Thursday, September 19, 2013

We Are Failures

We do fail. Over and over again. Some people think that we should never think of ourselves as failures.  But God is the God of failure (and possibility)–just look at who he chose to be his Judges, Kings, and Prophets.  Read through the book of Judges and see if you can find more than one or two who were not failures.Route_66_car_petrified_forest (1)

Yet, can and must benefit from failure.  We must learn from them, accept their consequences, and present them to God along with our successes.  It’s the only way to truly move on. My formerly income producing business is winding down–does that mean I’m a failure. Maybe. But it also encourages me to consider new avenues, perhaps retirement or new ways of marketing.

I’ve never forgotten the story my undergrad professor told about the buggy whip manufacturers who went out of business when the automobile arrived. Except for one. That one observed his whips and took a long look at the automobiles. He let his mind work and soon came up with a new description for his old manufacturing business: Flexible cables. And that’s what we need to do to succeed. Reframe our position in the light of present circumstances and see where that takes us.  Where has a failure caused you to change course, change description, or change a job?  Has it caused you to make some other change?

Photo By Finetooth (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

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