Jesus failed once. When He went to his hometown of Nazareth and preached, people at first were impressed with His wisdom and education, perhaps even a little proud of one of their own, but then they began to doubt Him because of their familiarity with Him (Mark 6:1-6).
They gossiped about Him, saying that this kid was just the village carpenter. How could He be an important, revolutionary rabbi? After all, they knew his mother Mary and her other children, James, Joses, Judas, and Simon, who were all still their neighbors. His family was all plain, simple, uneducated folks. Jesus could not be someone special, certainly not the Messiah.
So, they decided not to believe in Jesus as the Chosen One of God. Jesus did not make any disciples in his hometown, even among his family. He failed.
The next story in Mark’s gospel is also, at least in part, about failure. He sent his 12 disciples out in pairs to spread the news that God’s Messianic Kingdom was at hand (Mark 6:7-13). They were called to be great evangelists with the most urgent message in all of history, but he told them to be prepared to fail sometimes.
His instructions to them were to quietly withdraw and move on from places where people rejected them. He said, “Don’t make a scene. Shrug your shoulders and be on your way” (Mark 6:11, The Message).
It is easy for us to get trapped in failure or experiences of rejection. We want to succeed and be loved and appreciated, but success and acceptance don’t aways happen. When we experience failure, it is important not to get trapped in feelings of defeat and inadequacy.
Mark Steele once said, “Jesus can turn water into wine, but he can’t change your whining into anything.” Even if things don’t always go our way, Jesus still wants to use us for good. To be used, however, we must move on from negative experiences.
Evangelist and teacher Joyce Meyers said, “As a new creation in Christ you don’t have to allow old things that happened to you to keep affecting your new life in Christ.” She referenced St. Paul’s words: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here.” (2 Cor. 5:17, NIV).
When encountering negative situations, we must shake the dust off our feet and move on with courage to new opportunities.
Failure may be humbling to us, but humility is a very productive characteristic to have in life. It enables us to set aside our pride and learn new things that pride might have kept us from learning. Before he became a fabled NFL coach, a young Bill Parcells was coach at Texas Tech. Parcells said that during his spring practices at Tech, he began noticing a middled-aged man attending many of the sessions. Most of the time the man just silently watched, but occasionally he would catch Coach Parcells and ask him a question or two about his practices and methods.
One time the man said to Parcells, “You know, you’re a pretty good coach.” Only later did Parcells learn that the man was Gordon Wood, the coach at Brownwood High School, who was well on his way to winning over 400 games with his teams, more games than any other football coach has won in history.
Gordon Wood was already a legend at that time, but he regularly made the five-hour trip to Lubbock in the hope of picking up something useful and helpful from Bill Parcells, long before Parcells was famous.
Humility can facilitate personal growth and learning. No matter how good we are, we can still get better, but only if we are humble enough to open ourselves to learning.
Failure can be a good teacher if we are humble and courageous enough to learn the lessons it has to teach. When we experience failure, it is important that we don’t get stuck in the mud of despair and discouragement. We must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and try again.
We can learn much from our failures and they can be stepping stones to a new tomorrow.
Dr. Dan Darby is a retired United Methodist pastor.
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