Don't fear failure; learn from it.
If we are always learning, then we never truly fail.
So many young adults I pray with at our church each week have a huge fear of failure. But when you dig a little deeper, it's more about a pressure they feel to present themselves in a certain light, mostly on social media. It is like a mask they are wearing that they don't want to let people see behind. This is a highly pressurized mindset.
Failure is not to be feared, but to be used as a tool to help us grow by learning what doesn’t work to find out what does work. This is true in relationships, business, athletics and almost any other personal endeavor. Fail forward and you eventually will land on success. Michael Jordan once famously said that getting cut from his High School freshman basketball team was the impetus that drove him to success. It was literally the fuel in his engine that ignited him to higher places. Thomas Edison "failed" over 3,000 times at creating the lightbulb, but he never viewed it as failure but rather as just another feedback loop in learning what would eventually work. We can fail forward by learning from every experience.
Hebrews 12:1-2 says "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."
Look at how even Jesus had to "endure" the Cross. In the world's eyes, on the Cross they would have thought Jesus had failed. But we know that in fact He had defeated sin and death and 3 days later the tomb would be empty and Jesus's endurance had led to the greatest comeback victory in recorded history. Don't fear failure, learn from it and keep failing forward!
