The Thursday Update

Lakeshore Friends—

Say the word “failure” and very few people will think of anything positive in response.  Past failures in school, at work, with friends, in sports and the like come to mind and fill us with thoughts of wishing that we did better.  That’s very normal and even healthy, especially when it comes to any kind of moral failures.  No one wants that.  The failure event itself is a dreadful one for anyone with a drive to be the best they can be.

But what if our response to failure produced something positive over time?  What if our response led to some growth that would make failure less likely to happen in our lives?  Again, while failure is not fun (and sometimes not healthy), what we do after we fail actually can be.  In fact, failure can be a setup for a comeback!

In fact, I came across an expression several years ago for this.  It’s called, “failing forward”.  Whenever we fail, we can do one of three things:

1. Retreat, go backwards and become a worse version of ourselves.  That’s failing backward.
2. Resist, avoid making changes and maintain our failure mentality.  That’s failing down.
3. Run forward, grow from our failure(s) and become a better person.  That’s failing forward.

Which one best describes you after you fail? 

On Sunday, we’ll continue our new, short series by looking at how to fail forward.  We’ll explore some myths about failure and learn four ways to fail forward from people in the Bible who either did or seemed to fail, only to learn the lessons or persevere through it to become successes!

After all, we all fail and need to learn how to fail forward, don’t we?

I hope to see you here on Sunday.

Vince