Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Facing the Giant of Failure

Facing the Giant of Failure

II Corinthians 4:7–18

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In this lesson we learn how to succeed at the art of failure.

OVERVIEW

It’s one thing when you and I have an experience of failure in our private lives. Our failure is known only to a small circle of friends and family. But it’s a totally different thing when you’re the most important political leader in the world and your every move is reported live by the news media around the world. Such was the case when President George Bush became ill and vomited at a state dinner in Japan—unfortunately including the Prime Minister of Japan in the “effects” of his ill health.

Granted, that probably doesn’t qualify as a personal failure. We don’t normally hold people responsible for illnesses they have no control over. But try telling that to former President Bush. He probably felt himself a failure when his embarrassing moment in Japan took place. Indeed, when he had lain down on the carpet in order to be attended to by his physician he moaned, “Just roll me under the table until dinner is over.” At least his “failure” didn’t cloud his sense of humor.

A bit better example of what we traditionally think of as failure happened in 1957 when the Ford Motor Company released to the public what it called “the car of the decade”—the Edsel. It was supposed to be the most dramatic advance in engineering and design since the invention of the automobile a half-century earlier. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the biggest bomb in the history of the automotive industry. It was, to put it mildly, a colossal failure. Ford’s best efforts to succeed turned out to be the worst effort in the company’s history.

Life is filled with failure, whether presidential, corporate, or personal. The person who does not learn to manage failure, to defeat the giant of failure, will soon find himself buried under a mountain of disgrace and shame. But the person who learns to profit from failure will find himself climbing ever higher mountains of accomplishment. What the giant of failure means to trip you with can turn out to be a ticket to the future. But only if we understand failure from God’s perspective.

Facing the Giant of Failure

In 1988, the United Technologies Corporation published an ad in The Wall Street Journal reminding us of our failures. The ad said,

You’ve failed many times, although you may not remember.

You fell down the first time you tried to walk.

You almost drowned the first time you tried to swim.

Did you hit the ball the first time you swung a bat?

Heavy hitters, the ones who hit the most home runs, also strike out a lot.

R. H. Macy failed seven times before his store in New York caught on.

English novelist John Creasey got 733 rejection slips before he published 564 books.

Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times, but he also hit 714 home runs.

Don’t worry about failure.

Worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.

The first thing every person needs to do is face, not the possibility of failure, but the reality of failure.

Facing the Reality of Failure (4:7–9)

Paul introduces the likelihood of failure in his own life in an interesting way. He talks about the treasure we have in “earthen vessels.” What does he mean? The treasure is the gospel, and the earthen vessels are our frail and fragile human bodies. God has entrusted the priceless treasure of His gospel to be kept safe in the bodies of human beings.

What happens to human bodies? They are “hard pressed … perplexed … persecuted … struck down” … but never totally defeated. Though never knocked out, we are knocked down continually in life. In other words, we fail a lot. The fact of failure is factored into our humanity. It comes with the package.

In a book titled The Incomplete Book of Failures, author Stephen Pile lists some of the failures associated with people you thought always did everything successfully:

An expert said of famous football coach Vince Lombardi, “He possesses minimal football knowledge. Lacks motivation.”

Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him hopeless as a composer.

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas. He went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.

Thomas Edison’s teacher said he was too stupid to learn anything.

Albert Einstein did not speak unto he was four years old and couldn’t read until he was seven. His teacher described him as “mentally slow, unsociable and adrift forever in his foolish dreams.” He was expelled and refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School.

F. W. Woolworth’s employers at the dry goods store where he worked said he didn’t have enough sense to wait on the customers.

Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.

Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade. He did not become Prime Minister of England until he was 62 and only after a lifetime of setbacks and failures.

There are many more examples which could be cited. It is true that many people who succeed significantly have a string of failures somewhere in their past.

God is not surprised by our failure. Indeed, He expects it because He knows who we are (Psalm 103:13–14). We saw in our last lesson that the disciples failed to stay awake and watch and pray with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus’ conclusion was, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). God knows our propensity to fail and so understands our requests when we come to Him in times of failure (Hebrews 4:15–16).

The famous Scottish preacher, Alexander Whyte, described spiritual growth like this: “Spiritual growth is the saints falling down and getting up, falling down and getting up, falling down and getting up, all the way to heaven.” If you are like me, you can identify with that!

Facing the Reason for Failure (4:17–18)

Why does God allow failure in our life? What good purpose does it serve? Verses 17 and 18 reveal four reasons for failure:

1. We fail now so that we might succeed later.

Affliction is for now; glory is for the future. The Bible tells us that if we are going to reign with the Lord, we are going to have to suffer with Him as well (Romans 8:17). Glory is best appreciated by those who have first experienced the lack of it.

2. We fail in the incidental so that we might succeed in the important.

Paul talks about “light affliction” and “weight of glory.” The things that happen to us now, in light of eternity, are not as “heavy” as we think they are.

3. We fail in the temporary so that we might succeed in the eternal.

Paul talks about that which is for the moment and contrasts it with that which is eternal. Our failures in time prepare us for “success” in eternity.

4. We fail outwardly so that we might succeed inwardly.

God cares far less about our outward success than He does our inward success. While we are wrapped up in what we do, God is focused on who we are. Our goal is to learn to focus on the unseen, not the seen, things—just as God does. Failure helps us do that.

Peter Marshall said, “It is better to fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than to succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail.” Though our earthen vessels may fail, the treasure we carry in them will not. We may fail on the way to heaven, but we will get there in Christ.

Facing the Result of Failure (4:16)

I love verse 16, “we do not lose heart.” Why don’t we lose heart? Because in spite of all the failure we experience year after year in our lives, “the inward man is being renewed day by day.” On a daily basis God is transforming our inner man. We do not put our emphasis and priority on succeeding in the outward realm because that world is perishing. It is the inner man and the inward world that God is refreshing and renewing day by day.

Given these tremendous truths, the reality is that failure is not fun. It is painful and discouraging when it happens. And that’s when the giant of discouragement is ready to pounce on us, to convince us to throw in the towel. How do we fight this giant when he comes ‘round?

Fighting the Giant of Failure

Acknowledge Your Failure

Overcoming failure—and profiting from it—begins with us. Former President Harry Truman knew how to honestly evaluate things, even his own life. When asked if he was popular as a child in school, he replied, “No. I was never popular. The popular boys were the ones who were good at games and had big fists. I was never like that. Without my glasses, I was blind as a bat, and to tell the truth, I was kind of a sissy. If there was any chance of getting into a fight, I took off. I guess that’s why I’m here today.” In modern language, he “failed” at being popular, but he wasn’t afraid to admit it.

Sometimes we hesitate to admit our failure because we think of it like confessing sin. All sin is a failure of some sort, but not all failure is sin. So don’t be afraid to admit it when you fail.

Accept God’s Forgiveness

If our failure is due to sin, the only way to overcome its effects is to confess it to God and receive His forgiveness. The clear testimony of Scripture is that God is a forgiving God. He does not condone our sinful failures, but neither does He hold them against us if we want to be forgiven for them (Psalm 103:10; 1 John 1:9).

Apply the Lessons of Failure Toward Success

We should never accept failure as the final judgment or assessment of our potential. If we did that, we would never move beyond our first failure. We must learn to use failure as a resource, as an opportunity. An assistant to Thomas Edison tried to console him after a string of failed experiments had produced no results. “Oh, we have lots of results,” Edison said. “We know 700 things that won’t work!” John Keates, an English author, once wrote, “Failure is in a sense the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterward carefully avoid.”

By studying our failures we will discover what we are doing wrong which can only lead us more quickly to what to do right.

Accept Failure as a Fact of Life, Not a Way of Life

Failure is an event, not a person; failure is something that happens, not someone you become. We carelessly use the phrase, “I’m a failure,” so frequently that we begin to believe it. A person can have hundreds and hundreds of failures in his life and still be a success. Or, if he allows just a few failures to overcome him, he could be on the road to characterizing himself as a failure.

Think about Peter’s failure to identify with the Lord Jesus on the night of His arrest. And then think about him preaching with fire at Pentecost in the opening of the book of Acts. Peter failed, but he wasn’t a failure.

Arise from Failure and Start Again

The temptation when we fail is to wallow in self-pity, to sulk, to feel sorry for ourselves (a sure sign of the influence of the giant of failure). The best thing you can do is stand up, brush yourself off, and start moving forward again.

One of my favorite characters in Scripture is Jonah. You know his story, how God told Him to go one way (east to Nineveh) and he went the other (west toward Spain). Jonah failed miserably in his role and responsibility as a prophet. Yet after he had come back to the Lord, God gave him a second chance (Jonah 3:1–2). He sent him again to Nineveh to preach and 120,000 people repented before God. It was one of the greatest responses to the Word of God recorded in history. And this from a man who just a short time previously had failed miserably.

Sometimes when you try to start over people will say, “You’re a failure.” That’s the enemy talking—don’t listen. You listen to God who wants you to succeed. If you are right with Him He will be right with you.

Avoid Judging Failure in Others

Just as others might judge us, we must be on guard against judging others as a failure. We’ll close this lesson by looking at the examples of three people who were judged by others as failures, but whom God saw as successes.

1. The rich man and the beggar.

In Luke 16 the story of the rich man and Lazarus reveals two opposite individuals. Outwardly the rich man was the success and Lazarus the failure. But God’s perspective was the opposite. The rich man ended up in agony, and Lazarus ended up being comforted in Paradise. If we had seen the two before knowing God’s evaluation, would we have been quick to judge? God’s values are often very different than ours.

2. A Pharisee and a tax collector.

In Luke 18 we have the story of a Pharisee and a tax collector. The Pharisee was the epitome of success within first-century Judaism, and the tax collector one of the most despised men in town. But when they went to the temple to pray, their true success and failure became obvious. The Pharisee was proud and arrogant, the tax collector humble and repentant. Which would we have chosen as the success and which the failure?

3. A Pharisee and a prostitute.

In Luke 7, we have the story of a Pharisee named Simon and a sinful woman, a prostitute. Simon invited Jesus to his home for dinner. A prostitute came into the dinner and anointed Jesus feet with perfume and her tears. Simon was offended because of her impropriety, but Jesus was offended at Simon’s lack of love. The man who appeared to be successful was a failure when it came to love for God. The prostitute, a failure in life, succeeded in loving God. Which would we have chosen as successful and which as a failure?

These stories warn us to beware of judging others who appear to us to be failures. The man who, from the world’s point of view, was a great failure turned out to be the man God exalted and honored by raising Him from the dead and seating Him at the right hand of the throne of God. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you are a failure when you fail. Defeat the giant of failure by striving to receive Jesus’ final words about your life, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

APPLICATION

1. Read Matthew 26:69–27:5.

a. What failure did Peter experience on the night of Jesus’ arrest?

b. How many times in a matter of minutes did he fail in the same way?

c. What was his immediate response? (verse 26:75)

d. What was Judas’ failure during the same night? (verse 27:3)

e. What was Judas’ response to his failure? (verse 27:5)

f. What does both Peter’s and Judas’ immediate responses tell you about the universal human response to failure?

g. Where do we next meet up with Peter? (John 20:2 ff.)

h. What appears to have happened to Peter’s initial response to his failure?

i. This was less than 72 hours after his failure. How would he still have been feeling on the inside?

j. How do you reconcile Peter’s inner feelings (guilt over failure) and his outward expressions of involvement and faithfulness with the other disciples?

k. What does that tell you about picking up the pieces from failure and moving on even though we may still have conflicting feelings over our failure?

2. Describe a time in your life when you failed in a large way:

a. What was your response? How did you handle the failure?

b. What would you have done differently?

c. Are you better prepared for your “next” failure? What is your current perspective on the place of failure in the process of spiritual maturity?

d. What insight from this lesson was most helpful to you?

3. Read Matthew 26:31–35.

a. What was Peter’s attitude toward his ability to fail? (verses 33, 35)

b. What possibility did he see for others failing? (verse 33)

c. What do you make of the fact that Peter was the most vocal (see verse 35b) about his not failing and the fact that he was the only one who failed (as far as we know)?

d. How would you describe Peter’s attitude at this point?

e. What connection do you think there is between our expectations concerning failure and our response to it when it happens?

f. While the other disciples didn’t lie three times about their relationship with Jesus, how did they also fail? (compare verse 31 with verse 56b)

4. Read John 21:1–23.

a. What did Jesus do to encourage the disciples, Peter especially, after the resurrection? (verses 2–3, 6, 11–14; 15–17).

b. How do you think Jesus’ commissioning of Peter encouraged him following his failure?

c. Describe a time when you have been either the encourager or the “encouragee” after an experience of failure. What difference did it make?

d. How do we know that Peter indeed recovered from his failure? (Acts 2:14 ff., 3:6; 4:19; 5:29).

e. What is most important—the initial, or the long-term, response to failure?

DID YOU KNOW?

One evening when Thomas Edison came home from work, his wife told him she thought he had been working too hard, that he needed to take a vacation. “Where would I go?” Edison asked. “Just go where you would rather be than any other place in the world,” she replied. “Very well,” the inventor said, “I’ll go tomorrow.” The next morning he was back at work in his laboratory. If you are reading this lesson by the light of an electric lamp, you should be thankful that Edison’s hundreds of failures didn’t drive him from his lab. The inventor who patented over 1,000 inventions—including the light bulb—thrived on failure. Each failure eliminated one more rock from a field he was convinced would bear fruit in time.

Jeremiah, D. 2001. Facing the giants in your life : Study guide . Thomas Nelson Publishers: Nashville, Tenn.

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