Learning from Failure

This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally a song, hymn or selection of poetry to tie it all together. 

Today's devotional is taken from: Vujicic, Nick. Limitless Devotions for a Ridiculously Good Life. Colorado Springs, CO: Waterbrook Press, 2013. pp 80-82.

Opening Thought: One of the most fundamental lessons you can teach someone is to learn from failure. This is far more challenging than it sounds, despite it being so simple in theory. It becomes so challenging because the lesson calls us to be humble. Humility is key to this lesson. When we are pride-filled, we will stop ourselves from attempting something we are not experts in because we fear looking stupid, clumsy, ungifted, and foolish, and therefore our pride will stop us all together. I have come to know so many adults who speak about who they had wished they could have become in life, or thing they wish they could do, but never felt they had what it took to accomplish their goal. But they did have what I took,  an ability to fail towards progress.

The devotional begins with: 
Proverbs 142:5-7

I cried out to You, O Lord:
I said, “You are my refuge,
My portion in the land of the living.
Attend to my cry,
For I am brought very low;
Deliver me from my persecution,
For they are stronger than I.
Bring my soul out of prison.
That I may praise Your name;
The righteous shall surround me,
For You shall deal bountifully with me.”

Second Thought: When you trust in God, I believe it truly makes the process of using your failures to help learn and thus progress manageable, because you grow with the stories of the Bible. You see God taking people who were not perfect and using them for wonderful things, you see them doing feats that were just so far beyond what they could have done on their own. You see that with God, you come to know that one of humanity’s gift is the ability to rise beyond the limitations of failure, to utilize a moment of hardship and craft it into something positive and wonderful.

Continual Work: If you need to help yourself shake your pride, revisit in your memory some of the times you have failed in life, and ask yourself – “what did I learn?” Write it down if it helps. Then ask yourself, “Is there anything else I would like to learn?” Sometimes after failure, we have unanswered questioned, allow yourself to study and ask questions, ask experts, and really utilize it for the better. Then, finally ask the most important question, “God, will you help me move from this failure to a movement of progress?”

What Rev. Jacob is Working On: If I ask myself the questions above, and think about my failures, one of the failures is that I often forget to take time for my own worship. Being in church leadership, it is easy to take worship and turn it into work. So I am taking efforts to have time each day to sharing in devotional time, to reflect and think, and because of that I have this blog now, which allows me to share my devotion with my peers and congregants and as a result I have progressed, to a point where my devotional time can be transparent and welcoming, while still giving me a wonderful outlet throughout my week.

Scripture time: Proverbs 142:3

When my spirit grows faint within me, it is you who watch over my way. In the path where I walk people have hidden a snare for me.

David has found himself in a heavy situation, he is in a cave as he writes the poem to which our scripture was pulled from today. David is feeling faint and there are enemies around him, ready to snare him. This isn’t just failure, but a burdening situation. No matter what hardship we face, whether is the doubt of our hear, the doubt of your bodily welfare, or your situational luck, we all must cry out to the Lord, because only in He, can we find true refuge.        

Closing Words: I hope you enjoyed and were lifted by this devotional time; it is truly important to take time for God each day. By doing so, you welcome God into your life, and in turn you will be able to better see the world through the eyes of God, rather than God through the world's eyes.

Artistic Close: “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” - Winston Churchill.