Fearless! Breaking Through Barriers in Your Walk with God

Failure has no preference for race, status, creed, or religion. Failure is not spiritual or secular. Failure has no season, and it has no proclivity to bold or shy personalities. Promise does not secure it, and flattery does not redeem it. It knows no depth, height, or circumstance that can break its relationship with fear. Failure has no regard for those who wallow in pity and wishful thinking or drink from the cisterns of vain idealism in the valley of despair, lavishing their productive moments spectating instead of building for tomorrow today. No wonder many fear failure.

Those who walk with God are not immune to the possibility or experience of failure. You and I will fail sometimes even if we have never failed before. We may fail at what we think we’re good at doing or being good at. Failure may come to us when we have our best game planned, studied long hours, or followed the letter to the T. No one is in any way inoculated from failure even after seven opportunities to improve on anything. The first opportunity to guard against failure is at the time of deciding that “I will do it.”

Temporary setbacks are often the cause of despair for many would-be high achievers. They give up at the first sight or experience of setbacks. So that we understand each other and that your expectations are not disappointed, let me inform you that you should expect failure along your journey to phenomenal success. Expect that some days will not be as bright as other days. Expect that some mornings, you will not want to study for the upcoming examination. Expect that some days, you will look for your closest friends, and they will not be immediately present.

On some days, the clouds will seem more permanent in your life than the sun you so readily desire. On some days, the rain will be a prolonged feature in your life. On some days, you may look at your spouse and feel disappointed about your relationship. On some days, you will not want to show up for work. On some days, you will not want to hold the hand of your spouse as you walk through romantically charged places. On some days, you will look for success, but all you will find is failure. On some days, you will be tempted to turn back from continuing your journey. The destination may seem too far away.

I remember driving back from Florida with my wife and mother-in-law after visiting her stepdaughter in Florida. We decided to drive almost nine hundred miles drive without understanding how tiring it would be since it was our first drive to Florida. Despite the tiredness, we needed to make it back home to Alabama. Every stop for fuel was an energizing boost. All I had on my mind was getting home.

As tiring as it was, our destination was the motivation. As it is in the natural even more so in the spiritual. Our life’s journey is similar. We need to get refueled along the way. At those times, we need not get emotionally distressed and give up. If you do, you are saying that you would not be pleased if you but survive tomorrow. In the scriptures, Jesus said that He sends the rain on both the just and the unjust. So, just because it’s raining doesn’t mean it’s over for your plans. It doesn’t mean you have suddenly become unjust or just.

Your soul has a character that speaks of who you are. It speaks loudly in difficult times. A mature character helps you manage the uncertainty of the moment. Understand that you don’t have control over failure staring at you in the morning, at noon, or in the evening, but you can decide to dismiss its clamor for your embrace or befriend it. That’s a choice you can make. That resilience is not developed through the willful ordering of mental energies but by faith in God.

For in him we live and move and are! As one of your own poets says it, “We are the sons of God.” (Acts 17:28 TLB)

For in him we live and move about and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are his offspring.” (Acts 17:28 NET)

Fear gives rise to false definitions. One of those misleading definitions is failure. Failure must be differentiated from the lack of obtaining a particular goal. Although a person may not succeed at the first attempt of a goal, it is not permanent until they decide to give up on trying. To embrace discouragement and give up on trying is the quintessential definition of failure. The principle of failure does not only lie in what you can hear, smell, taste, see, or feel. It is in what is manageable. Visual individuals can picture and dismantle objects with their physical and philosophical eyes. Tactile individuals can also physically feel and emotionally connect to the object of care, concern, or hate. Everyone, at some time, will have the urge to pursue the object of their desire. It is the inability to achieve that particular prize or“ goal that is deemed as failure, especially if a colossal cost was attached to pursuing that goal.

The journey to total self-awareness, self-consciousness, and self-acceptance demands the acceptance of fear as an attraction for failure. In other words, fear initiates failure. No one is immune to the features of failure—not even Christians who confess the presence of God in their lives. Christians experience relationship breakups, academic inconsistencies, financial woes, and career mishaps on a daily basis. As a matter of fact, it is not unusual that Christians have to deal with such experiences because of their religious faith. So, for the Christian, failure is not an unmentioned reality; it is an interpretation of values, processes, and expectations.