Success is awesome, it makes you feel all giddy inside. Success makes most people feel invigorated and alive. After a successful day, more than likely, most people will go to bed with a smile on their face and not a worry in mind.
The opposite of success is failure.
Failure, put plainly, sucks. Failure sucks. It makes you feel terrible and self-conscious in a way that can be unhealthy. There are so many more issues that come with failing -- as if failing isn’t enough.
That debilitating feeling you get in your gut when you do something you know you shouldn’t have. The chill that creeps up your body when you realize you’ve really messed up. Thoughts slowly crawl across your mind... “If only I wasn’t me, I could overcome this,” “I messed up again, I’ll never be any good,” “I am such a failure.”
The longer you feel that way, the more you believe those thoughts, especially the last one. Don’t embody failure, its not who you are, its just something that happened.
When you get those thoughts, remember that failure is just an event, not a defining moment. Failing does not define you. Failure does not determine your worth or your future.
You do not have to stand in the door of that one failure or stand at the bottom of a mountain of them. No matter how many times you’ve failed or been called a failure, a failure is not what you are. Here are a three people in the Bible who failed, but didn’t let failure define them.
1. Simon Peter, a disciple of Jesus
Simon Peter, aka Peter, was one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. Peter was the brute force body guard of Jesus -- he cut off the ear of a servant of the high priest for trying to mess with his friend (John 18:10). He loved Jesus, and it was easy to say that Jesus loved Peter; Peter was one of the three people who got to go with Jesus to the Mount of Transfiguration where Moses and Elijah appeared from heaven to speak with Jesus (Matt 17: 1-9).
While everything seemed to be going well between Peter and Jesus, at the last supper Jesus tells Peter that he will deny him three times. Peter is mortified Jesus predicted such a betrayal from such a loyal friend.
Sure enough, as Jesus foretold, Peter denied Jesus. The amount of grief and shame that flooded him after that event must have been overwhelming, but Peter rose from that event, and even though his failure was written down to forever be remembered, Peter did not let his failure define him.
Peter went on to do great things: he healed a lame man in Acts 3:11, he communicated with the Holy spirit in Acts 8: 14-17, and he went on to do many other miracles while evangelizing the gospel in his lifetime.
2. The Woman at the Well
The woman from John 4:1-30 was never named, but she has a title, The Woman at The Well.
She was a Samaritan woman who had been married five times and was living with a man who was not her husband the day she met Jesus. She met Jesus at the well of Jacob where He asked for a drink of water from her. She told him she was not married as it was not customary to speak to women without their husband present.
Jesus replied to her, despite her shortcomings and his disregard for current laws, that she would never thirst again if she drank from the water He gives. This event could have gone two different ways following that moment: the woman could have hung her head and gone home with her shortcomings hanging over her, or she could have gone out to tell her city about the encounter with Jesus.
Her story in this chapter ends with her going to tell everyone about Jesus despite her reputation and deficiencies, making her one of the first female evangelists in the Bible.
She’d had her failures, but she didn’t let that stop her from fulfilling her destiny. Maybe she didn’t know that her destiny was evangelism, and for sure didn’t know her story would still be told two thousand years after it happened. One thing is for sure, if she had wallowed in her failures, she would have never made it into the Bible.
3. King David
David, the King of Israel, was chosen as a young man to do great things for the Lord. On his way to the palace life, he was looked down on for being young, but he didn’t let that stop him, and he became king.
Here’s where the real trouble begins.
After some time of studying about David, there were plenty of times where I was stumped by his ability to continually fail God.
He murdered innocent men (2 Sam 11: 14-21), slept with already married women and got one pregnant (2 Sam 11: 2-5), he even caused a plague that killed seventy thousand of his own people (2 Sam 24:2-25). Yet with every terrible thing he did, King David went to his knees and repented before the Lord, asking for a clean slate, and when he arose, he started in a new moment that was equally balanced for a new success or failure.
Even though David had multiple mishaps and failures in the eyes of God and his people, he was still called a man after God’s own heart. If David can do it, literally anyone can do it.
While the morals of these stories are not necessarily about overcoming failure, from them, everyone can learn to get back up and get on with their destinies. Life is full of chances. Sometimes we hit and sometimes we miss, but we should never stop trying.
Take as many turns as you need, you’ll get there.
Whether it’s grades, sin or self-destructive habits you’re struggling with, there are always opportunity to succeed. If that means having someone help you succeed, do what you must to reach your full potential.
A victory is a victory, but victories are never made by people who don’t try. Every moment is an opportunity to try for success, and in a moment, you’ll get another chance. Don’t let your failures of the past hold you back from your future.
God speed, worldchangers.
