“All of us have failed, falling way short of fulfilling the beauty of God‘s plan, that which God intended us to be.”(paraphrase of Romans 3:23)
Americans have very little patience for losers. A team starts having a losing season, ticket sales plummet. A certain sports star, who has the reputation for excelling, when they hit a drought, or difficult time, the fans turn into fault-finders. There’s a famous American expression: “When you’re hot you’re hot, and when you’re not, you’re not.”
In America, we hate losers and we love winners. Failure is considered the unpardonable sin. We canonize champions, we adore achievers. We worship winners, and we sanctify the successful. Everybody wants to succeed. The fact is, I’ve never met anybody in life who’s said, “My life goal is to fail.” Everybody strives for success because failure comes all to easy.
And the emphasis on success puts enormous stress on our society, because failure is a part of life. Yet nobody wants to be called or considered a failure. I suppose that’s a part of life as well. But many people will do anything - lie, cheat, steal, lower their standards, or morals - in order to succeed. It really is that important to people.
"Failure" is the one thing you don’t want to be labeled as. And as a result, we fear failure. We’re afraid of what it might do to us. If I fail what will happen to me? What will other people think? Will I be rejected? Will anybody love me? Will I be considered worthless? The fear of failure is a universal fear. And it causes many people and enormous amount of stress in their lives.
The fear of failure can cause you to be indecisive, you’re worried about what choice to make. What if I make the wrong choice? So you can’t decide. The fear of failure can cause you to be a workaholic - you work and overwork, trying to keep up, trying to get ahead, trying to stay ahead.
The fear of failure can cause you to be a perfectionist where you’re always worried that it’s never good enough to meet the critiquing of people. And you’re never quite satisfied because you’re afraid people won’t like what you did, or how you did it, you’ll be looked on as a failure.
The fact is, failure is a part of life. The first fact about failure is that failure is a fact. And though we can seek to minimize our mistakes and failures, the issue is not how to keep from failing, but how to survive and recover from failure.
Today we’re going to look at what God says about failure in His Word, and we’re going to try to reduce the stress level in our lives by looking at four things we can do WHEN we fail. Not if, but when. Let me ask you: WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU FAIL? Let me mention two of four things to you.
1. REMEMBER EVERYBODY FAILS - Have you made mistakes? Welcome to the human race. It just means you’re alive. In James 3:2 (NIV) it says, “We all stumble in many ways.” We’re all living proof of this verse. Failure is a part of life. You are going to fail. The Bible tells us, “We all stumble in many ways.”
Let’s review the facts of life: 1. You have already failed many, many times in your life. 2. Right now you are probably failing in some areas of your life. 3. You’re going to fail many more times in the future. It’s inevitable - it’s a part of life.
Ecclesiastes 7:20 - “There is no one on earth who does what is right all the time and never makes a mistake.” Nobody’s perfect. The closest you’re ever going to get to perfection is when you are filling out a self-description on a job application. Because you don’t discuss the failures, do you? You describe the successes. And when you’re describing yourself, or handing them your resume about yourself, that’s the best you’re ever going to be. But everyone fails. Even those who are the best at what they do, do not do it right all the time.
Even the superstars fail. Pro basketball players miss on the average of 50% of their shots. In professional baseball, a player is considered outstanding if he can get on base 3 out of every 10 times he gets up to bat. And they also say, that, the players who hit the most home runs usually strike out the most, too. *They strike out more than they get on base. And those are the superstars. Those are the ones who get paid the multi-million dollar contracts.
Everybody fails. The Bible says, “All have sinned and fallen short of God’s mark of perfection.” *I heard of a pastor who was teaching on this verse one time. He said, “We’ve all fallen short. Thank God that He forgives our falling shorts.” Morally we all have falling shorts, those times and acts that leave us embarrassed. We all miss the mark. We all fall short.
You would save yourself a lot of stress over failure if you would remember that everyone fails. You may act perfect, look perfect, and walk around projecting perfection. But we already know - you’re not perfect. And even the Church, whose entire ministry and message is to be based on forgiveness, even we can expect near perfect performances out of people.
But there has only been, and will ever be but One Perfect Person, and that was the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you let go of the image of being perfect, the fear of failure will lose its grip on your life. The Bible tells us that everybody fails. You should remember that when you fail.
2. REALIZE IT’S NOT FATAL - When we do fail, we often over exaggerate the effects of that failure. We blow it out of proportion. It’s not the end of the world. God wants you to feel conviction, not condemnation. The fear of failure is far more damaging to your life than failure is. With failure - you fail, you pick yourself up and you go on. The fear of failure - you can let that haunt you for years and years.
The fear of failure is actually worse than failure in what it does to your life. *And studies show that the more talented you are, the more you tend to fear failure. In other words, people fear failure most in the area in which they gifted. But a lot of that stress comes from the perfect performances that we think is required.
The fear of failure is almost universal. *And it is even a part of many believers’ lives. Even Christians fear failure. And we experience failure, but it is not fatal! Proverbs 24:16 - “For a righteous man falls seven times, and always gets back up.” I like this verse because it says even the best of people make mistakes, even the righteous stumble. Those who are earnestly trying to live right and godly in life, even they fall, they mess up, and make mistakes.
You say, “But that verse said, ‘Seven times.’ I’ve fallen more than seven times.” Seven, in the Bible is the number of completion, or perfection. And what I see here is God saying, “You may be, or feel like you are a complete failure. But you can still get up!” Your failure is not fatal!
Everybody falls. We have done a moral or Spiritual belly flop. The only difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is not that successful people never fail. They do fail. They fail as much if not more than the unsuccessful. What is the difference between a failure and a success in life? Successful people simply get up and keep on going.
Successful people simply don’t quit when they blow it. Successful people are persistent, determined, diligent. They have endurance. The people who succeed are those who keep on going after they’ve fallen. *They learn from those failures. A righteous man falls, but he rises up again.
When you see someone who seems to wreak of an aura of success, don’t become jealous, and don’t idolize them. Even they have failures, and their success didn’t come automatically. Things we obtain easily in life are usually lost more easily. And successes and status that is reached through persistence and determination, and rising up above failure, are usually more hard to be taken away.
*An oak tree is simply a little nut that refused to give its ground. Through storms, washing outs, and even droughts, the acorn simply refused to give up its ground. How do you get to be a success in life? Refuse to be plucked out of life based on a blunder, or even a series of blunders, a Spiritual or moral “washout,” if you will. Sometimes, it’s the repeating of the same failure that keeps people down. But "even the righteous man falls many times..." "We all make mistakes, and stumble over sins."
Paul understood this. In 2 Corinthians 4:9 it says, “We are cast (struck) down but we’re not destroyed.” The Phillips paraphrase says, “We might be knocked down but we are never knocked out.” You have to get up from falling. You have to get up and try again. Everybody falls. But it’s really not failure if you’ll get back up!
Successful people simply get up again and keep going. Successful people are simply ordinary people with an extra ordinary amount of determination. They keep going. You’re never a failure until you quit. You’re never a failure until you give up. As long as you keep trying you’re not a failure. Reach back up, and slip your hand back in the hand of the One able to keep you!
How do you reduce or eliminate this fear of failure that’s so prevalent in our lives? The best way to get rid of the fear of failure is to redefine failure. What is failure, anyway?
Failure is not failing to reach your dreams. Failure is not having a dream.
Failure is not setting a goal and missing it. Failure is not having a goal.
Failure is not falling down. Failure is refusing to get back up.
Let me redefine failure for you: Failure is refusing to try again. It’s saying, “I blew it. I tried out for baseball but I didn’t hit the ball on the first swing so I give up. I tried out for the sport, but I didn’t get it right, right off the bat so I’m going to give up.”
How did you learn to ride a bike? You get on it, fall off. You get on it, you fall off…. Finally you get on it and stay on it for five seconds, then ten seconds. But if you keep giving up when every time you try something and initially you don’t have success, you’re never going to succeed in anything. Failure is refusing to try again.
How many of you had tests in school? How many of you, when you saw the first question, quickly realized that you should have studied? How many of you ever failed a test? Did you quit taking tests just because you failed some? If you graduated, you probably did not let those failures keep you from trying again. Someone says, "I had no choice. The teacher made me." You did have a choice. You could have dropped out, ran away, folded your arms and said, "I blew it, and I’m not going to try it again!" All of us have that constant choice in front of us.
And can I tell you, that, your tests are not over? If you run from a test in one area, you’ll face a test in another area. And in life, the Christian life especially, each day is a test. And the Bible says that "we have all stumbled in many ways," but also, that, "the righteous fall many times, but he rises up again."
Listen: Though resilience doesn’t equal righteousness, one of the trademarks of people who succeed, and last, at serving God, is that they get up from their fallings. (Or as the preacher I spoke of earlier would say, "They pull up their fallen shorts.") Some people think that their mistakes are so bad that they are unforgivable and irrecoverable! But my Bible says, “The Lord’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save.”
Just because you fail doesn’t mean you give up. You fall, you reach up to the Father, and you let Him pull you back into active life. You let Him pull you back into wholeness, completeness, and healing. Some of you have failed to do that! Oh, you’re saved, but you still have this haunting memory hanging over you like a black cloud. You failed. You know it, and others know it. You remember it, and others remember it.
But everyone has failed. And your greatest failure is when you fail to get up again. *People who seem to be a success at serving God simply have come to accept God’s grace and forgiveness. They understand that God has said, “I will forgive you,” and they accept that, and it becomes a reality in their life.
The “righteous” described in Proverbs are not some super Spiritual elite group - they are common men, with common failures, who also have this in common: They just keep on getting back up!
Listen: Don’t individualize something that is common among men. When you fail, don’t act like you’re the only one that ever has. Don’t refuse to run the race because you tripped over a loose shoestring! Just because you fall, it doesn’t mean you can never succeed. You are never a failure until you give up.
The Bible exhorts us in these ways: Remember that everybody fails, and Realize that failure is not fatal. Let me give you a concluding story that is a great admonition and instruction, giving us a way to handle failure.
A farmer was out one day with his very old donkey. The donkey fell in a deep, dry well. The farmer didn’t know what to do. He called some of his friends over to help him try and rescue the donkey, but it didn’t work. The farmer couldn’t bear the thought of the donkey just staying down there dying a slow death, so he decided that they would just throw dirt in on top of the donkey, and bury him in the well.
After several minutes of labor, the farmer glanced down into the well, and was amazed by what he saw. He saw the donkey coming closer to him. He wondered how it was happening. With every shovel of dirt that would hit the donkey’s back, he would shake it off, and then step on it, making his way up a little bit at a time.
That’s some great advice for some of us. We’ve fallen in the well more times than we can remember. We thought we was ruined, a goner, it was finished. But the donkey teaches us a lesson of God’s Grace. If you have fallen, failed, blew it, and messed up, don’t despair. Ask for forgiveness, shake off the dirt, and let the experience teach you something.
What can it teach me? It can teach you to “Shake it off, and take a step!” I need to tell someone: Failure isn’t final with the Father! And that’s - a fact.
