After
my father-in-law, Glenn Kirkland, lost his wife
of forty-six years, Grace, to Alzheimer's
disease, he decided to open himself to getting
married again. While finding a suitable spouse is
no small challenge for anyone, it is a
particularly daunting one for a retired man of
seventy-one.
Yet Glenn took the important step
of getting socially active again. He began
attending a Bible study and joined the large
choir at Fourth Presbyterian Church. And from
time to time he took initiative, asking a woman
to have dinner with him.
Glenn's first effort at a
relationship did not get beyond a dinner date or
two. But then he met Barbara Nielson, a
psychologist who had recently joined the church
and become active in the choir. Things blossomed
between them and after several months of
courtship they married. Their relationship is a
gem and has brought a new lease on life to both
of them in many ways.
I believe there are a number of
reasons that account for Glenn and Barbara's
finding each other. At the top of the list is the
grace of God, working to bring them together and
to convince them of the benefit of marrying. Yet
Glenn's optimism also played a vital role and put
him in position to receive this gift of God. His
belief that he could find someone to marry led
him to do the very things which allowed God's
provision. The same is true for Barbara: her
optimism and sense of adventure positioned her to
meet Glenn as well.
I talk with many Christians who
would dearly like to be married, or to realize
some other significant goal, yet are convinced
their prospects for success are nil. Their fear
of failure is so pervasive that it blocks them
from making even the first efforts, and so it
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Many of us can benefit from
making a concerted effort to tame our fear of
failure. We need a clear perspective for
confronting our fears and for answering those
internal messages which keep announcing,
"This is impossible."
Such a perspective should
accomplish two things for us. First, it should
give us a reasonable hope for success. Having
this hope is vital if we're to find the incentive
to begin moving toward our goal. Second, it
should give us a healthy attitude toward failure
itself. Failure is seldom the monster it pretends
to be; indeed, it has its positive side.
Appreciating this fact helps us feel more
comfortable in the face of taking risks.
A Basis for Hope
When our fears of failure are
strong, we need first and foremost to remind
ourselves that our apprehensions may not be in
line with reality. The possibility is very
real that we will not fail. I personally find it
helpful to reflect on past experiences when my
expectations of doom were not fulfilled. If my
predictions of failure were wrong in these cases,
they are probably wrong now.
Once we have carefully and
prayerfully decided upon a particular course of
action, we should remind ourselves, "I'm not
going to expect failure here. It's not a sure
thing that I'm going to fail. It's very possible
I will succeed!" Call this positive
thinking, if you will. The point comes where it's
an essential attitude for the Christian.
What I'm recommending, though,
differs from popular ideas about positive
thinking in two important ways. First, I'm not
suggesting that we should blindly anticipate
success even when there is no basis in fact for
expecting it. Our expectation should be based on
a good analysis of all the facts we have and our
best understanding of what God wants us to do.
Second, I'm not recommending that we should ever
assume that success is guaranteed beyond all
question. We must always leave room for the fact
that we don't know the mind of God for our
future. His timetable, as well as his definition
of success, may be different from ours.
With these cautions in mind, we
still have strong reason for hope in the major
steps we take. We have a sound basis for
believing that success is a good probability.
It's right and proper and healthy for us to be
substantially optimistic. This optimism is vital
for at least three reasons:
1. Optimism gives
credit to the power of God. God is
at work behind the scenes in our lives in
unfathomable ways for our good. He desires our
very best. He isn't our adversary but our friend.
As a general principle he desires our success in
life, not our failure. A continuing attitude of
pessimism shows that underneath I believe that
God is against me, not for me. An optimistic
spirit grants that God can work in a multitude of
ways, including many I have never fathomed, to
bring about a positive outcome.
Consider that there are only
eight instances in the Gospels where Jesus
commends the faith of an individual--that is,
where he directly compliments someone's faith. In
each of these cases, the faith which impressed
Jesus had nothing to do with doctrinal belief; it
was a supremely optimistic spirit.
In six of these incidents,
individuals expected Jesus to perform a healing
miracle for them or for someone else (Mk 5:24-34,
Mk 10:46-52, Mk 2:1-12, Mt 15:21-28, Lk 17:11-19,
Mt 8:5-13). Their expectation was not based on
blind faith, for they had all seen or heard of
Jesus performing similar miracles. Still they
held to their faith in spite of many factors
which might have discouraged them.
The woman with the hemorrhage,
for instance, had been told by doctors for twelve
years that she couldn't be healed; blind
Bartimaeus was told by the crowd to stop calling
for Jesus; the four men who brought their
paralyzed friend to Jesus had to lower him
through a tiled roof to get through the crowd. In
each instance, individuals through their optimism
showed a respect for the power of God which was
above and beyond the ordinary. It accents the
fact that we honor Christ through an optimistic
spirit.
2. Optimism shows
respect for the ability of judgment which God
gives us. Scripture
warns us against trusting in our own
understanding (Prov 3:5-6). Yet it also tells us
that we who have been born again have "the
mind of Christ" (1 Cor 2:16). This means
that God has given us the capacity for sensible
judgment. As we take pains to think through a
choice carefully, and do so with prayer and
respect for God's will, Christ leads us to a
sound decision.
Indeed, part of having faith as a
Christian is trusting that Christ will enable me
to make good decisions. When I'm confident of
having made a good decision, I'm naturally
confident that the outcome will be positive.
Optimism, then, reflects my conviction that God
is guiding my decision process.
3. Optimism
contributes to my success. Time and
again, experiments in the social sciences have
shown that the expectation of success has a
significant impact upon actual achievement. When
I'm confident of reaching a goal, I'm inspired to
work harder to get to it, and I'm more alert to
opportunities which will help me move toward it.
Also, my confidence inspires others to act in
ways that help me reach my goal. I'm not
suggesting that we ever should purposely
manipulate others against their will to further
our own purposes. But if I'm working toward a
goal which Christ has inspired within me, then
I'll best allow him to motivate others to help me
when my attitude is optimistic.
By the same token, when we expect
failure, we easily and subtly end up doing the
very things which bring it about. The servant who
hid his talent is a classic example. He was so
afraid of a negative outcome that he did the very
thing that would bring about his downfall (Mt
25:14-30). It was the optimistic servants who
invested their talents and realized both success
and the praise of their master. We should realize
that for Christians optimism is not only okay but
desirable when taking major steps. This is part
of what faith is about. When we have taken
reasonable steps to make a careful decision, we
should also take reasonable steps to keep our
heart expectant as we work toward our goal. If we
need to exercise some thought control, we should
do so. We shouldn't regard this as falsely
"psyching ourselves up" but as good
stewardship of our mental process.
We should confront the fear of
failure with constant reminders that God desires
our best and that we have good reason to be
hopeful of reaching our goal.
The Positive Side of Failure
Yes, we fear failure. But the
bite of a fear is remarkably lessened once we're
persuaded that even if the worst occurred it
wouldn't be so bad after all. There are actually
significant benefits which failure can bring to
us. Understanding these will not only reduce our
anxiety about it but also give us fresh heart to
try again if disappointment does occur.
While we shouldn't court failure
or overtly desire it, neither should we harbor
unreasonable apprehensions about it. It's these
fears which stifle us from taking steps of faith.
We can find the courage to take these steps once
we realize that even if failure should occur, we
will still benefit from the experience and be
better off than if we had simply sat still.
In reality, failure not only
helps us grow in important ways but contributes
to our long-range experience of success, when we
know how to accept it and appropriate its
benefits. There are at least three ways in which
this can happen:
1. Through failure we
learn how to be successful. The most
obvious benefit of failure is that through it our
experience grows. Through a hands-on experience
we learn in a most authentic way how not
to do something. Lessons gleaned from experience
generally stick with us much better and are much
more beneficial than those merely learned
academically. If we apply what we have learned to
our future experience, our possibility of success
is increased significantly.
Most of us, if we'll look
honestly at our lives, will admit that certain
hard experiences have done much to teach us and
equip us for the quality of life we now live.
Failures in relationships have taught us how to
relate to people better. Failures in academic and
work experiences have taught us how to approach
certain types of work more effectively. Failures
in parenting have taught us how to better
encourage and guide our children. Business
failures have given us a wiser approach to
investments. Moral and spiritual defeat has
taught us how to draw more fully on the power of
Christ. Through all of these experiences we have
come to understand our own gifts, strengths and
weaknesses better, and that in turn has given us
a more confident grasp of God's direction in our
life.
These experiences can benefit us if
we can take them in the right spirit. Some
discouragement is normal when failure and
disappointment come, and we need to allow
ourselves the freedom to grieve significant
losses and setbacks. Yet the point comes where we
need to begin to take a more positive look at our
failure and see what beneficial lessons can be
gained from it. The danger is that we get
paralyzed by our failure. We assume that failure
once means failure forever. We conclude that God
is against us and has shown us our fate through
this unhappy experience. We lose the courage to
try again.
At such times we must put into
practice everything we know about the creative
power of God. He is telling us to learn what we
can from our failure and move on. And so often
when we do, we find that vital growth has come
through the experience which could not have come
any other way. A friend of mine has put it
simply, that one of our main concerns in life
should be to learn to be a "successful
failure."
Again, this principle will serve
us well not only in the face of actual failure
but as we anticipate the risks involved in taking
a step of faith. Even if failure comes, it may
provide a vital growth experience, which
contributes toward our future success in
significant ways. The fear of failure is reduced
when we come to appreciate this important
benefit.
2. Failure can carry a
success of its own. A second point
to remember is that experiences which we
initially perceive to be failures sometimes in
the end turn out to be successes. We find we
called the shots wrong.
Christian
psychiatrist Paul Tournier writes about one of
his most humiliating experiences, which occurred
when he was giving a talk at a university:
I felt right from the first
word that I was not going to make contact
with my audience. I clung to my notes and
laboriously recited, with growing
nervousness, what I had to say. As the
audience left I could see my friends slipping
hurriedly away. . . . On the way home in my
car with my wife, I burst into tears.*
The next day a professor of
philosophy phoned him and said that the talk was
indeed the worst he had ever heard. But he added
that while he had sat through numerous erudite
lectures in his lifetime which had left no
impression on him, somehow he was drawn to
Tournier. A lasting friendship between the two
developed, which resulted in the professor's
coming to Christ. Tournier now looks back upon
that discouraging lecture as one of the great
successes of his life.
Tournier's experience reminds us
that failure can have more than just educational
value. The failure may in fact be a success which
we don't yet recognize. There are times when we
fail to live up to our own expectations but
fulfill God's quite well. The experience we
perceive to be a failure may indeed be a success
in his mind, contributing in a most positive way
to our future and to his intentions for our life.
God understands success much better than we do.
Tournier's experience also brings
out how God honors our honest efforts at success,
often in ways that go considerably beyond our
initial perceptions. It's fitting, too, to
reflect here on the experience of Jesus himself.
His brief mission to earth was judged at the end
by friends and foes alike to have failed. Today
we know it was the greatest victory of all time.
It stands forth as an example of God's capacity
to bring success out of apparent failure.
3. It sometimes takes
a certain number of failures to bring about a
success. The final benefit of
failure we need to look at is more mystical and
difficult to pin down. Yet it's no less important
to understand. There seems to be a law in human
life that success comes about only through a
number of earnest attempts. It sometimes takes a
number of failures to breed a success. It is the
principle of sowing seeds which is talked about
so frequently in Scripture. Some seeds take root
while others do not, for reasons we never fully
understand. Yet the greater the number sown, the
greater the likelihood of a rich harvest. Thus,
Scripture declares,
As you do not know the path
of the wind, or how the body is formed in a
mother's womb, so you cannot understand the
work of God, the Maker of all things. Sow
your seed in the morning, and at evening let
not your hands be idle, for you do not know
which will succeed, whether this or that, or
whether both will do equally well. (Eccles
11:5-6)
Sometimes failure does mean we've
made mistakes. As we examine our experience we
discover what we did wrong and how to avoid these
errors in the future. We learn from our failure
and grow through it. Yet in other cases we are
not able to discern clear mistakes. Our failure
seems to have come about in spite of our doing
everything right. At such times we are especially
prone to self-disparagement, for the evidence
seems to suggest that God has cast the lots
against us. We become fatalistic and conclude
that God doesn't want us to succeed in this
particular area. We lose the courage to try
again.
The fact is we don't know the
mind of God. Usually we have very little basis
for judging whether he is punishing us through a
failure or not. The possibility is just as real
that the failure suggests only that God's time
for success has not yet come for us. By the
principle of sowing seeds, success isn't less
likely now, but more so! If we'll simply
keep casting the seeds, eventually one will take
root. It's fair to think of this, too, as a
principle of compensation. Failure with one try
is compensated for by success with another.
Genesis records a time when Isaac
and his servants made three attempts to dig for
water in the valley of Gerar (Gen 26:19-22).
After each of the first two, native herdsmen
quarreled with them over property rights, and
Isaac's men had to abandon the wells after all
the hard work of digging them. But the third time
they were successful and there was no resistance.
Isaac named the well Rehoboth ("a broad
place"), declaring, "Now the LORD has given us room and we will
flourish in the land." Less hardy souls
would have given up after the first or second
attempt, saying "God doesn't intend that I
succeed."
The
principle of sowing seeds seems to be an aspect
of God's common grace, a means of his dealing
with all people, and one which touches humanity
at all points of pursuit. In In Search of
Excellence, Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman
note that repeated effort is one of the most
common keys to success among notable businesses.
The oil companies that are most successful in
discovering oil, for instance, are not the ones
with the best equipment or the most intelligent
personnel but the ones who dig the most wells!
Persistence is the factor which separates
successful firms from unsuccessful ones.*
Yet the principle is also one
that applies to the Christian's walk of faith.
Even a man as spiritually mature as the apostle
Paul at times had to make several bungled
attempts before he finally experienced a
successful opening to use his gifts for Christ
(Acts 16:6-10).
Of the principles of success and
failure which we're considering, this is perhaps
the most important to keep in mind in reference
to romantic relationships. I have counseled with
many older singles who have gone through several
disappointments are now ready to throw in the
towel. They are convinced that their chances of
marrying are nonexistent and that failures in the
past must prove that God hasn't cut them out for
marriage. Seldom do I believe that this
conclusion is justified. In the immensely complex
world of romantic relationships, the chemistry
which doesn't work in one case may do so
wonderfully and surprisingly in another.
God's timetable with each of us
is remarkably different, and we shouldn't assume
that disappointment in the past means we're
doomed to disappointment forever. There may be
lessons to be learned from past experience. But
in many cases the failure of romance to flourish
simply means that the compatibility factors were
not right, and nothing you could have done would
have changed that. In another relationship the
mix of factors will be different and
compatibility may be much more natural.
When disappointment in romance
comes we should, to be sure, pray that God will
give us a heart to accept our present situation
joyfully. But praying for acceptance of the
present is not incompatible with praying for
change in the future. If the desire for marriage
continues to be strong, you should be honest in
expressing it to God and continue to be hopeful
that the opportunity will come about.
In romance, and in other areas
too, we need to be careful not to fall into a
fatalistic mentality about the future due to past
failure. Particularly when there are no clear
lessons to be learned from failure, the principle
of casting seeds suggests that we should stay
hopeful. Failure in the past may just as well
indicate we are now in line for a victory as
anything! The important thing is not to lose
heart. We must not close the door in any area of
our life before God is ready to do so.
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