How To Overcome Failure

[Dr. Dionne S. Wood]

When most people hear the word "failure", they almost always immediately react with a sense of finality or fatality. I believe, however, there is something that we can glean from every situation we face in life; even the ones we may label as failures.

What is failure? Failure is defined as:


1. an act or instance of failing or proving unsuccessful; lack of succes.

2. non-performance of something due, required, or expected

3. a person or thing that is proven unsuccessful


Failure can also be defined as an opportunity to try again. Failure or the lack of success does not have to be fatal, final, nor forever.

There are several instances in the Word of God where we see great people suffer from moral, spiritual, and personal failure. Some examples that come to mind are David when he killed Uriah to cover up his sin with Bathsheba, Jonah when he refused to minister to Ninevah, Moses when he struck the rock instead of speaking to it, Peter when he denied Jesus three times and then ran away from ministry. There are countless others, but the common thread that these people share is that although they each failed miserably in one way or another, they were able to recover. What was their secret to recovering when so many other succumbed to their failures? What can we learn from these people and their lives? Here are five tips that can help us learn to handle and overcome failure in our lives:

1. Be Honest With Yourself

In the cases mentioned above, each one had to acknowledge their shortcomings to themselves. Even Jesus, Who is our greatest example, had to admit that He didn't want to go through the suffering of the cross. While He was praying in the garden of Gethsemane, He asked the Father to "let this cup pass from me." That was, in fact, an admission of human weakness. Yet, it was when He owned up to that area of weakness in His flesh, that He received the strength to endure. Don't make excuses for your failure. Adam did. When God came looking for him after he and Eve had eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam tried to shift the blame on to Eve instead of "manning up" and taking responsibility for the part he played in his sin. Honesty with yourself and with God is always the best policy.

2. Go back and Get Right

David fasted, prayed, and worshiped. Jonah worshiped. Jesus said, "Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done." It is in repentance that we reposition ourselves to receive and walk in the promises of God. Don't allow your failure to prevent you from coming to God in repentance and worship. Remember, repentance is a turning away from your way AND a turning back to God... not just saying "I'm sorry". :)

3. Forgive Yourself

One of the biggest problems that I've seen when talking about this subject is the inability that we have to forgive ourselves when we mess up. This is called condemnation. We internalize our failures, and instead of seeing our errors as learning tools, we begin to see ourselves as failures. We allow guilt and shame to plague our minds, rendering us unavailable for use in ministry. Someone I know once said that guilt is what you've done, but shame is who you are. What that means is that if you've fallen short in some area of your life, you are guilty of committing an offense or omitting a command. We've all done that according to Romans 3:23. However, once you internalize that guilt and fail to forgive yourself, the guilt morphs into shame. In the case of our relationship with God, it inhibits us from worshiping freely and operating effectively in the Kingdom. If we allow guilt, shame, and condemnation to prevail, then we will miss the opportunity to move on and try again. Self-pity is the enemy to your recovery.

4. Embrace the Grace of God

In Luke 22:31-32, Jesus tells Peter that He has already prayed for him because He knew that Peter's faith would be challenged and tested. All throughout Scripture, we find God telling His people, "Fear not" and "Don't faint". Even when Paul, that great Apostle and the author of over two-thirds of the New Testament, was experiencing some short of personal shortcoming in the form of "a thorn in his flesh", he asked God to remove it. The Father's answer was simply this: "My grace is sufficient." God's grace is more than just His unmerited favor. It is the stop-loss measure that He grants His beloved to make up the difference in our lives. I must interject this here, however: Do not frustrate the grace of God! The Paul to whom God gives sufficient grace is the same one who admonishes us as believers not to continue in sin so that grace may abound (Romans 6:1-2). The grace of God is not a reason to continue to operate in failure.

5. Learn the Lesson

One of the biggest mistakes that most people make in life is moving from one situation to another without having learned the lesson from the previous experience. We move unwittingly through life, leaving valuable lessons unlearned. Lessons that can assist us on our journey through life towards destiny. There is always a lesson to be learned to be learned from what we go through. Even our failures, mistakes, errors, and shortcomings offer us immeasurable insight into the purpose of God. My mother used to always tell me that hindsight is 20/20. What I believe she meant that by that witticism is that after we've failed at something, we can often look back and see exactly where we've erred. This information is vital, because if we stay focused on God's will and faithful through our relationship with Him, He may allow us another opportunity to get it right. The Bible says is Jeremiah 18:4 that the vessel that the the potter made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter. So, he made it again into another another vessel that seemed good to the potter to make it.

The Conclusion of the Matter

Restoration is possible after failure. You can recover after a mistake. There isn't one of us who hasn't failed at one thing or another at one point in time or another. If we didn't fail, we wouldn't realize how much we need God. Remember, it's in our weakness that God's strength is made perfect. Failure itself is not a prerequisite for greatness, but how we respond to failure will determine how far we go in God. Failure is a necessary step in the process.All of the great men and women in history share one thing: they have all failed miserably; sometimes more than once. But the key to their greatness was that with each failure, they gained a little bit more knowledge that eventually led to that "sudden" success.

[Rev. Wanda]

How can you ever know victory if you have never known a "failure". Thanks for your words. For every venture that did not work out the way I anticipated, I learned valuable lessons as to what to do better or what not to do at all. We are on a journey and we learn by every effort that pushes towards our goals. Thanks again for your words.

Rev. Wanda