6/10/2022 • Desk of Dennis Piller
Finding Failure
Sorry, I'm late today.
I pray every day about what God wants me to write about. Sometimes I feel like I hit a wall and maybe it’s time to stop. And so, I wait. I almost feel like I’ve failed because I’m not ahead of the game after all this time.
But in the face of that shadow, I am in the middle of celebrating a great win. My youngest daughter’s graduation from high school. What a great achievement! She won some great awards and wore these beautiful tassels for her scholastic achievements. I could not have been prouder.
But the fear of failure seems to ever loom at our door. Fear of college. Making new friends. For me, it hasn’t been a particularly great year financially. My stock market choices seem to have been miserable failures. And with the weight of responsibility in our lives, it’s a common thing to carry the stress of failure. This mindset of a new undertaking being a potential failure looms in the shadows.
But the fact is that everybody fails from time to time. And we know down deep that failure is not final or permanent. But it still weighs on us like the picture of Atlas with the world on his shoulders.
But I must proclaim – Failure is not who we are.
1. We must remember that everybody fails. It’s only temporary. Real failure is not getting back up. Ecclesiastes 7–20 “not a single person on earth is always good and never sins”. To me, that means that we all fail
2. We must realize that it’s temporary. It’s only a shadow on a sunny day. We take little steps forward but real success is getting back up and believing that God‘s plans for you will carry you and see you through. Proverbs 24:16 “for though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again.
3. We need to discover the treasure of failure. God educates us through it. Are you listening? Learning? Decide right now to be better, not bitter.
4. God uses failure as stepping stones. Satan uses that stone as one around your neck. Psalm 119:71 “my trouble turned out all for the best – they force me to learn from your textbook”. Think about that! Failure should drive you into God‘s word. It caused you to look in a different direction. It may have closed the door and we need to be looking for the window that will open.
5. God uses failure to motivate us and move us onto something else. Proverbs 20:30 “sometimes it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways”. (my interpretation) How true is that? We are so intent on a specific direction or driven to a personal purpose and we may even feel that it’s a good and holy one. But we hit a wall. We fail. We’re overcome with the consequences and how we’ll survive them. But I have always been a firm advocate that people will not make a change until they’re in enough pain. Sometimes God uses that to change our direction, to change our attitudes or our disposition. He opens our eyes to a new opportunity and the discovery that can be so much more valuable than the path that we were on.
In our failures – The potential of failing – or in the stress of possible failures –
They are all stemming from the spirit of lack.
We need to re-discover God‘s grace.
Psalms 32:1- 5 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
3 For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up[b] as by the heat of summer. Selah
5 I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah
Being a failure is not who you are
it’s just what you’re going through right now.
And God promises to use that to keep his promise to you.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I do not wish to sound condescending or above my own failures or the things that I went through – grew through. But in all my failures, I found new directions, new insights, and new beginnings.
Failure is not who you were or who you are.
God's mark is upon you. Your name is written in the lamb's book of life. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. God doesn’t make mistakes, so you’re not one of them. Choose you today to believe God and not your fears or temporary failures and fears!
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