All of us have dreams we would love to see become reality, yet
many of us are doing little to make them happen. Why do so many of
us settle for mediocrity and safety and living unfulfilled
lives?
All of us have dreams we would love to see become reality, yet many of us are doing little to make them happen. Why do so many of us settle for mediocrity and safety and living unfulfilled lives? What holds us back from making the changes we need to make? For most of us, the holdup is the dirtiest four-letter word in our vocabulary: f-e-a-r. In particular, our fear of failure.
In the many years I’ve been counseling people, I’ve learned some interesting things about fear. I’ve discovered that some of us are in relationships we are desperate to see changed, yet we refuse to do anything to bring about the change. The most common excuse I hear is, “Things aren’t very good between us now, but at least I know what to expect.” In other words, we prefer the misery of the known to the uncertainty of the unknown.
Some of us approach our career the same way. We’re in dead-end jobs we hate, but year after year we stay, making excuses like, “I’m too old,” “I’m not educated enough” and “I can’t afford to leave the job security I have here.”
All I can say to these kinds of rationalizations is that if God is calling you to make a change of any kind in your life, living your life weighted down with the anchor of fear will effectively stop you from making the changes you know you need to make.
Over the next two weeks, I would like to explore the valuable lessons learned by one of the best known Bible guys. His name was David. Most of us think of him as “King” David, the fearless slayer of Goliath and leader of vast armies, but there were times in his life that David was as paralyzed with the fear of failure as you or I have ever been. In Psalm 66, he shares three valuable tools that helped him overcome his fears. We’ll look at the first today and the other two next week.
The first tool may surprise you. David learned that one of the most effective tools we can use to overcome the fear of failure is failure itself. One great way to overcome the fear of failure is by failing a few times and realizing that failure isn’t the end of the world.
We grow up being taught that failure is a terrible thing … something to be ashamed of and avoided at any cost. But that’s just not true. Failure isn’t fatal and failure isn’t final. For example, what would you call someone who is paid a large sum of money to accomplish a task on a regular basis, but only succeeds in accomplishing the task four out of every 10 times he attempts it? Well, if that job is hitting a baseball, you would call him a hall-of-famer.
Without failure, you won’t learn. As Bill Gates once said, “Success is a terrible teacher.” Apparently he’s learning that the hard way these days, but the truth remains: When we are successful, we tend to focus on things that aren’t necessarily essential. But if failure does nothing else, it certainly gets our attention! And that’s a good thing, because the wake up call gets our head back in the game.
As Proverbs 24:16 reminds us about the best in ourselves, “No matter how many times you trip them up, God-loyal people don’t stay down long. Soon they’re up on their feet …”
I hope you have learned that the question is never “if” you will fail, but how you will respond when you inevitably do fail. The way to overcome the fear of failure is to remove the sting of failure, to develop an attitude that says, “So what if I try something that doesn’t work? I’ll learn my lesson and move on!”
David knew that the setbacks he faced were only temporary. In Psalm 66 he talks about all the disappointments he and the nation of Israel had faced, yet he realized that failure isn‚t fatal and failure isn‚t final, because “God protects our lives and He holds our feet to the path.” (Psalm 66:9) His attitude was “I’m not afraid of failure, because I belong to God, and His ultimate victory insures mine.”
Henry Harris is Lead Pastor of Rolling Hills Community Church, 330 Tres Pinos Rd., Hollister, Calif. If you have questions or comments, please visit the church’s Web site at Rollinghillsfamily.com, e-mail pa*********@****************ly.com or phone (831) 636-5353.
