Arguably the greatest basketball player in history was Michael Jordan. — Do you agree? Yet he had to become the greatest basketball player who ever lived! There are not many who know the full story.
So did you realize that Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team as a sophomore and told to go home and come back next year? He did come back the next year, and he went on to be a superstar. He got a scholarship to North Carolina and then progressed to become the NBA’s greatest ever! So failure had an important role.
At first he failed. Over and over he failed—yet he was the greatest!
My favorite commercial on television was made by Michael Jordan. I liked it so much, I have it written down word for word. Would you like me to describe it? Here it is. Jordan emerges out of the darkness and stands with a basketball in the spotlight, and he says, “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games in the NBA. 26 times I have been trusted to take the shot to win the game—and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again, and that is why I succeed.
He succeeded because he would not let his spirit be broken by failure, and he did not quit. He learned the value and importance of failure.
Frankly, it is not fun to feel you have failed—nobody likes it. Who wants to fail and to flunk and to flop? Who seeks wreck and ruin? Who enjoys being unsuccessful and unfulfilled? Who would choose disappointment and defeat? Yet, it can be used in our life.
A man named Douglas was rejected at West Point two times before he finally got in—he became General Douglas MacArthur, the famous American general of World War II and a household name.
Here is another reject and failure—a man wrote a couple of books to entertain his own child. He went to 23 publishers who rejected him. Finally, he found one who said yes. When published, it sold 8 million copies—the man is known to us as Dr. Seuss.
And here is another example—a young man named Henry had both his first two companies go bankrupt in five years before he finally found out how to do things correctly. His name is Henry Ford. Maybe you helped his company succeed.
Here is another story—a salesman had spent most of his life in semi-failure living in cheap motels and selling things out of the back of his car. He was a high school dropout. At 52 he had arthritis and diabetes. He had lost his gall bladder and thyroid glands, and not even his own wife would have expected Ray to make it big. At mid-life he could have been called a misfit. He failed and failed—in real estate, as a disc jockey and musician, and now as a second rate salesman of various products.
One day on a business trip he was hungry, and he went to a cheap hamburger place to eat. He sat in his car and watched what was going on. He took all his savings and bought the hamburger joint in partnership with two men he barely knew. Later they totally sold out to him, and he had it all to himself! You may know the two men by name only, the McDonald brothers, and his name was Ray Kroc. Today the chain has 10,000 restaurants and is the largest restaurant chain in the entire world.
Related to mistakes and failures there are three things you can expect and benefit from in life:
I. FAILURE WILL TARGET YOU
It can be proved, say life coaches, that “20% of the people will be against everything.” When Robert Kennedy was Attorney General, he made that observation. Think of it. The highest approval rating you can expect is 80%. So, if you are at 50%, you are off the perfect number by just 30%!
Everybody is not going to like you or what you do—does that shock you?
There is a collection of letters that end up spelling CAVE. There are CAVE people all around us. The letters mean Citizens Against Virtually Everything! Those people will find you if you attempt anything significant. And remember, the only people who are exempt from failure and criticism are those who do nothing because they attempt nothing.
Lee Trevino, the famous golfer, said it in a classic way; he said, “We all leak oil.” If you have not failed, you will never end up being a person of accomplishment! All breakthroughs had risks—risk of failure!
The only person who is always right is the person who says, “I will make mistakes and I will fail at something I try to do!” Such a person understands life. There is more that can be said, the person who is given much to do—will do something wrong. Failure will target that person because such a person lives on the edge of life.
Failures often lead to success—so if failure targets you, don’t be defeated. Consider this seriously:
“One of the greatest qualities in a person is the ability to correct the mistakes that have been made previously and then to make a new person out of yourself continually.”
I will say more about that again later.
II. FAILURE CAN TEACH YOU
Edison said, “I found out what would not work,” after experiment after experiment failed on the light bulb; it went on for days and days!
Robert Schuller asked us, “What great thing would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?” And I would say it’s at that point that the element of real faith kicks in, in a practical way. When you go on, the secret is to make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes. Remember, today’s opportunities erase yesterday’s failures. So that, we make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks.
Golden opportunity is often dressed in disguise. It dresses itself so it looks like challenge, trouble, failure, or setback.
There are many people of faith who learned a great lesson. They said they could not wait for amazing success so they went ahead without it and fulfilled God’s purpose for their life. William Carey was like that!
Here is what you can learn by failure—you learn that being defeated is often temporary, but giving up is what makes it permanent. Proverbs 24:16 says, “For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again …”
I like the quote I collected from Reader’s Digest. It goes like this: “If at first you don’t succeed, you are running about average.” Failure can be an event, but it need never be a person. You see, failure and defeat may serve as well as victory. It can shake our soul and let God’s glory out.
The Roman thinker Plutarch said, “To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.” Listen, failure can teach you!
Napoleon Bonaparte once commented, “I can tell you who is the greatest general. The greatest general is the one who makes the fewest mistakes!” Yes, we fail—it’s part of life and it’s the school of life to those that succeed. So sometimes, failure can be the best teacher.
III. FAILURE SHOULD TEMPER YOU
Margaret Thatcher reminds us of something important, “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.”
Theodore Roosevelt said, “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” It’s a classic quote all of us need to review.
Mark Twain once admitted, “Throughout my life I have gained more from my critics than from my friends.” Have we learned that yet?
Once a great preacher wrote, “Welcome an enemy who will watch you keenly and sting you savagely. What a blessing such an irritating critic will be to a wise man, what an intolerable nuisance to a fool!” (Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Victorian Baptist pastor of the world’s largest church)
If you have never really fallen flat or been totally embarrassed or really hurt—I tell you what it means, it means you have never taken any risks or challenges. Here is the point—we cannot become what we want to be by remaining what we are! That’s simply, almost simplistic! We have to be willing to be put in a place of danger and challenge. For example, it’s true that ships are safe in the calm harbor—but that is not what ships were made for—ships were made to cross stormy seas.
John Wooden, the famous baseball coach, in his book They Call Me Coach said, “do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” Yes, we all have limitations and we all have areas where we do not excel. But nevertheless go there and let it temper you. But I mean it—we grow, we temper our constitution if we do not blame others for our mistakes and failures. We must not make the greater mistake and most terrible failure of blaming someone else. Why? Admitting error clears the scoreboard and starts the game over. Listen with your heart, a person may fail many times, but that person won’t be a failure until that person says that someone else pushed him! Never blame others for failures in life. It is at this place where a child becomes an adult, it’s when we assume responsibility for our failures and mistakes. It’s to stop saying, “We didn’t succeed,” and start saying, “Because of me, we didn’t succeed.”
Again and again God takes failures and makes them winners! Winners are not those who make no mistakes, winners quickly realize I need God’s help and discover how to make a loss a gain. “I need God to help me not do it again.” Mistakes can and should temper us, refining our character.
In fact, it has been said, “No person ever progressed to greatness and goodness but through great mistakes and failures,” and there is a reason for it—it can be used to drive us to God. If you and I will not fail twice, listen at once to what God says and what you have learned by past failures. With God as our secret strength—failure is a delay but not a defeat. The road we are on may have detours, but God will keep it from being a dead end! If, and it’s a big if, we are building our secret strength on His grace and obeying His guidelines. He is the God of the second chance and the new start.
Failures lead us discover then, so that we can function freely yet avoid them in the future. Let me show you. A manager of a baseball team looks at his players and put them in a batting order to help the team perform better and win. He positions his players to compensate for their inability. Past errors and failures help him make that wise decision. That is why they have spring training. A good player realizes, “I can do this well and I cannot do that well.” So we ask God, “Position me where I contribute the most!” Failures, experience taught that! Failure is important if that failure lets God be our wisdom and position us in life so that we do the most good. How would we know our place if past failures had not taught us? So, never forget the vital importance of failures.
Failures create success when God is involved!
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