“Everything I touch breaks.” “Nothing I do succeeds.” “Nothing ever works out right.” “I am a colossal failure.” Have you ever said or felt like one of these? I sure have and many times in my life I have said or felt like all of them. I remember one of the first times I felt like this, I was probably in jr. high. My father had just purchased a brand new VHS camcorder. That’s right, VHS! Back then they were so big you needed a weight lifting belt to carry the camcorder on your shoulder and it probably had a battery pack that was the size of a VW Bug. It was awesome! Everyone in the family was so excited to be able to record parties and events on such a high tech piece of equipment. As my father pulled the camcorder out of the box, I can still remember seeing the heavens part and the Spirit of God descending like a dove with a loud voice from God saying, “This is my VHS Camcorder, whom I love; with it I am well pleased”. Needless to saw it was a big moment. My father set the camcorder aside to read the instructions. With the camcorder alone on the couch I ran over to look at it. I guess I must have been over-eager, because as I excitedly plopped myself down on the couch, next to the camcorder, I launched it up into the air. Time stood still as it flew effortlessly across the room and broke into pieces on the floor. It was the first of many times in my life that I felt like a failure and a disappointment to those around me.
As I look at my life, there are so many failures and short-comings it makes me think I am destined for failure. It is almost as if on my tombstone it will read, “John – lived life of a failure”. But just as depression begins to set in and I call around for a good psychiatrist, I start to read stories of others around me who have failed miserably only to use the failure to achieve greatness. Robert F. Kennedy once said:
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
You see, as I look at all of my failures, all of my short-comings, and all the things I have broken in life, I don’t look at them with disdain. Instead I look at all the lessons I have learned from each of those circumstances. Each of the hard, hurtful and painful times were paired by an opportunity to learn something. If I learned it, then I had new growth in an area of my life. I had a bit of pain that was tempored with a new joy that came from the new freedom of learning a greater truth. I would love to say, I always learned and enjoyed the pain I just went through, but that is just not true. The pain has been great, but in hindsight, so have the principles learned. I didn’t always learn the principle that I should have and, therefore, had to, again, go through another tough time to learn, fully, what I should have the first time.
At times, I learned a great principle or truth but the amount of felt or perceived pain caused me to have a fear that this circumstace will happen again and it will cause pain again. That fear in turn caused a new desire to avoid the pain, not necessarily to practice the truth. In a lot of those instances, even though I was armed with a new truth, I was handcuffed with the new fear. An example of this happened just after I learned to ride a bike. I was confortable and confident, however I hadn’t had a lot of experience riding in a variety of environments. It was a nice warm Las Vegas day and I was riding around the block with my family. As I rounded the corner I had failed to notice the small amount of water in the gutter, but I soon would have pain because of that error. I turned the corner and my wheels hit the water and immediately slid out from under me. I landed hard on the pavement, knocking the wind out of me and scraping my legs and arms. Trust me, there was tons of pain, but I learned a very valuable truth (watch for water as you go around a corner). I still remember that day because of the pain. Now I had a decision: do I retire the bike forever so there is no future chance of falling or enjoy the truth and understand I could fall if I don’t apply the truth. The good news is I kept riding, even though I fell a couple more times, and was able to go on longer trips and learn more by applying the truth then I could have from retiring the bike out of fear.
Fear is powerful! Fear can be a helpful thing. Fear keeps me from doing dumb things like walking into traffic or jumping off a cliff. Satan knows it is powerful too and he loves to use failure to keep us handcuffed in fear and remove the motivation to accomplish what God has put you on Earth to do. So how do we overcome the fear of failure and gain motivation? Craig Groeschel writes in his book It: How churches and leaders can get it and keep it,
“‘The antidote for the fear of failure is not success but small doses of failure.’ Think about it. To keep you from getting the flu, what kind of shot does the doctor give you? He gives you a small dose of the flu. You get just enough to train you body to reject it. The same is true for failure.”
If this is true, and I believe it is, then all of the failure and pain we have been through, will pail in comparision to the massive success we will experience as we walk with Christ. The failure and brokeness no longer becomes our handcuffs. Instead, failure and pain becomes our training ground for what God is trying to teach us. If this is hard to believe, you are not alone, but look at the apostle Peter. His constant, colossal failures helped form him into the most radical and successful apostle that the whole church was built upon. I mean come on, he is the only other person other then Jesus to walk on water! If Peter could be a success, so can you and me. We are all broken, fearful people, but we must count the cost and keep moving forward to the success we will have in Christ. Failure is not an option it is a neccesity. Everyone will dream and fail, but who will fail often enough to see those dreams become a reality? WILL YOU?
