Learning To Fail Forward
Last week in our Sunday Night movie, “Facing the Giants,” the main character felt like a complete failure. Some of the parents were talking about firing him as head coach, and even one of his assistant coaches was a part of it. And to make matters worse he had just found out that the reason he and his wife couldn’t have children was because of him.
And it got me thinking about this whole idea of failing or being a failure. Now it’s easy to say that no one is a failure, which is true, and that God doesn’t look upon any of us as failure. Or I could use some of the common platitudes and quotes like
• “Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something.”
• C.S. Lewis said, “Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success,” or
• Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
And yet knowing all of this we failure still haunts us and over the course of this life we still feel like failures. Our marriage has failed, we lost our jobs, we’ve been evicted, or our kids are out of control.
And so we hide our failures even though we live in a culture that’s okay with failure, puts it on display, and understands that it’s a part of our pathway to success.
Recently I heard of a story of how Ben and Jerry’s have a “Flavor Graveyard.” It’s a graveyard for all the flavors that “died.” Each of these flavors had their own unique headstone. For Peanut Butter and Jelly it reads,
R.I.P. Peanut Butter and Jelly
An unbeatable duo!
Yet somehow it managed
To flop in a cone,
So we stuck to the sammich.
1989 – 1990
Failure is not something to hide from or hide from others, rather it’s a reality of life and one where we can learn and grow. The Apostle Paul gives to us a little taste of his life and the way he views those things that didn’t always work out in his life, or his failures.
“For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.” (Romans 7:15 NKJV)
But even though he may have failed, he continued to press forward.
“Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.” (Philippians 3:12 NKJV)
Paul not only made mistakes, but also knew we would as well, even if we were well meaning about them. And so as he encouraged himself he also encourages us to press on, to move forward in spite of our failings.
Like Baskin and Robins, let’s put our failures in the ground, celebrate them, but move on knowing that God has a plan and a purpose; that God has a calling upon our lives and He needs for us to move forward in spite of our failings.
And so today I’d like to talk with you about how we can “Fail Forward.”
1. Don’t Give Into Self-Condemnation
“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1 NKJV)
One of the main reasons why we don’t move forward after some difficulty is because of condemnation, not from others so much, but from ourselves. This is why we repeat every Sunday morning our maxim.
“We are mighty men and women of valor, because we are greater in the eyes of God than we are in our own eyes. And while our hearts may condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knows what truly lies within.”
This comes from the life of Gideon, and Gideon felt like a failure. He said that He was the least within his family, his clan, and within the Jewish nation. It doesn’t get any lower than that. Yet, this is not the way God saw him. Instead of a failure, God saw Gideon as a mighty man of valor.
And this is exactly how God sees each and every one of us, so we need to stop condemning ourselves and start moving forward, living lives for Jesus despite how we might feel.
The Apostle John tells us the same thing that we’re not failures, even though our heart may think differently, and the truth is that God’s thoughts about us are far greater than what we think about ourselves.
“For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.” (1 John 3:20 NKJV)
This then leads me to the second thing we need to do in order to “Fail Forward.”
2. Focus on Jesus
The writer of Hebrews tells us to lay aside everything that hinders our walk with God, and holding onto our failures is easily one of them. He calls them weights and snares holding us back and tripping us up. Instead he tells us to keep our focus on Jesus where it belongs.
“Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.”(Hebrews 12:2a NKJV)
We need to by faith keep our focus on where it belongs, and that is on Jesus and off of ourselves. It’s when we’re so busy with life that sometimes we actually miss or fail to recognize Jesus.
This was the case of the Samaritan woman. She also may have felt like a failure, having five husbands and now living with someone who wasn’t her husband. This isn’t something people brag about back then.
And so when she met up with Jesus she had no idea who He was, or who it was she was addressing. So Jesus said, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.” (John 4:10 NLT)
We need to stop focusing so much upon ourselves, our problems, and our failures and get them focused on Jesus, and then Jesus will help us focus on the things that truly matter and what will help us change our lives and circumstances.
And so we need to stop condemning ourselves and focus on Jesus, and then humble ourselves, which is our third point.
3. Be Humble
To be humble we need to keep our eyes wet, knees bent, and our hearts soft.
What does that mean?
• It means to we need to see the poverty of spirit that exists within us and weep because of our sinful condition before God.
• We’re to continually keep our knees bent, that is, we need to constantly be in prayer and not throw our own little pity party. We need to continually be in prayer asking the Lord for His guidance and direction, and
• We need to keep our hearts soften under the power and control of the Holy Spirit, and not allow them to be hardened over the circumstances.
In any sort of precious mineral extraction, you don’t pull out anything that is 95% pure from the earth. Instead it takes time to separate the dregs from the precious metal. And so heat is applied, and as the dregs start to come to the surface, they are taken away.
This is the same process needed that will help us move forward in spite of our failings.
We need to learn to extract the precious, that is, the lessons failure teaches us, from the worthless dregs of guilt and shame. We must learn the lessons while not taking on the othe stuff.
Through the prophet Jeremiah the Lord said,
“If you return, then I will bring you back; you shall stand before Me; if you take out the precious from the vile, you shall be as My mouth. Let them return to you, but you must not return to them.” (Jeremiah 15:19)
God’s desire is to restore us, to bring us back to Himself, but to do so He must separate the precious from the vile, the wheat from the weeds, and then warns us not to return to the old or to those things that keep us down and defeated.
And so we need to stop condemning ourselves, focus on Jesus, and humble ourselves under the mighty gracious hand of God, and then take the time to heal correctly, which is our fourth point.
3. Heal Correctly
While we want to heal quickly and move on, it’s important that we heal correctly.
Mephibosheth was the last surviving son of Jonathan and grandson of King Saul. After Saul and Jonathan died in battle there was panic in the palace. In her haste, Mephibosheth’s nurse dropped him resulting in his being crippled for the rest of his life.
They were so in a hurry that they didn’t take the time to set the bones in his feet and ankles, and as a result Mephibosheth was crippled for the rest of his life.
It’s important that we take the time necessary to heal correctly, but we’re so in a hurry to bury our past mistakes and failures that we haven’t take the time to learn from them, and what history teaches us is that when we fail to learn from our mistakes we end up repeating them.
It’s important that we heal. But it’s also important that we set straight those things that have been broken in our lives. If we don’t then we’re susceptible to resentment and bitterness, which the writer of Hebrews warns us about.
“Looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.” (Hebrews 12:15 NKJV)
Basically what this is saying is that if we allow bitterness and resentment to hold sway in our lives then we’ll not only miss out on God’s grace, but we’ll make everyone’s life around us as miserable as we are.
This leaves me with just one more step for us to be able to move forward despite our failures.
5. Have a Vision
This is probably the one thing that is needed, and the one thing very few people have, which is what keeps them from moving forward when failures take place.
When you think of success, it's easy to think of Walt Disney. He created more than 81 feature films and hundreds of shorts. He earned more than 950 honors, including 48 Academy Awards. He founded the California Institute of the Arts. And he built Disneyland.
But these honors came from difficult challenges, even failures. And yet, from these difficult times came important lessons that would serve him later. Out of them he grew and in many ways succeeded.
At age 22, Walt experienced bankruptcy after the failure of a cartoon series in Kansas City. He headed to Los Angeles with $40 in cash, and an imitation-leather suitcase containing only a shirt, two undershorts, two pairs of socks and some drawing materials.
Feeling that others could do animation better his goal was to become an actor. But when he and his brother Roy saw that no one else was doing this work they set up shop, and the rest is history. But it wasn’t without problems, from a takeover of his first animated character, and being 4 million in debt after WWII.
But Walt had a vision, a place where children and parents could enjoy time together, but he had no money for it. So they got involved with an upstart technology called television, something Hollywood didn’t particularly care for. From here they produced such classics like “The Mickey Mouse Club,” “Davy Crockett,” and “The Wonderful World of Color.”
Walt now was able to secure the financing to open Disneyland.
One of the mainstays of Disneyland is “Tomorrow Land.” And while Walt never saw its completion, he did see it, because he had a vision for it, and it became a reality.
To move forward from our failures we need to have a vision, that is, a divine revelation that is beyond ourselves. We need to see beyond the smallness of our own mind the allow God to expand our vision by expanding our faith.
What is vision? Someone said it like this, “Vision is a preferred picture of what you future looks like.” Walt Disney started with a mouse.
And so to get that vision to move forward despite our failures we need to
a. Get Alone with God
With all the noise of the world, we need to get away and spend time with God so that we can hear His voice and know His will and way for our lives, and for what lies ahead. And the Bible tells us that when we take this time away with God then we’ll be strengthened and will receive that guidance for whatever we’ll be facing.
If Jesus needed to spend time alone with God, how much more do we? And this wasn’t just a routine for Jesus; He took time alone with His Father when times were stressful or when He knew that things would get stressful if not downright impossible humanly speaking.
No one else, not even us, knows us better than God. He knit us together in our mother’s womb and knows every hair upon our head.
And so to get God’s take on what is going on and to receive that strength to move forward, we need to spend time alone with Him.
b. Write it Down
The Bible says that where there is no vision the people perish, Proverbs 29:18. More literally this says, where there is no revelation from God, people will do whatever they want, they’ll cast off all restraint, including God’s will and way for life.
Therefore, it’s important that we take the time and write down what God is telling us.
Studies have shown that most people never really think about the future, not in any real sense that will change the way they live today. Of those who do, only three percent write it down, and of these it was found that they were the top achievers, that is, they were the ones who achieved their goals.
To the prophet Habakkuk the Lord said to write down the vision and make it plain, so that whoever reads it may move forward, Habakkuk 2:2.
So we need to get alone with God, and then take the time to write down what He is saying, so that we can
C. Work It
The Apostle James says that having faith alone isn’t really sufficient to see us through, we must be able to put into practice what we know is true, James 2:14-26.
While it says that Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness, that would have never been the case if he didn’t pack up and move to Canaan, the land of promise.
We have to put into practice what we say we believe. If we know that God never leaves us nor forsakes us, and that He is not finished with any of us, we need to act on this belief and not get stuck in our failures but move forward in the vision and mission of God. And who knows if that failure wasn’t in God’s design to help clarify God’s call and mission for our lives?
Conclusion
Don’t let your failures define you; instead let them motivate you to greater heights with the Lord and in His rarified air.
