Facing Failure

BOB AND I HAD THE UNUSUAL OPPORTUNITY to speak on the subject of failure at a charity fundraiser. Although it’s not a typical speaking topic, failure is one thing we all have in common. Just reading the word may bring up unpleasant videos on the screens of our minds. We’ve all seen those sad movies and prefer not to watch the reruns. The great movies are the ones that show the main characters falling down in failure but getting up again as overcomers.

Countless examples of failure fill our history books. It’s said that Thomas Edison had a thousand failed experiments in his quest to invent the light bulb, but he persevered. Thanks to his continued efforts, my light overhead enables me to see what I type. Abraham Lincoln lost several elections before he won the presidency and led the country through a civil war.

The Bible also contains stories of failure. Moses was guilty of murder and ran away to tend sheep for forty years, until God called him to lead all two million of His people out of Egypt. When Jesus was arrested, Peter denied knowing Him three times and was devastated by his failure. But after the Resurrection, Peter became a fearless preacher of the gospel and was willing to die a martyr’s death.

The apostle Paul led the persecution of Christians in the earliest days of the church. After Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus, however, he became a world-class missionary, wrote much of the New Testament, and willingly suffered for his faith. It was this miraculous conversion that enabled him to preach “that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all” (1 Timothy 1:15).

All of the above were overcomers because they didn’t let their failures define them. They didn’t allow failure to keep them from taking risks. Has the Lord put something on your heart to do, but you fear failure? Maybe it has to do with your job, your marriage, parenting, an athletic competition, an elected office, or a mission trip. I vividly remember years ago when the Lord impressed on me something I needed to do, but a person I respected warned me of certain failure. With my husband’s encouragement and prayers, I took the risk anyway. I look back in gratitude for what God did as I trusted Him for the assignment He had given me.

As a mom, I also had to trust God for wisdom to prepare my kids for both success and failure. Long before my boys played ball games that are watched on highlight reels, they needed to learn to face failure. And our girls, sweet as they are, would fail too. Because we have all faced failure, we are qualified to teach our kids how to deal with losing while they are young, when the loss is forgotten by the time the last pieces of ice in their snow cones are slurped. Later, as losses yield greater consequences, so does the determination to face failure and not give up.

Such lessons came in handy when our son Robby was privileged to play for the high school state championships in both football and baseball, and his team lost both. Our son Timmy had lost games, too, but his goal his junior year in college was for his football team to have an undefeated season. They lost one game by one point.

After Timmy’s loss, Bob and I had a few minutes to pray with him before he addressed the media. He apologized to the fans in what is now known as “The Promise,” a brief, humble, passionate speech that served as motivation for his team to win the rest of their games that year, including the National Championship. “The Promise” has received a lot of recognition in the years since it was made and is now engraved on the wall of the sports complex at his university.

We can make a promise too—a promise to ourselves: When we fail, we will get up again by God’s grace. We will do what we know God has called us to do, and we will not give up on responsibilities, people, or life. We may lose by a point or miss success by a mile, but we can be overcomers. God’s Word says so: “This is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 John 5:4).

REFLECTION

Reflect on your experiences of failure. How have they prevented you from doing what God has called you to do? Read Psalm 73 and pause to meditate on verse 26: “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Instead of being paralyzed by past failures, we can, by God’s grace, commit to being overcomers and getting back up when we fail. Proverbs 24:16 reminds us that “a righteous man falls seven times, and rises again.”