Failure in Christian preaching is often portrayed not as an end but as a necessary step toward growth, learning, and ultimate success in God's plan. Illustrations use images like stepping-stones, setbacks, and repeated trials to show how grace and perseverance transform failure into spiritual achievement (Philippians 3:13-14; 2 Corinthians 12:9).
Failure can lead to unexpected great achievements beyond original intentions.
Christopher Columbus was obsessed with the idea that he could get to the East by traveling west, but by sailing west he never did reach India. He failed, but changed the course of history by discovering America, a great achievement. If you set out to do something great enough, what you do incidentally may be of more significance than that which is accomplished on purpose by someone else.
Early failure does not prevent later success in God’s plan for life.
Phillips Brooks became a teacher in Boston Latin School, a position for which he seemed preeminently qualified. He lasted only a few months. His headmaster commented that Phillips "had in him no single element of a successful school teacher" and set Phillips packing with the conclusion that he had never known a man who failed as a schoolmaster to succeed in any other occupation. He had failed at the age of 20. Phillips Brooks overcame that failure, however, to become one of the finest pulpiteers in all of American history. No failure need be final.
Failure can motivate new levels of achievement and purpose beyond initial setbacks.
Frank Laubach learned to live above his failure. At 45, missionary Frank Laubach was a theological seminary professor in the Philippines. He was next in line for president of the seminary. However, the board selected someone else. Laubach took off for the hills to sulk. He was angry about the unfairness of life and God's seeming lack of justice. He was a failure in his own eyes. Was that the end of his story? Not on your life. Frank developed in his solitude a technique for teaching hundreds of millions of people throughout the world to read for the first time. He became the father of the modern literacy movement. A failure, Frank Laubach learned to live above that failure, and on that new level, he found how to achieve excellence.
Failure is a necessary step toward success and learning, not a reason for pride or quitting.
Thomas A. Edison recorded 1,093 patents. Most of these inventions were impractical or unmarketable. They were failures. But a man who invented the phonograph, the mimeograph, and the electric light bulb could afford a lot of failures. He was so inept in business matters that he lost control of the profitable companies that he founded, and yet in the depths of the depression, he died with an estate of $2,000,000. Edison was a successful failure. It is obvious that you learn as you fail. You also grow as you fail, but you must dare to fail. If you can fail enough, you will learn a lot; but if you are too proud to fail, then you will not enjoy success.
Repeated failures can lead to eventual success and fulfillment of God's purpose.
Abraham Lincoln was considered by many Americans as a most successful president. It was strange that he was a man marked for failure, a man suffering from melancholia, who endured long periods of depression throughout his life. He could barely see out of one eye. He had frequent nervous attacks, severe headaches, indigestion and nausea. He had a couch placed near his desk in the White House so he could quickly lie down when one of his spells came over him. When Lincoln was 10 years old he was kicked in the head by a horse and experts now believe that the skull was severely fractured, leaving him with lifelong problems. When he came to deliver the now famous address at Gettysburg, he was coming down with smallpox. Lincoln failed in business in 1831, was defeated for the legislature in 1832. The next year he suffered another business defeat and in 1836 had a nervous breakdown. He failed to be elected speaker in 1838, was defeated for elector in 1840, and for Congress in 1843, as well as in 1848. Lincoln failed to be elected to the Senate in 1855, and was defeated for the Vice Presidency in 1856 and for the Senate in 1858. However, being elected President in 1860, he could afford all those failures. Abraham Lincoln was truly a successful failure. Some people are slow starters and may discover God's purpose late in life. Moses was 80 years old when he began his life's work. All that time God was preparing him to do one thing-lead the Hebrews out of Egypt. It could be that you are living to accomplish only one great task for God, and that all the rest of your life is merely preparation for that great heroic responsibility.
Many great leaders failed repeatedly but succeeded by persevering and learning from failure.
When the great Polish pianist, Ignace Paderewski, first chose to study the piano, his music teacher told him his hands were much too small to master the keyboard. When the great Italian tenor, Enrico Caruso, first applied for instruction, the teacher told him his voice sounded like the wind whistling through the window. When the great statesman of Victorian England, Benjamin Disraeli, attempted to speak in Parliament for the first time, members hissed him into silence and laughed when he said, "Though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear of me." Henry Ford forgot to put a reverse gear in his first car. Albert Einstein failed his university entrance exams at his first attempt. Thomas Edison spent $2,000,000 on an invention which proved to be of little value. Very little comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are fingerprints on the road to achievement. Abraham Lincoln's life could demonstrate that the only time you do not fail is the last time you try something and it works. We can "fail forward" toward success. Who Has Not Failed? The Apostle Paul failed; Peter failed; every one of the twelve apostles failed. David, Israel's greatest king, "a man after God's own heart," failed. Moses, giant among the Israelites, giver of the law, deliverer of his people, failed. Jacob, father of Israel, failed; Isaac, son of promise, failed. Abraham, progenitor of Israel, father of the faithful, prototype of those who are righteous through faith, failed. Even our first parents, in their human perfection, failed. Who has not failed? It is not failing that is the problem; it is what one does after he has failed. To take failure as final is to be a failure. To see in failure the school of the Spirit is to let failure contribute to one's growth in Christ.
Setbacks are part of progress; success comes from learning and pressing on despite failures.
Booker T. Washington said, "Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed." By taking two steps forward and one step back, we still continually move closer to the goal. A man who makes no mistakes is one who does nothing. Failure, disappointments, and setbacks are a part of life. We must learn not to identify with our failures. There are many, many examples of people who overcame backward steps. Abraham Lincoln ran for political office seven times and was defeated each time. Bobby Kennedy failed third grade and could not even take care of his own paper route. Babe Ruth struck out more times than any other baseball player. Ed Gibson, one of the astronauts on the Skylab III mission, failed first and fourth grades. Learn from your mistakes, but identify with your success. Press on, confident in your own ability to succeed, backed by the power of God. Never forget that people who accomplish great things believe they can do it. When All Else Fails, Read the Instructions We are so good at doing things our own way. Then, when they do not work out, we turn to God and say, "Help! Now what do I do?" We are so foolish, for if we had read His instructions in the first place, we wouldn't have had the problem in the second place. "Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee." That's a powerful thought!
The futile quest for the philosopher's stone illustrates the failure of worldly pursuits.
Fuller relates, that "one Thomas Charnock, in pursuance of the philosopher's stone, which so many do touch, few catch, and none keep, met a very sad disaster. Once, when he was on the point of completing the grand operation, his work unhappily fell into the fire." "This," says M. Disraeli, "is a misfortune which I observe has happened to all alchemists."
A gifted man’s life spiraled through failure before finding purpose in writing.
An illustration is furnished in the history of Combe, the unhappy author of "Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque." "We find," says a reviewer in "The Companion to the Library," "this improvident man, and all within a few years, figuring as a boy at Eton; a scholar at Oxford; a student in the Temple, with a very handsome independent fortune; a barrister pleading with success; a man of fashion intimately associating with lords and ladies, and calling himself (from his courtly dress and splendid liveries) 'the Duke;' and then an outcast spendthrift; a private soldier; a novice in a French monastery, playing the monk to get his bread for the time being; a strolling player; a gentleman's servant; and a waiter at an inn at Swansea. It was after all these metamorphoses, that he turned himself into an author. His last scene of all was the King's Bench; there he wrote 'Syntax' and some other works; and there he died, after an imprisonment (for debt) of twenty years."
Ambitious plans often contrast sharply with the reality of failure and loss.
Bonaparte, referring to the siege of Acre, says: "I see that this paltry town has cost me many men, and occupies much time; but things have gone too far not to risk a last effort. If we succeed, it is to be hoped we shalfind in that place the treasures of the pasha, and arms for three hundred thousand men. I will raise and arm the whole of Syria, which is already greatly exasperated by the cruelty of Djezzar, for whose fall you have seen the people supplicate Heaven at every assault. I advance upon Damascus and Aleppo; I recruit my army by marching into every country where discontent prevails; I announce to the people the abolition of slavery, and of the tyrannical government of the pashas; I arrive at Constantinople with armed masses; I overturn the dominion of the Mussulman; I found in the East a new and mighty empire, which shall fix my position with posterity; and perhaps I return to Paris by Adrianople or Vienna, having annihilated the house of Austria." What a wide difference between what he then anticipated and what he subsequently experienced!
Many fail because they lack ability, patience, and perseverance to reach their goals.
See AGGRESSION; SALOON, FIGHTING THE.
ATTAINMENT, SUPERFICIAL
There are men who attempt to rise in the social scale without any apparent fitness for the larger place aspired to. Many start off on a course, but lack ability, patience and pluck to persevere and so fail of their goal, as the following somewhat humorous illustration suggests:
Attorney William S. Barnes, of San Francisco, has a new office boy. The last boy with whom he was associated resigned a few days ago because the law business did not suit his peculiar temperament.
“How long have you been here?” asked Barnes, when the small boy made known his intention to engage in a different vocation.
“Six months,” replied the boy.
“And you don’t like the law business?”
“Naw. It’s no good, and I tell you straight, I’m mighty sorry I learned it.”
Many inventions fail, symbolizing dashed hopes and the pain of wasted effort.
There are thousands upon thousands of models at the Patent-office of inventions that are of absolutely no use whatever. They represent the blasted hopes and often the ruined fortunes of innumerable inventors who invested their time and money in worthless ideas. The models forwarded by these inventors to the Patent-office form a sort of museum by themselves, and those who wish to look a bit beneath the surface can find a story abounding in genuine pathos lurking in pretty nearly every one of these foolish inventions. (Text.)--New York _Evening Sun_.
Great opportunities wasted lead to lives that end in disappointing failure.
Caligula once fitted out a fleet at great expense, as if to conquer Greece or to accomplish some other great undertaking, but the ships returned laden with pebbles and cockleshells, only to receive the scorn of all.
So many a life that is well equipped and has glorious opportunities flattens out into insipid nothingness.
Apparent failure can lead to unexpected success and new opportunities.
See DEFEAT; NEGLECT; SUCCESS IN FAILURE; SORROW FOR A LOST CAUSE.
FAILURE LEADING TO SUCCESS
It is part of the compensation of life that nearly every dark cloud of disaster or disappointment has a fringe of light under it. An instance of this is seen in the career of Senator Beveridge:
It was a joke that sent United States Senator Beveridge, of Indiana, into public life instead of into the army. He took the competitive examination, but at a critical moment he laughed at another boy’s sportive remark and failed to pass by the smallest fraction. We are told by one chronicler that young Beveridge was so badly upset when the news reached him on the street that he had failed to pass that his distress was mirrored on his face so plainly that a passing acquaintance stopt to ask him the cause, and was himself so touched that he forthwith offered to advance him the money necessary to start him in college.
What seems like failure in battle is actually a step toward freedom and new life.
These cheering lines are from _Success_:
There is no failure. If we could but see Beyond the battle-line; if we could be Where battle-smoke does ne’er becloud the eye, Then we should know that where these prostrate lie Accoutered in habiliments of death, Sweet Freedom’s radiant form has drawn new breath-- The breath of life which they so nobly gave Shall swell anew above the lowly grave, And give new life and hope to hearts that beat Like battle-drums that never sound retreat.
Great men often start with humble or discouraging beginnings but rise to prominence.
The parents of Isaac Barrow, the celebrated English divine, conceived so mean an opinion of his temper and parts when he was a boy at the Charterhouse School, that his father used to say, if it pleased God to take from him any of his children, he hoped it might be Isaac, the least promising. Adam Clarke’s father was equally uncomplimentary to his own flesh and blood when he proclaimed his son to be “a grievous dunce.” Poe, at West Point, was a laughing-stock to his schoolmates. Sheridan’s mother presented him to a new tutor as “an incorrigible dunce.” Byron, at Harrow, was in no wise distinguished above his fellows. Napoleon and Wellington in their schooldays were distinguished only for dulness.--_Lippincott’s Magazine._
Losing composure in public preaching causes deep personal embarrassment and discouragement.
I was preaching for a single Sabbath in Brooklyn. In the course of my discourse I lost my head; in fact, I lost all of them. Three were on paper, and one on my shoulders; and they all went at once.
I tried to remember what I had had in my head, but, like the old king’s dream, the matter had gone from me.
I tried to decipher what I had put upon paper, but the writing had faded out.
Everything was gone except the audience, and I could have wished that they were gone, too.
I pounded the desk; I pawed the floor; I clawed the air. I poured whole broadsides of big dictionary into those long-suffering people, but without a single scintilla of sense.
At last I struck a line of thought, and clutched it with the grip of despair, and pulled myself out of the hole in which I had been floundering, and then limped along to a “lame conclusion.”
And then so mortified was I that I would have sunk through the floor, could I have found a vacant nail-hole. As that was out of the question, I would fain have sneaked away without speaking to a human being; but, as bad luck would have it, I had promised to go home to dinner with the Hon. William Richardson, one of the most cultured members of the congregation.
We walked some distance before either spoke a word. Finally, I broke silence--I felt like breaking everything in sight--and I said, “Richardson, was not that the very worst you ever heard?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Mean?” I replied, catching savagely at the word. “‘Mean’ is no name for it. You must have noticed how under the third head of my discourse I lost my head, and ripped and raved and tore around like a lunatic. What did the people think of it?”
“Think of it? Think of it?” he repeated with sincere surprize. “Why, they thought it was the best part of the whole sermon.”
And then I said to myself, and I said to him, “What is the use of talking sense to the people when they like the other so much better?” Possibly this may serve to account for the fact that these same people subsequently called me to become their pastor.--P. S. HENSON, _Christian Endeavor World_.
Lack of initiative can cause serious harm despite training and routine.
That which is recorded of the telephone girl below is true of great numbers of both sexes in every walk of life. Patients in hospitals soon learn that “trained” nurses will never willingly do anything outside the routine of their directions, which they take mostly from the bulletin-boards. It is said of some physicians that they would prefer that their patients should die regularly rather than get well under an unaccredited practitioner.
A Philadelphia telephone girl refused to make connection with the Fire Department because the man at the other end of the line had not the necessary nickel to put in the slot. At the Earlswood Idiot Asylum, England, we saw several idiots who had been trained to “self-support under direction,” but they had no power of self-reliance; indeed, the superintendent informed us that up to that time there had been quite a number who could automatically do things after much training, but only three in the history of the institution (which was then comparatively young) had been trained to be self-reliant. A reasonable amount of common sense ought to be required of telephone girls or men. This girl’s stupid blunder nearly cost a life.
Misplaced self-confidence can lead to costly mistakes despite apparent expertise.
In a current magazine we find the following:
Some years ago an attorney was called in by a large company and handed a lease.
“Give us your opinion,” said the president. “We have a great deal of this sort of legal business, and it is only fair to say that your opinion may mean much to us and to yourself.”
The lawyer went through the document with some care, but quickly, and on the spot.
“This is one of the best-drawn leases I have ever examined,” he said heartily. “You are wise to handle such matters inside your own organization. I commend your business judgment.”
“Can you suggest any improvements?”
“None whatever,” declared the lawyer.
“Can you discern any flaws?”
“No--emphatically! Mr. Johns,” continued the attorney, turning to the president’s assistant, “I want to congratulate you, as a lawyer, upon your thorough grasp of this most difficult branch. In my opinion this instrument is unassailable. It will hold in the highest court in this State.”
“That is what we want--your honest opinion,” said the president. “You have given it, and we are much obliged to you, and shall be pleased to have a bill for your service. My dear sir, the highest court in the State declared this lease null and void last week, and we have lost a ten-thousand-dollar suit upon it!”
Both the business man who drew the lease and the lawyer who approved it were mistaken. They believed in themselves, but a higher tribunal showed their fallibility.
Winning a cause can sometimes be worse than losing it, revealing true success’s cost.
It often turns out that our apparent successes are really our undoing. Croake James tells this incident:
I was mightily delighted with the whim I was shown on a sign at a village not far from this capital, tho it is too serious a truth to excite one’s risibility. On one side is painted a man stark naked, with this motto: “I am the man who went to law and lost my cause.” On the reverse is a fellow all in tatters, looking most dismally with this motto: “I am the man who went to law and won my cause.” (Text.)--“Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”
Success depends on many uncontrollable factors beyond effort and talent.
I remember Thackeray saying to me, concerning a certain chapter in one of his books that the critics agreed in accusing of carelessness: “Careless? If I’ve written that chapter once, I’ve written it a dozen times--and each time worse than the last!” a proof that labor did not assist in his case. When an artist fails it is not so much from carelessness--to do his best is not only profitable to him, but a joy. But it is not given to every man--not, indeed, to any--to succeed whenever and however he tries. The best painter that ever lived never entirely succeeded more than four or five times; that is to say, no artist ever painted more than four or five masterpieces, however high his general average may have been, for such success depends on the coincidence, not only of genius and inspiration, but of health and mood and a hundred other mysterious contingencies.--Sir JOHN MILLAIS, _Magazine of Art_.
Failure is a necessary lesson and not a final defeat when the cause is right.
_Success Magazine_ appropriately publishes these lines:
There is no failure. God’s immortal plan Accounts no loss a lesson learned for man. Defeat is oft the discipline we need To save us from the wrong, or teaching heed To errors which would else more dearly cost-- A lesson learned is ne’er a battle lost. Whene’er the cause is right, be not afraid; Defeat is then but victory delayed-- And e’en the greatest vic’tries of the world Are often won when battle-flags are furled.
Some victories destroy the victor’s noblest qualities, making defeat preferable.
Milman has told us how Pope John XXI, bursting into exultant laughter as he entered for the first time that noble chamber which he had built for himself at Viterbo, is crusht by its avenging roof, which that instant comes down on his head. And thus it is true, in a deeper sense, that many a triumph crushes and extinguishes all that is noblest in him who has won it. Doubtless, failure and defeat are bitter, but hardest of all to bear are not our losses but our victories.--Bishop POTTER, _Scribner’s Magazine_.
A Sunday school boy falls into sin and crime due to bad company and loses his way.
A poor boy, who had been educated in the Stockport Sunday school, England, conducted himself so well, and made such great proficiency in learning, that he was appointed teacher of one of the junior classes. About this time his father died, and his mother, reduced to indigent circumstances, sent him to one very hearts to live unto the Lord, and their conduct affords proofs of the sincerity of their professions; thus for example, Esquimaux sisters, who have no boat of their own, venture across bays some miles in breadth, sitting behind their husbands, on their narrow kajacks, in order to be present at the holy sacrament, though at the peril of their lives." What a lesson is this for those who live near, and make any trifling thing an excuse!
Failing honestly in life can be a mark of integrity and trust in God.
A good doctor of divinity whom I knew well, met a Christian man in the street, shook hands with him, and congratulated him. The man said, "I do not know why you should congratulate me, for I have had a world of trouble; in fact, I have failed in my business." To which the doctor replied: "I congratulate you, because you failed honestly; you are the only man for years I have seen fail like that. "Then he shook hands with him again, and said: "My dear fellow, I do thank God you failed honestly." But no man need fail because he serves God.
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