Failure—the
Sequel
A Sermon
Dialogue
with Dr.
Fred Lang and Pastor Tom Frost
August 3,
2014[1]
Tom: This morning, we offer something a bit
out of the ordinary.
Some
of you may remember that on July 6th, we talked about the subject of
failure. We had read Paul’s lament that
he wanted to do good, but couldn’t; and he wanted to avoid evil, but he did it
any way. In agony, he cried out, “What a
wretched man I am! Who will rescue me
from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24). He then answered his own question: “Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our
Lord! ... [There] is now no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the
Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 7:25; 8:1-2).
A
pastor can often tell when he has stumbled upon a sensitive nerve in people’s
lives. It can be quite evident in the
way people greet the pastor when they leave the service. It was clear when Fred Lang came through the
line that he had some thoughts on his mind!
As we talked, it became clear to me that there was more to be addressed
on the subject of failure. So I asked
Fred if he would help me this morning to address some of these issues.
Fred,
can you tell us first about how you became so interested in this topic of failure?
Fred: One of the things that I did when I worked in Washington,
D.C. was to work with the US Department of Commerce and the White House in
training senior leaders and executives in the federal government. The subject of failure often came up. As we began to create leadership development
programs, I tried to convey to these executives how important failure is. If
you don’t fail during your career, you cannot succeed. It is through failure—because we are
imperfect people—through failure we learn what we can do differently. That is the lesson we learn as we grow up and
as we stumble—that person that reaches out beyond their grasp—beyond what they
think they can do--is the person that can risk failure and become successful.
Tom: But I have to tell you—I don’t feel very good when I fail.
Fred: No one does. No one
feels good. But let’s examine failure
from a different perspective. When we fail, we learn what will not work then
you reflect on your failure and you realize, “Hey, you stepped out, you tried
something differently and that gave you more confidence to try it again.’
Tom: I take it then, that you don’t view failure in itself as a
bad thing.
Fred: Failure is a stepping-stone to where you want to go. From a business perspective, it’s where you want
to go with your career, where you want to go in life. Failure is OK. But I caution these executives to fail
earlier in their career rather than late in their career when the decisions
they make are so monumental that they can cause harm to many people. But failure in the training stage is a way to
try things that you have never tried before so you can step out and learn from
that failure.
Tom: The Bible gives us a lot of material to reflect upon when
we think about failure. We can
especially find examples of failure in the life and journey of the Apostle
Peter. Let’s listen to this story.
First Lesson: Matthew 14:22-33
22 Immediately Jesus made the
disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he
dismissed the crowd.
23 After
he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later
that night, he was there alone,
24 and
the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves
because the wind was against it.
25 Shortly
before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake.
26 When
the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,”
they said, and cried out in fear.
27 But
Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”
28 “Lord,
if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”
29 “Come,”
he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came
toward Jesus.
30 But
when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord,
save me!”
31 Immediately
Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why
did you doubt?”
32 And when they climbed into
the boat, the wind died down.
33 Then those who were in the
boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
Reflection:
Tom: Fred, when you hear this story, do you think of Peter as a
good guy or a bad guy?
Fred: I think he’s a good guy.
The words that you mentioned that Jesus Christ spoke to Peter, “Why do
you doubt?”—everyone of us at some point doubts our ability to accomplish a
task that we haven’t tried before. It is
those self doubts that can hold us back, as it did for Peter. Peter suspended logic and he moved out on a
path. He stumbled when he began to
believe those doubts in his mind. We are
no different than that. We have
doubts. We experience failure. But Peter learned from that, as we can see
through the rest of the dialogue with Peter.
Tom: Do you see Peter as a failure?
Fred: No. I see Peter as
having the same ability to fail as all of us.
But he was one of those who took a risk and followed Jesus Christ, and stepped
out, without “seeing” where he was going.
Peter stepped out as all of us must do if we are to grow. We must have many failures in life before we
can grow.
Let
take a look at a few people that with whom we are all familiar:
1.
Walt Disney -- Today the Disney Corporation has made
billions from merchandise, movies and theme parks around the world, but Walt
Disney himself had a bit of a rough start. He was fired by a newspaper editor,
earlier in his career, because, "he lacked imagination and had no good
ideas." After that, Disney started a number of businesses that didn't last
too long and ended with bankruptcy and failure. He kept plugging along,
however, and eventually found a recipe for success that worked.
2.
J.K. Rowland -- Rowland wrote the very popular Harry
Potter stories and she has made a lot of money from the books and the movie
rights, but before she published the series of novels she was nearly penniless,
severely depressed, divorced, trying to raise a child on her own while
attending school and writing a novel. Rowling went from depending on welfare to
survive to being one of the richest women in the world in a span of only five
years through her hard work and determination. This brilliant and imaginative author
could have quit after her first failure, but she didn’t and, as a result, we
have stories that have delighted all ages.
3.
Winston Churchill -- This Nobel Prize-winning,
twice-elected Prime Minster of the United Kingdom wasn't always as well
regarded as he is today. Churchill struggled in school and failed the sixth
grade. After school he faced many years of political failures, as he was
defeated in every election for public office until he finally became the Prime
Minister at the ripe old age of 62. What he learned in his failures helped him
to lead a nation.
Tom: Let’s look at Peter’s story more closely. Where is the risk, and where is the failure
in his story? How do the characters
respond?
Fred: Let’s start with the risk:
the seas were not calm. He could
have drowned. That’s the risk.
Tom: The story says that the boat was “buffeted
by the waves because the wind was against it.”
Fred: And
doesn’t that happen in real life? He
could have drowned. But he suspended logic.
He refused to listen to the voices in his head that cause us to doubt
ourselves when we want to try something differently. Peter had never walked on water. He stepped out of the boat because he
believed what Jesus Christ told him. He
suspended all logic and belief in the frailty of the human being and moved
forward.
Tom: I thought that logic was supposed to be a tool that helps
us.
Fred: Logic is a tool that helps us. But there is a time that the tool of logic
can actually cloud our vision and prevent us from seeing the possibilities that
God puts before us.
Tom: The key seems to lie in discerning when to listen to logic
and when to ignore it.
Fred: In the world of business, we have a tool called “regression
analysis.” We determine on the basis of
the past patterns of growth whether we have a pattern that permits us to move
forward. But moving forward is all
faith—but faith that is based upon past experience. Past experience is based on logic. You have to suspend logic up to a point. You have to say, “here is our pattern. It is likely that we can move forward. We may stumble along the way.
Tom: It sounds as though we can find regression analysis in the
old hymn “amazing grace.” It’s grace
that’s brought us safe thus far, and grace will lead us home.” The past is evidence of what has taken place;
but going forward, we are stepping forward in faith, based in part on the
lessons of the past, but having no assurance of what is going to happen.
Fred: Businesses do the same thing. They have a marketing plan but they have to
have faith. They have a mission, they
have a vision of where they want to go and they have a team. They develop a strategic and a tactical
strategy, to move forward, based on their past experience. In other words, they
weigh the odds and take a risk.
Tom: So did Peter. He was
doing fine until he looks around and sees the waves. And he takes his eyes off
of Jesus.
Fred: He begins to listen to the little voices in his head—“O
what am I doing?!” I can’t walk on
water. He disbelieves. This is why you need to believe before you
see. When you see, you look at the
physical environment, and it tells you or leads you to believe that you cannot
do certain things. But when you believe
in yourself—that is the quality that God gave us—you step forward using the
gifts that God gave you to move forward in your life, in your career.
Tom: That brings us back to the definition of faith that we find
in Hebrews 11:1—“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen.”
Fred: But the word “hope” bothers me here just a bit. I am talking about more than just “hoping” I
can do something. The word “hope” contains
within its definition an element of doubt. Substitute the word “expect”. It’s
more of an “expectation” that based on what God has enabled me to do in the
past, He will enable me to do something again.
Tom: That’s right. That
is exactly what Hebrews 11:1 means by “hope.”
We aren’t talking about wishful thinking; but we aren’t talking about
certainty, either. We are talking about
stepping out of the boat, just as Peter did—not because he knew what the result
would be, but because he trusted in the One who invited him to walk on water.
Fred: One thing that we cannot do is to allow our fear of failure
to paralyze our expectations of the future. We must have the faith of
expectation if we are going to be able to achieve goals that are beyond our
reach. It changes us as people!
Tom: We have a second story about Peter and failure.
Second Lesson: John 18:15-27
15 Simon
Peter and another disciple were following Jesus. Because this disciple was
known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the high priest’s courtyard,
16 but
Peter had to wait outside at the door. The other disciple, who was known to the
high priest, came back, spoke to the servant girl on duty there and brought
Peter in.
17 “You
aren’t one of this man’s disciples too, are you?” she asked Peter. He replied, “I am not.”
18 It
was cold, and the servants and officials stood around a fire they had made to
keep warm. Peter also was standing with them, warming himself.
19 Meanwhile,
the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching.
20 “I
have spoken openly to the world,” Jesus replied. “I always taught in synagogues
or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret.
21 Why
question me? Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I said.”
22 When
Jesus said this, one of the officials nearby slapped him in the face. “Is this
the way you answer the high priest?” he demanded.
23 “If
I said something wrong,” Jesus replied, “testify as to what is wrong. But if I
spoke the truth, why did you strike me?”
24 Then
Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest.
25 Meanwhile,
Simon Peter was still standing there warming himself. So they asked him, “You
aren’t one of his disciples too, are you?
He denied it, saying, “I am not.”
26 One of the high priest’s
servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, challenged him,
“Didn’t I see you with him in the garden?”
27 Again Peter denied it, and
at that moment a rooster began to crow.
Reflection
Fred: The context seems so different from the story about Peter
walking on the water.
Tom: Yes, the context is different.
Peter
had always been one to speak impulsively, to speak grandly about things. He was a “big picture” guy. It was because Peter had this gift of
“seeing” who Jesus was that Jesus selected Him to lead his church.
But
Peter could be boastful. He bragged
about being willing to die with Jesus.
He said, “Lord, I will lay my life down for you now.” (John 13:37).
Jesus knew better. Jesus told him
that before the rooster crowed, Peter would deny Him three times. That is exactly what Peter did.
When
the time came for Peter to stand up and be counted, he denied following
Jesus. He denied that he knew
Jesus. He denied that he even knew who
they were talking about. The crow of the
rooster has become a symbol ever since of someone caught in denial.
Fred: I can see a pattern in Peter’s behavior. Peter begins with such great promise. As you point out, he was there in the
courtyard. Except for Peter and John,
the other disciples were no where to be found.
Just as Peter had the courage to risk climbing out of the boat (while
the other disciples cowered in the boat), Peter also risked going to the Temple
Courtyard.
Tom: But Peter’s faith and courage could only take him so
far. The one who, only hours before, had
bragged to Jesus that he would lay down his life for the Master now was
intimidated by the question of a girl on duty.
What do you think accounts for such a change in his attitude?
Fred: He had self-doubts.
There are times that we can be courageous in life, but we also have
self-doubts. Jesus already had
demonstrated the power of faith to Peter, and Peter had shown, by walking on
the water, the power of faith to enable us to do something that we never imaged
was possible. But Peter looked at the
risks he faced there in the Temple Courtyard, he looked at his self-doubts, and
he permitted those self-doubts to limit what he could do.
Tom: When Peter focused on the waves raging around him, and when
Peter focused on the Temple Soldiers who could arrest him, Peter took his
attention, his focus, off Jesus, the One who enabled Peter to do the impossible
in the first place.
Fred: And he failed to believe. Fortunately, this incident wasn’t
the last time we heard of Peter. He
learned from this failure, and went on to become a great leader—who took this
small band of followers and led them to become the Church of Jesus Christ. Peter’s faith grew into a faith that would
sustain him even at the cost of his own life.
Tom: Do you see Peter as a failure?
Fred: No. Peter stumbled in life, as all of us do from time to
time. Peter failed Jesus in this instance. But there is a big difference between failing
in a moment of weakness, and being a failure.
He proved himself later on. The
purpose of failure is to learn. Failure
is a stepping-stone to where we want to go in our lives.
Tom: That is a pattern we see in the Bible over and over
again. In a way, one could look at
Jesus’ own death as a sign of failure.
The One who people thought would usher in a new kingdom of Israel was
executed as a common criminal. But just
when all hope appeared to be lost, God showed us that failure is not the last
word. He showed us that nothing can
overcome the power of God’s love.
Fred: The resurrection was God’s “yes” in answer to the world’s
“no.”
Tom: Exactly. Resurrection
is the sequel to failure.
Fred: Resurrection is God’s assurance that no matter our
circumstances, God is with us, waiting for us to reach out and take His hand,
trusting that He will lead us home.
Tom: What are the waves that are raging around you this
morning? What in your life is causing
you to take your eyes off of Jesus?
Whatever they are, I invite you this morning to reach out in faith for
the One who overcame death itself. Let
Him raise you up to new life. May it be
so!
Copyright © 2014 by Thomas E.
Frost. All rights reserved.
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