COMMON CAUSES OF FAILURE IN OUR LIVES
The book of Proverbs has a tremendous amount to say about failure. These are just a few. If we would pay attention to these we would avoid these common forms of failures in our lives as Christians.
1. BECAUSE WE DON’T PLAN AHEAD
We don’t think ahead. Like the old saying, “If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail.” Proverbs 21:12 “A sensible man watches for problems ahead and prepares to meet them. A simpleton never looks and suffers the consequences.” Proverbs 19:2 “It’s not good to have zeal
without knowledge nor to be hasty and miss the way.” Proverbs 23:23 (Living Bible) “Get the facts at any price and hold on tightly to all the good sense you can get.” All three of these verses are saying the same thing. You’ve got to plan. You’ve got to plan your life. The Bible says that you can only live for today but you have to plan tomorrow. You can’t live tomorrow and you can’t live in the past. You can only live in the present. That’s why we believe you must live one day at a time. But living one day at a time in no way contradicts planning out the rest of your life. You ought to plan your future because that’s where you’re going to spend the rest of your life. If you don’t plan your future, I guarantee you, somebody else is going to do it for you. You have to decide what’s important, decide your priorities. It’s a characteristic of leadership. It’s a characteristic of ministry and remember the moment you become a Christian you are part of the ministry.
2. WE GIVE UP TOO SOON.
When a failure comes a long we think, “It didn’t work.”No, if at first you don’t succeed, welcome to the human race. If first you don’t succeed you’re normal. You must have failures. One of the things a successful man told me over and over is that you succeed by not giving up. Successful people are just ordinary people with incredible amount of determination. They don’t know how to quit. They just keep on keeping on. The real truth, when you’re around successful people you discover real quickly that success is built on failure. Success is never built on success; it’s built on failure. You find out what doesn’t work and then you do what works. Edison said he tried over 200 different elements before he discovered the tungsten element for the light bulb. When he got to 199 I’m sure he must have thought, “I’m a failure,” but his attitude was “I haven’t failed 199 times. I just know 199 things that don’t work.” That’s an education. You keep on keeping on.
Facts about Lincoln: His mother died when he was a baby. He had little opportunity to finish school. He ran for a seat in the state legislature and lost. He started a business and went bankrupt. He fell in love with a girl and she died. He later married another girl and was unhappy in his marriage the rest of his life. He served a term in congress but was defeated for re-election. He ran for six other offices including senate and vice president and was defeated every time. But then he became our sixteenth President. After all that. His entire life was defeat until he was elected President.
Proverbs 13:4 says “Lazy people want much but get little while the diligent are prospering.” Circle the word “diligent”. Proverbs 15:19 says, “A lazy fellow has trouble through life.” We fail because we give up too soon in the ministry. We think, “It’s not working!” You just have to
keep working it! So just ask yourself if people of the world are determined, what about we who have the Holy Spirit and the strength of God. We should be doing more.
3. WE DON’T LISTEN TO GOD.
When we’re not seeking God’s guidance in the matter. Instead of finding out what God wants us to do and doing it, what we do is make our plans and then say, “God, bless my plans.” Never do that! Stop saying, “God, bless what I’m doing.” And start saying, “God, help me to do what You’re blessing.” That’s the key to success. “God, You’re out there doing some great things in the world today. Let me get in on some of them. Let me catch a wave. I want to be in on what You’re doing. Help me to do what You’re blessing.” Proverbs 14:12 “There is a way which seems right unto a man but the ends thereof are the ways of death.” Our natural inclinations get us into a lot of trouble. When you have a natural inclination to do something it’s almost always the wrong thing. Almost always the wrong thing! “There is a way that seems right but it ends in death.” So trying to play God, taking matters into your own hands surely will fail. A little prayer can help can help you avoid a lot of failure due to wrong decisions.
4. WE ARE AFRAID TO TAKE RISKS
We’re unwilling to trust God when He tells us to do something. That’s a lack of faith. The Bible says, “The fear of man is a dangerous trap but to trust in God means safety.” Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will bring it to pass.” If you want a key to success, that’s it right there. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Don’t lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will bring it to pass.” You say, “God, what You’ve all called me to do I’m now going to take a risk to do.” God will bail you out. Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is. Don’t be afraid to rock the boat if Christ is your captain. If you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat. If you want to see God really at work in your life, you’ve got to do some things that you can’t do in your own power. Most of the time, most of our lives and most of our ministry can be explained away by simple human effort. You’ve never really believed God until you’ve attempted something that cannot be done in the power of the flesh in which you say, “I’m absolutely bound to fail unless God bails me out of this.”
5. WHEN WE THINK WE’VE ARRIVED.
You never arrive. You’ll always be growing. You’ll always be learning. You’ll always be walking before the Lord saying, “God, I need to depend on You,” and it is integrity and it is humility that God honors. When we think we’ve arrived, the Bible says, “Pride leads to
destruction and arrogance to downfall.” “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” One of the reasons God hates pride so much is because you’re un-teachable. If you can’t learn from other people, you’ve got an ego problem. You can learn from anybody if you just know the right questions. So the Bible says, “Counsel in the heart of man is like a deep well but the man of understanding will draw it out.” You just need to learn to ask the right questions. You can learn from people older than you and you can learn from people younger than you, people who are different from you, people who you don’t even agree with. You can learn from them if you just know the right questions. The wise person learns to ask questions. The wise person learns to draw it out. If you think, “I know it all!” you’re headed for failure. Keep your mind open. Nothing succeeds like success. You never know it all. You never learn it all. All leaders are learners.
6. WE SET OURSELVES UP FOR IT.
We actually set ourselves up for failure. Job 3:25 says “What I always feared has happened to me.” That sounds crazy but it’s true. Sometimes we intentionally plan to fail. Have you ever seen anybody who was a chronic looser? No matter what they did, they bombed out at it. After studying the Bible and studying human nature for a long period of time, I’ve come to realize that many people fail because deeply inside, consciously or unconsciously, they want to fail. They want to fail. If you are that type of person, you have to remove those emotional roadblocks for you to be effective in ministry.
Learn to avoid these common mistakes and you would be soaring like an Eagle. I pray the Holy Spirit will begin to reveal more and more to you. You were born to win. Stay blessed
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