Welcome to "Tuesday Morning"—a shot of spiritual encouragement heard around the world. Well, not everywhere around the world, but gaining every day.

 

Kyle Rote Sr. was a consensus All-American football player at Southern Methodist University in 1950 and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame sixteen years later. He was the first pick in the 1951 NFL Draft by the New York Giants, where he played with distinction for the next eleven years. His son, Kyle Jr., chose soccer over football and became one of the first well-known, American-born professional soccer players. The younger Rote once said, "There is no doubt in my mind that there are many ways to be a winner, but there is really only one way to be a loser, and that is to fail and not look beyond the failure."

 

I can't begin to tell you how many people I have known who have let a personal or professional failure imprint them for life—never rising above the place where they "crashed and burned." Some have allowed one failure to destroy their lives and profession. Others, on the other hand, have determined that their failure would not be fatal. (Simon Peter was one who not only survived his denial of Jesus but went on to become a leader in the New Testament Church.) Those who have followed in the tracks of Peter have recovered their integrity, have earned back their good reputation, and their future became more successful than anything they had done in the past. I applaud these folk. They redeemed their past, and with God's help they re-directed their failure to project them forward. And God has blessed them.

 

This week's "Tuesday Morning" is entitled "Failing Forward." It is the title of a book written by Dr. John Maxwell. Continue reading whenever you are ready. Then—please do this—forward this message to a friend who is burdened down with guilt and pain over a failed past. This essay is not a sermon. It is a way through the wilderness. I am praying now that someone you know will be encouraged and will re-direct their life to follow the plan that God has had in mind for them all along.

 

Tom Barnard

A Senior Encourager

 

P.S. Have you purchased a copy of my new book yet? It's entitled E-Couragement: Meditations for Leaders. It contains more than sixty essays written especially (but not exclusively) for Christians in leadership roles. A friend who teaches at a Christian college wrote recently to say that she used one of my essays at the beginning of one of her classes as a devotional. A student later wrote to tell her how much that particular message meant to him that day.  You can purchase the book through Amazon.com for around $9, plus shipping. If you prefer, send me a check for $15 or more and I will send you a signed copy. If you are interested in supporting my ministry in this way, write to me and I will send you my mailing address. Grace and Peace.

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“Failing Forward”

Tom Barnard

 

n his excellent book, Failing Forward—Turning Mistakes into Stepping-Stones for Success (Thomas Nelson, 2000), Dr. John Maxwell reflects on his personal battle to overcome failure, describing his experience in terms that he called a recipe for disaster:

 

Fearing Failure…Misunderstanding Failure…Unprepared for Failure

 

But if you think that this was a formula for failure for Maxwell, you are wrong. Instead, for him (and for many others who have followed his example), coming to grip with failure is one of the most important keys to success in life. Maxwell quotes J. Wallace Hamilton as saying,

 

     People are training for success when they should be training for failure. Failure is far more common than success; poverty is more prevalent than wealth; and disappointment more normal than arrival.

 

Training for failure! What a novel concept. I wish I had learned that before enrolling in a five-hour course in New Testament Greek in college (with plans to continue N.T. Greek II the next semester). And when the professor announced that he would be awarding only one “A” grade in a class of 30 aspiring religion majors, I had second thoughts about staying the course. If the college had offered a course in General Studies, I probably would have changed majors that very day. But I didn’t. And I didn’t earn the “A” grade that I so desperately wanted. I came close, and I enrolled in N.T. Greek II. I’ll never forget the guy who got the “A”—he ended up being a career missionary in Japan! He knew languages!

 

The fact is that failure can indeed become a stepping-stone for success. Mary Kay Ash is an excellent example of people who use their failure to propel them to success. She overcame significant obstacles in her life and career. Society tends to look at winners like Mary Kay and say, “I could have done that if I had as many things going for me as she had going for her.”

 

Society would have been wrong. After retiring early from a corporate management position, Mary Kay decided to launch a new company—her own line of cosmetics for woman. She purchased the formulas of an outstanding line of cosmetics, designed her own marketing plan, and proceeded toward incorporation. Her husband agreed to manage the administrative part of the business, while Mary Kay worked to prepare the product line, recruit and train sales people, and launch the advertising. She was off to a quick start, but a month before the target date to launch the business, her husband died suddenly of a heart attack.

 

Mary Kay was devastated. She considered quitting. But she didn’t. In 1963 she launched her business. By the year 2000, her company was grossing more than $1-billion in annual sales. In addition to her 3500 employees, her direct-sales consultants number about 500,000, and they are the ones that sell her products in 20 world area markets. Maxwell concludes, “Despite adverse circumstances, obstacles, and hardships, she failed forward.” The key for Mary Kay was failing forward, not backward.

 

Have you ever failed at something? Welcome to the universe. Everyone has. Do you consider yourself to be a failure? If so, we need to change that. Failing at something and being a failure are two mutually-exclusive conditions. I like to refer to Erma Bombeck as someone who started slowly but who overcame enormous adversity during a career that finally brought her enormous success. Eventually she published fifteen books and was recognized as one of the twenty-five most influential women in America—also being featured on the cover of Time magazine. She once said, “Personally and career-wise, it’s been a corduroy road. I’ve buried babies, lost parents, had cancer, and worried over kids. The trick is to put it all in perspective…and that’s what I do for a living.” Maxwell concludes: “That point of view kept Erma Bombeck down to earth…It also kept her going—and writing—through the disappointments, the pain, the surgeries, and the daily kidney dialysis until her death at age sixty-nine.”

 

Maxwell calls this “Failing Forward.” And he highly recommends it to everyone. Why? Because it works