Coping With Failure

Peter, the outspoken and impulsive follower of Jesus, was probably the most prominent of Jesus' early disciples. He was first to follow Jesus, first to be appointed as an apostle, first to recognize Jesus as the Messiah, and first on every New Testament list of the Twelve. And he was also the first - and perhaps only apostle - to deny knowing Jesus. Were his story to have ended there, his failure would have been his main legacy to those who followed. But God had other plans.

Failure is ubiquitous. Everyone - including you and I - will at one time or another experience the sinking sensation of failure.

That news probably doesn't "make your day," but there's good news just around the corner. To appreciate it, however, we need first to look at this all-encompassing phenomenon of failure.

Failure comes in all models, shapes and sizes. You may fail in finances, spending more money than you make or risking too much for a wishful return. Failure happens in the workplace, too. It may come in the form of an unsatisfactory performance evaluation or a dismissal. Our failure may be related to relationships; it may be a personality clash at work, an estranged child at home, or a divorce. Power struggles at church are also relationship failures.

Sometimes we sense that we're failing to grow in the ways God designed us to grow. Fulfillment is at least deferred at the moment, and we sense that we may never become the person we could have become if our hearts or situations were different.

Whatever the model, shape or size of your sense of failure, the feeling is awful. Turmoil on the inside and distance from friends and associates on the outside. It undermines your confidence, destroys your morale, and sometimes creates the cancer of bitterness.

There are several possible causes of this feeling of failure. I say "this feeling of failure" because sometimes we have not failed. It just feels like we failed. There are times when we should honestly face the fact that we did not put enough effort into a task or a relationship. If it's true that we botched a job or a relationship, we need to accept responsibility for that and then move onward with life, more humble and more wise.

On the other hand, sometimes a perceived failure is actually just a poor fit. In these instances, there's no virtue in blaming ourselves. If Jane gets an unsatisfactory performance review, it may simply confirm that she isn't "wired" to do that particular work. The problem then is not with Jane; the responsibility for apparent failure may instead be on the shoulders of the person who gave her that assignment.

Lest our focus on failure be "bumming you out" about now, let me hasten to a welcome consolation: Failure can be the back-door entrance to success!

How? Because this sense of failure teaches us about ourselves. An interesting book for those who want to read about this is What Happens When Smart People Fail. The authors take a secular-but-sane look at various people who went through "job failure." They show how the experience helped various individuals re-focus their careers in directions more aligned with the people they discovered themselves to be.

The draftsman may discover, when dismissed from his job for being too avant-garde, that he is a hit in art advertising. The corporate executive, cooped up in a politics-bound headquarters office until a merger ousts her from the nest, may find a rekindled sparkle back in her eyes as an entrepreneur. Neither may have made that discovery without the precipitating failure and the awareness it generated as they tried to understand what happened.

I have some personal experience in this pilgrimage. My earlier career revolved around music and ministry. To combine these two challenging, interesting arenas into one position was a wonderful adventure. It required that I wear two hats, one as a pastor and another as chief musician. Both required a servant-leader.

I welcomed the challenge and worked hard to achieve well in both responsibilities. I earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in music. My preparation for the pastorate included rigorous academic and practical studies in Bible and related subjects. Several years later, I was ordained as a pastor, committed to ministry first and to music second.

I prayed with my people, played with them, comforted them, confronted them, counseled them, was blessed by them and sought to be a blessing to them in return. They knew that I cared for them as one of their pastors, not as their resident Christian recording and performing guru.

I studied leadership, wanting to be as effective as possible. I taught church music leadership in college and in seminars. As time passed, I was thrilled to see leaders, relationships and programs develop in my area of ministry.

Now in the context of all this training, all this experience, all these developments and all these relationships, do you suppose I could be dismissed from a church? Yes.

How could that be possible? Easily, it turned out. And as you can imagine, I felt the cold chill of failure deep within my spirit. How does God help us cope successfully with failure? The answer lies in lifestyle worship. I felt the cold. I rehearsed gnawing questions of what I might have done wrong that precipitated my dismissal. I was emotionally numb. It was a classic time for faith.

The Bible explains faith this way in Hebrews 11, verse 1:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

The New Living Translation expresses this verse this way:

What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see.

You may wonder, "How do we integrate faith into our lifestyle, especially if we feel as if we failed? Can faith somehow transform our sense of failure into a time of worship?"

Yes. When failure strikes us, it pleases God to see our hearts looking up to Him for comfort, rather than looking to alcohol, drugs or eastern religions. It pleases God to see us trusting Him, acknowledging that we are not in control and resting in the reality that He is in control. It pleases God to see us looking up to Him for a way out of the wilderness in which we wander. It is that faith that transforms our sense of failure into a time of worship.

© 2007 John Garmo. If you would be interested in using this article, please contact us at Info@MissionToChildren.org.