You are not the sum of your bad behavior. I know you screwed up… again. I know you have made mistakes. You have even hurt people you love with your poor choices. Your weaknesses have been exposed. Yet I am here to tell you, you are not a failure. Even when people peer at you with that look of disdain. Despite the fact that you feel terrible for what you have done (or have not done), you, my friend, are not a failure.  Who you are is a person that is experiencing failure.

Now, I know that this may seem like a play on words but hear me out. There is not a person on this earth who is exempt from failure.  From the little “white” lie to losing a job, to those who commit the most egregious of crimes, we are a world filled with humans who are prone to failure.   We know that nobody is perfect but when these words become reality we often find it hard to deal with. I know. I have failed a lot. I have failed at jobs. I have failed at school and I have even failed at marriage. Each time in the moment, I did feel like a failure. Yet through these experiences I learned that if you choose to classify yourself as a failure that means that you have given yourself over to it. Failure then becomes your identity. It becomes who you believe you are. This make failure a trap that is hard to escape.

“We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his son.”

Pope John Paul II

If you are planning on moving forward then you must change your mindset. Instead of seeing yourself as a failure, start calling yourself a person who is experiencing failure. I know this seems like a small thing but I believe it can have a great impact on your outlook. A person who is experiencing failure is free to assess it and learn from it. He can better look at the issues that lead to the failure and give them to the Lord.  He becomes more capable of sharing his weakness with mature men who will challenge and encourage him. In the end, being fully engaged in the process, he pushes through his failure, as opposed to evading it.

A person who identifies with being a failure only has one thing on his mind– not failing. So instead of pressing forward and building up the areas of his life where he has been prone to failure, he is racked with fear. He sees those weak areas as monsters he must flee from or contain. Instead of rooting them out through fellowship with God and mature men, he shuts those areas into closets and boards them up hoping they don’t escape. When they do, a person who sees themselves as a failure, having not dealt with the heart of the matter, eventually succumbs to the same weakness that led to failure before.

The Bible says a righteous man may fall seven times and rises again (Proverbs 24:16). Unfortunately, you and I have fallen many more than seven times but there is hope. The number seven is often used to symbolize perfection or completion.  So I take that to mean that a righteous man falls as many times as he needs to, to gain what he needs to overcome this area.  He then rises to move on to the next battle, and ultimately victory, which is our true destiny in Christ Jesus.

Moving from being a failure  to a person experiencing failure doesn’t mean that you won’t ever fail again.  What it does mean, however, is that hopefully we get better at it. We will see our failures differently. We will be learning from every setback and using each one to propel us forward with humility towards God.

Despite what you feel or what others say or imply you are not a failure. God in his mercy has allowed you to reach the end of your self and you are now being forced to reevaluate what you did or how you have been doing things. Guess what? That’s not a bad thing. In fact, experiencing failure brings us back home to the reality of God’s truth–we need salvation. We need to be saved. Unfortunately, it is the nature of man to slide away from this awareness when things are going well. Thus God, uses these times of discipline and pruning to cultivate faith and growth in us.

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.  Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,  I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Phillipians 3:12-14

When I look back at all my failures, some of them make for great stories…now. Yet many of them are still the source of great pain for myself and others.  I am choosing through God’s grace to let none of my failures define me. I am choosing to see myself as God sees me. While our failures and weaknesses must be addressed, they are not who we are. We cannot allow them to become a final destination. Instead, we must push though them until they are only a point of reference along this arduous journey called life. Do not set up camp in your worst moments. Stop only to regroup, and recalibrate then press on.

Questions to consider:

How have you managed failure in the past?

Who are the mature men that can guide you through failure?

What have you learned from past failures?

How have your failures helped you?

How have your failures hurt you?

What is one area of weakness that you will readdress this week?

Please comment and share your thoughts below!