Failure and Success

‘…The God of heaven will give us success…’  Nehemiah 2:20 NIV

To turn your failures into successes you need to do two things: 1) Realise that God wants you to succeed because you’re His child. When you think about it, what good and loving parent wouldn’t? In the face of overwhelming obstacles and enemy threats, Nehemiah announced, ‘…The God of heaven will give us success…’ and God did! 2) Realise that failure is a teaching tool. The greater the failure, the greater the opportunity to learn from it. But first you must acknowledge the teaching potential in your mistakes and commit to learning, growing and changing as a result. Thomas Edison said, ‘I’m not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.’ At twenty-one years old he set up his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, and became a full-time inventor. At any given time, he and his team were working on as many as forty different projects and they applied for more than four hundred patents a year. Edison’s feverish work schedule and productivity caused the local citizens to dub him ‘The Wizard of Menlo Park’. But he wasn’t always successful. The fact is, he struggled with many of his inventions but despite embarrassing failure after embarrassing failure, he refused to give up. Often ridiculed for his perseverance, he engaged in some ten thousand experiments before finally inventing the incandescent light bulb in 1879. Concerning his chequered work history, he said, ‘I haven’t failed. I’ve found ten thousand ways that don’t work.’ Stop labelling your failures as negative. There are very few real failures in life—only options. Some options work, others don’t. The truth is, with God on your side you’ll win if you persist!

Bible in a Year: 2 Chron 17-18; Acts 23:16-35;