turn on the addition module.

Foreshadow of the incident -  An investigation item happens in a middle of module roll-out wherein a module missed a condition on the program, causing files to be deleted without checking if successfully downloaded. This involves a critical service integrator.

Slowing down the addition process - Adding of contents to GRID DB took 1 record every minute, which is slower than expected.

Impeding the addition process -  The earlier part of the system keeps on crashing due to “out of memory error” after the system rolled-out.

My response to my flags are careless and insensitive. I neglected to check the entire system overall, and tend to control things on my own hands instead. I was arrogant to inspect things deeper, because I was over confident that everything will going to be okay.

Receiving the devastating news

It was October 25 when we received a removal case that came from Anti-FA Sensor. I gave a benefit of the doubt because the first case was only a grayware, and possible that my system rules tagged it correctly compared to the manual analysis of an engineer. Until the second case falls in, and the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. Each of the cases are with the horrifying AV detection – malwares and ransomwares.

It was too late for me to realize that Anti-FA Sensor is doing something unexpected. Because like I said earlier, I was being over confident, so I took the news lightly at first. It was my manager that calls the attention to take the incident more seriously because it has a damaging effect to the GRID’s integrity, and also to the company’s monthly AV testing performance. I suddenly felt worried, and the amount of gravity was gradually consumed me. My first reaction was to correct the added content in GRID’s content, and to focus on what needs to be done to lessen the damage.

Realizing the impact

God is sovereign, and I believed that He allows Anti-FA Sensor to fail – to teach me an important lesson. This is truly a wake-up call to change my work methodology and coding ethics, given that I’m putting out a new process that has an effect to a critical service. Testing my system is crucial, so I need to check every details, and make sure that all functions and integrations will work as expected before and after the roll-out.

I can’t help but to feel down on what just happened to me. It drained me physically to the point that I don’t know how to proceed and how to get up. My confidence was shaken. I felt really ashamed to my team members, to my manager, and to my director.

But God has a promise to me, a promise that always been in my heart, a promise that I’ve been holding on for a very long time, a promise that i remembered:

Jeremiah 29:11 - For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

I will continue to trust His promise to me, to keep my head up high, because I can surpass His challenge to me – a challenge that is already part of His plan, a plan that will give me hope and future.

Reliance to the Lord

I also prayed to the Lord for comfort and strength. And eventually, praying and talking to God granted me a heart of thanksgiving. The Lord transformed my grief into grateful. I’ve realized that in the middle of the storm, I still have one God that loves me, that will never leave me, and will never forsake me.

I praised God for:

My Manager – for always being supportive all throughout the incident. She never let me feel that I’m alone in my battle. She never judged me nor let me do things to resolve the incident on my own. The amount of love I received from her is immense, to the point that she also sees things as her lacking in preparation, instead of focusing only on my mistake. I told her that it was my responsibility, and I am accountable on the incident. She did everything to calm everyone on the boat, and to boost our morale. I will forever be grateful that she remained strong and firm – a captain that everyone needs when the going gets tough.

My team members – for the support and willingness to help me to resolve the incident. Without them, I would be in dreadful, and my pain could last longer.

My lesson – another answered prayer for me. I am praying to God that He brake and mold me to have a Christ-Like character. And He needs me to change my response to failures and mistakes. I am thankful to God that he gave me this challenge – an opportunity to grow, and for having me realize that I am NOT the one who’s in control. How I wish I could control things most of the times, but God imposed me over and over again that He is the one who’s in control.

There were only little things that we could manage from the incident, the rest were uncontrollable and out of our hands. All we need to do was to give everything we had to correct the mistakes, and to focus on things we could improve so incident like this won’t happen again in the future. The rest were lifted up and surrendered to the Lord our God.

Key Takeaway

In spite of my heartaches, what happened to me is a blessing from God. I will continue to trust His promises to me, and be grateful to all things that He allowed to happen – be it good or bad.