"The greatest failure
in Your Life is to Be Continually Fearful You Will Make One." Elbert
Hubbard
Dear Friends,
I am good at failure.
Don't misunderstand me, I don't like it when I fail, but each time I do, I hope
I improve by learning from my failure
Writing a daily Leadership
Thought for these many years, I have amassed more mistakes than I
could ever imagine. I make frequent mistakes in spelling, grammar, alignment-
you name it and I have it.
Those mistakes are
embarrassing, like a mistake I made yesterday with one of my quotes. It was
graciously brought to my attention by a friend who receives my Leadership
Thoughts.
He kindly pointed out my
mistake in the following grace-filled words written as only he could
write them.
"Good Morning Pastor,
Tom, THANK YOU SO MUCH for these words of Wisdom and these Leadership Thoughts
This is wonderful and I
always cherish these beautiful words and thoughts.
Should line number 18 read
as " Some people day (say) something and some people have
something to say. ?
By the way last week, we
had a Malachi Dad's graduation and 54 inmates, and their family members
participated.”
I love my brother Jayant
who faithfully spent time learning prison ministry with me. If you had seen him
at the beginning of this ministry, you would have thought to yourself ‘he is
never going to make it.’ By his own admission, he would frequently admit that
there were many times he felt like a ministry failure and was ready to
quit, and yet week after week he never gave up, and thank God he didn’t for
today he leads one of the largest prison ministries in the state of
Texas.
I don’t think It was
coincidence that yesterday a missionary friend, Christophe Savage, sent me the
devotional below on failure. I hope it will bless you and my friend Jayant as
much as it blessed me.
Embracing “Failure”
By Steve Backlund
Let’s reject the lie that
says, “If something is hard to do for us, then we can’t do it.” If we fall for this
deception, we are determining our future from our past. This faulty thinking is
something we cannot take with us in the higher plans and purposes God has for
us.
The opposite of this lie
and life-restricting mindset is this: I embrace failure as part of the process
of learning to walk in higher levels of living. As I think about
this, I remember a big “failure” of mine. In one of our books, we misspelled
the word ‘Foreword’ by spelling it ‘FORWARD’. It was at the beginning of the
book in a large font. When we edited the book, we didn’t notice this. We only
discovered this after ordering a significant number of copies, and then someone
came up to me, pointed it out, and said, “I am so sorry.” Upon hearing this, I
had a momentary, “Oh no!”, but I ultimately thought, “I am learning to walk in
book writing, so I welcome mistakes like this as part of the process.” We were
taking steps forward.
To fail is “to fall short
of success or achievement in something expected, attempted, desired, or
approved.” To succeed is to accomplish what is intended or attempted. We
certainly enjoy success more than failure, but long-term successful people
learn to like many of the failures they experience because they know, like
babies, they must grow into walking in their potential.
What would happen if a
baby determined its future from its past? What if they said, “I’ve never walked
before, so I am not a walker. And when I tried to walk, it was a struggle, so
this proves I do not have the gift of walking. Because if I had the gift of
walking, it would not be so difficult to learn to walk.” This sounds
ridiculous, but this is how I thought in many different areas of my life.
Those who succeed most
also seem to fail most. Toddlers fall down much more, at first, than they take forward
steps in their attempt to be able to walk. Even though this is true, they do
not quit or create an identity belief from their apparent failure in walking.
They understand they cannot get their identity from their past; they get it
from their parents. “I am made in their image. I AM a walker, and I will walk.”
Why do successful people
like to fail? It
is because they see the manifestation of their flaws as evidence that they are
walking in greater things. After all, if a toddler falls down, it means they
were standing (because you cannot fall unless you were standing).
Today, you are breaking free from the
perfectionistic mindset, which does not embrace seeming failure as a natural
part of growth.
Yours in Faith and Friendship
Tom
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