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Changing Failures to Assets

written by Bill Crossman

Failures! Mistakes! No one is exempt from these pits in life. We “all sin and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We are helpless to escape them. On the one hand, social mistakes bring temporal consequences. On the other hand, spiritual failures bring eternal repercussions.

Society marks those who fail, punishes the makers of mistakes. Laws increase, prison sentences lengthen, and more prisons are built. As one amazed inmate decscibed, “My prison cell is a manufactured natural wonder. It's a wonder that man would manufacture such things as prisons. But it is natural that I'm in it.” Conn Wyz once summed it up this way: “Time is filled wit doin it.” ⁽¹⁾

But one sees men and women rise above yesterday's mistakes. That person who picks himself up after a grave defeat and goes on is the one who builds a strong tomorrow and is recknoned great. Whether the mistake is carnal or spiritual, if the lesson is learned there is greater character for that soul.

Do we not see this demonstrated over and over again in the prison ministry? Inmates are coming out of prison. Some return to the same failures and back to prison. They are as the dog returning to his own vomit. Others are released as functional citizens in society, having learned a lesson. “A prudent man foresees the evil, and hides himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished” (Proverbs 22:3). Still others learn a deeper lesson, replete in the grace of God. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the holy is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10).

Obviously, those who have learned from their mistakes do not regard failure as an incurable disease. They have turned mistakes into assets: “...it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Hebrews 12:11b).

A taste of defeat may lend itself to greater appreciation of excellence. To the wise it will lead to gratitude of God's roll in our activities 2 Corinthians 12:5-10. It would seem that one can not succeed without failure. Therefore, let mistakes teach you acknowledge potential rather than to declare yourself a failure.

Know your limitations and you will know your humanity. Know your humanity and you will know your potential. Step back and take a look at life, its origin, its conclusion. Know where your place is in it. We should be able to see that every relationship that ends offers strength for a new relationship to endure. So we break our tie with the flesh that the relationship with God may endure. In this we turn mistakes into assets.

Mistakes put us into a debt relation with life. As sin, they separate us from God. Our appointment from the Creator is to take that which He has given to us and do better with it. (See Ecclesiastes 12:13,14; Luke 13:6-9; Matthew 25:14-30) But we miss the mark by our mistaken sense of accountability. Since the limitation of man is in his humanity, how can the debt be resolved? When medieval astronomers determined that the earth was all important, the assumption was that the sun must rotate about the earth. Later, when it was suggested that the earth actually rotated about the sun, a violent debate developed. The mistake was made and the debt incurred demanded satisfaction! That payment was in continued ignorance and suffering over centuries. Accountability was placed in tradition rather than truth.

In the realm of the soul the debt concentrated through sin is devastating. We can not pay it! Yet it must be paid, for all debts will be paid. Here we can learn fro our failure. Understand how we are trapped in the mire of worldly life. Our limitation is upon us. Since we can not pay the debt, then the lender must pay. And pay he has, through the blood of Christ Jesus. He has absorbed the debt and taken the loss in His own blood. Now, what can you learn from that? Will you turn your mistakes into assets?

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