Failure is something each of us do, over and over, throughout our lives.

Also, we have all had times when we dropped the ball that someone had entrusted to us, haven’t we?

With that being said, never think that when failure arrives at your doorstep it translates to you as a person being a failure. This simply is not true.

We all vastly exaggerate failures and fumbles when it comes to our own set of mishaps along the way. 

Zig Ziglar said it well when he said, “Failure is an event, not a person.”

Growing up, I uniformly transferred my failures and stumblings over into my personhood to mean that my existence was therefore a failure. That I, as a person, was a failure. This was totally wrong thinking! Plus, it’s a miserable line of thought.

We all have blown the prospects of failure out of proportion.

My go to verse growing up, was Romans 3:23 which says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

This verse did not say just my name, it instead indicated that every one of us fall short of the glory of God.

Failure is NOT the end of the world and doesn’t typically kill any of us.

Yet, we all fear failure, don’t we? We’ve learned this behavior.

Isaiah 41:10 is a good reminder for us: “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

Even good people stumble and may fall at times.

Successful people are not defined as being those who have never failed. Instead, they are people who get up, dust themselves off, and go at it again. In fact, successful people often do not know how to quit. Even amid countless fumbles and failures along the way.

Success and power can be found amid our own failures.

Michael Jordan once famously said, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the fame-winning shot and missed.”.

It was also Michael Jordan who once said that we will each miss 100% of the shots we don’t take…the same can be said of times we choose not to pray!

We all face failures and fumbles, and to do so, well, requires determination and resilience on our part. Without our failures combined with unwavering determination, we have no success stories to tell anyone.

Philippians 4:13 addresses this issue well: “I can do all this through him who gives me strength”.

Great people are simply ordinary people who have an extraordinary amount of determination. They just keep on going. They realize they’re never a failure unless they choose to quit.

That’s how to reduce our fear of failure. Redefine it. When we fumble, we stoop to pick that ball up once again, carry it onward, and learn what caused us to drop it in the first place.

We don’t fail by not reaching our defined goal. Instead, failure arrives when we do not have a goal in the first place.

Failure is refusing to get back up again once we fall. It’s refusing to try.

Now sometimes we grow truly weary and grow fatigued. We do need to remember the importance of rest, and then restart the effort to succeed.

Matthew 11:28 is a good reminder to us all: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”.

Let’s all hold on to the thought that we learn more from our fumbles and failures than from our successes and can embrace them all.

Samuel Smiles said it well, “We learn wisdom from failure much more than from our success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.”