The Fear of Failure

Raise your hand if you’ve ever failed at something.

Now raise your hand if you’ve ever failed at something so many times that it made you quit.

Yeah… my hand is up too.

There was a time in my life when I felt like such a failure.

It was my senior year of high school, and I had been working my butt off in the last sport of my high school career: golf. I worked so hard and poured so much energy into making sure I went out my senior year with a bang. My golf team had made it to state my junior year, but this time I was playing in sub-state all on my own… and I was determined to make it to state.

So we started the meet, and I was playing pretty good golf. Then it got down to the wire. It was my last hole, and every stroke mattered. I knew I was about to make a putt that could land me a spot at state.

But I missed the putt… and added another stroke.

My golf coach then came up to me and said, “You just missed beating the school record by one stroke.”

Ahhhh man!!! Are you kidding me?!!! I thought. I was so mad at myself.

We then went into the clubhouse and turned in our scorecards and waited for the results.

And then I got the news… news that I had missed qualifying for the state tournament by one stroke.

One stroke. Man, I was so disappointed. I was just like, “Are you kidding me, God? I worked so hard for this. I’ve prepared for this. And now I’ve failed. What am I supposed to do? This is not the way I thought my senior year would end. This is just too much.”

At that time, I was going to go play softball at Central College. That was my plan. But after I missed beating the school record and qualifying for state by one stroke, I decided that my golf career wasn’t going to end like that.

So I decided to go play golf at Wartburg College in Waverly, IA.

But then golf at Wartburg didn’t go like I had planned. I wasn’t loving it. I didn’t get much joy out of it. I felt like I had failed again.

So I thought, “God, I literally came here because I wanted to play golf. What am I supposed to do?”

And honestly, I felt like running away. I even went through a spell when I wondered if I should transfer because I felt like I was failing. I wondered if I should just run off to another school. 

But then I decided to be still for a sec. And I prayed about it. I gave it to God. Then I made the most of my situation, and I went all in at Wartburg.

If I would have run away and never stopped to listen to what God was saying, I would have missed out on all the wonderful things God had for me. My husband Tyler, a ton of memories, and the church I’m now a pastor at for crying out loud!

If I wouldn’t have failed at golf my senior year, I wouldn’t have come to Wartburg to play golf. And if I wouldn’t have quit golf at Wartburg, I probably never would have met Tyler. And if I wouldn’t have met Tyler, who knows if I would still be going to the church I’m now pastoring at. And if I wouldn’t have kept going to that church with Tyler, I don’t think I would probably be a college and youth pastor at that church today.

And some of you have these failures happening in your life right now that make you just want to run. You feel like you’re failing at sports, school, work… failing a relationship with your parents, your spouse, a friend, or a sibling.

But although you may have failed at something, you are not a failure. You are still living. You are still breathing. Which means God is not done with you yet.

This is what Elijah in the Bible had to be reminded of too.

Elijah was a good man. He was a faithful man. In fact, he had just experienced a huge victory!!! He had shown a bunch of people who didn’t believe in God that He was real! And he had just witnessed a miracle from God, yet still felt like running when failure sunk into his heart.

In 1 Kings 18, the people in this story have been experiencing a drought for three years. No water… for three years! And at the time they were under the leadership of this really wicked man named Ahab and this wicked, mean queen named Jezebel. And then all of a sudden at the beginning of 1 Kings 18, we’re told that God’s word comes to Elijah, and the message is this: “Go and present yourself to Ahab; I’m about to make it rain on the country.”

I mean could you imagine this?? Could you imagine if you heard God say, “I am going to make it rain up in this place.” ???? I just love it.

So God does. You’ll have to read the whole story for yourself, but basically, Elijah tells everyone that God is going to make it rain. And then God makes it rain. So this is a huge victory, because all these people are amazed at God, right?

But then Jezebel, that evil queen, comes in. She hears about how Elijah showed all her people how God is the one who made it rain instead of the fake gods she believed in. So she threatens to kill Elijah.

And Elijah, who is pretty much the last good godly person left, he gets afraid. Jezebel set him over the edge, and he became terrified. 

So you know what he did?

He ran. He ran off into the desert, hoping to escape all he was leaving behind. Hoping to escape all the horrible threats and circumstances Jezebel was telling him and putting him through.

1 Kings 19: 3-5 tells us, “Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. ‘I have had enough, Lord,’ he said. ‘Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.’ Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.”

At this point, Elijah feels like his failure is too great. That he tried to be a faithful servant leading others to Christ, but he has failed. Nobody listens. Nobody cares. He’s just like, “It’s too much. What’s the point? What’s the use?”

Could you imagine being Elijah and working with all your might to lead the people around you to live life the right way and follow your instructions, only to have everyone do the opposite and then threaten to kill you

But then an angel comes and tells him to get up and eat. Right there by Elijah’s head is food and water. And then in verse 7, it says, “The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, ‘Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.’”

And when I was preparing for this word, I just had this phrase stuck in my head, “It’s too much.” 

That sometimes life is too much. That sometimes my failures and mistakes seem too much. That everything going on around me is too much!! That failed grade is too much. That failed relationship is too much. That the failures of 2020 are too much.

And before I found Scripture for this I wrote down: 

Some of you are thinking “It’s too much!” I feel like I’ve failed. There’s too much in my past. There’s not enough in my present. And I don’t think I have a future. You’re just thinking, “It’s too much.” And you know what? You’re right. It is too much for you.

But can I just tell you that it’s not too much for God? Your failures and past mistakes aren’t anything God hasn’t seen.

And then I was thinking and researching about different people in the Bible who have failed. And I came across Elijah. And then I came across this verse when Elijah is at the end of his rope and he wants his life to be over with. He’s discouraged, he’s depressed, and he’s done.

But an angel tells Elijah in this verse, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.”

It is too much. For you! But I want you to believe that your failure and your life circumstances are not too much for God.

Then in verses 8 and 9, it tells us, “So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. There he went into a cave and spent the night.”

God gives rest to Elijah first. He gives food and water. Some of you need to just chill out. You’re getting way too strung up and hung up on the small little things of life. Oh no, I’m going to fail at work because I made a mistake. Oh no, I’m not going to be as liked because I didn’t make the starting line-up.

You need to stop for a sec and be still like Elijah! You need rest from all these thoughts. I’m not saying to be lazy and lay and eat and rest all day long. But I am saying that you can’t go your whole life going 100 mph, never stopping to be still and listen for God’s voice.

And then after this rest, God tells Elijah to go up to this mountain. And some pretty cool things happen. In verse 11-12, it tells us, “Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.”

That’s where Elijah heard God: in a gentle whisper. And some of you are stomping around in your situations, making all the ruckus, because you don’t know where God is and you can’t hear God and why isn’t he listening or answering you?

I’m going to say this bluntly. Instead of looking for God in the big loud boisterous fire and earthquake way you think He will answer you, maybe God needs you to be still and shut up so He can talk to you.

God will give you time to rest. He will listen to your prayers, He will listen to your failures even though He already knows them, but then He’s going to come back and tell you, “Get up, my child. There is work to be done.” 

And that’s what God does to Elijah. He lets him rest. He gives him food and water. He hears him out. But then He gives Elijah a mission and tells him who exactly he is to go find to help him along in the ministry.

God does not give up on us nearly as easily as we give up on Him! God came to Elijah in the desert in the midst of his despair. While Elijah may have had enough of God, God had not yet had enough of Elijah!

Elijah felt like he was done. He felt like it was too much. But God was not done with Elijah. And God is not done with you. No matter how many failures you’ve had.

And when you come to God and He gives you rest and you do hear His voice, and He tells you to go and do something like he did to Elijah, you may not feel back to 100%. You may not be totally healed emotionally. You may not feel totally out of your valley yet.

But God is moving you. God has given you an assignment, and sometimes just taking that next step after your failure is enough. Even if it hurts.

But you are still living. And you are still breathing. And that means that God is not done with you yet.

No matter what failure you’re walking through, you can believe that God is there with you. He is walking through it with you. And He’s working it out for good. He is not done with you. And by simply taking a step forward… by being still, listening to His voice, and taking action where He tells you to go, He will use your failures to bring breakthrough. He is not going to give up on you.

And I just pray that you never give up on Him.

Because there will be rough days. There will be days that the devil just attacks you with these thoughts of failure. 

Literally two nights ago I was laying in bed, thinking I was a failure over something so dumb. I even had a hard time falling asleep because I couldn’t stop thinking about my failure.

A couple days ago, Tyler and I were working on our new house, and we both got frustrated. Tyler was trying to figure something out, and he was just having a hard time with it. He felt like a failure in that moment.

And in those moments when the devil tries to sneak in and tell us that our failure means we’re not enough. Or that it’s the end… that we’ll never make a difference… that we’ll never be like so and so… or be able to move past our failure, we can remember that while our failures and mistakes may be too much for us, they are not too much for God.

Your failures and past mistakes aren’t anything God hasn’t seen. And maybe they’re not something you’ve done. But maybe what someone has done to you. God has still seen it.

He is the God of new beginnings. The old has gone. The new has come.

Elijah was to the point of calling it quits. “‘I have had enough, Lord,’ he said. ‘Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.’”

Jezebel almost stopped him from going on. But God flipped the failure of Elijah and turned it into faith. And he flipped my failure of missing that record and state qualification by leading me to where He knew I needed to be.

So what is your Jezebel? What is it that has set you over the edge? That makes you feel like it’s too much? Is it school? Work? Is it a mistake you’ve made? Your past? An unhealthy relationship?

You may feel like running. And maybe you have. Maybe you have run away from God because you feel like it’s too much. That if God were real, you wouldn’t have to deal with this. With all this stuff. So you decided to run from Him.

But I have good news. There is a God who is waiting for you to stop running away and start running to him. And He is good. And He loves you. And He doesn’t care about what the world has said you’ve failed at.

Jesus came down and suffered death after living a perfect life. To some, even his disciples, his closest followers, He may have looked like a failure. Like how does someone who claims to be the Messiah just allow death to knock on His door?

But Jesus didn’t run! He knew He wasn’t done. He knew it wasn’t over. It was hard, and He had pain, and He felt, but Jesus knew that what the world deemed as a failure, He knew was victory. And three days later, He rose from the dead. And now we get to spend eternity with Him in Heaven. 

Jesus gives us the opportunity to have a relationship with Him. And through that relationship, He reveals that He’s not done with us. That there is more to our story.

So believe it. Because you’re still breathing. And you’re still living. Which means God is not done with you yet.