No one likes to fail. No one ever likes to feel that they have let someone (or themselves) down. However, if you have lived longer than about 5 minutes, you have failed in some capacity. When failure comes, how do we respond? One article suggested there are four ways that people respond to failure and only one is helpful:
1) The Godzilla response – When we fail we explode in anger and try to destroy everything and everyone in our path in a foolish attempt to make ourselves feel better.
2) The Hummingbird response – When we fail we simply dart to the next thing without dealing with the reason for our failure or its consequences.
3) The Deer in the Headlights response – When we fail we freeze, unable to complete a thought much less a plan to deal with our failure.
These three responses are certainly not helpful, and spiritually speaking, they are the cause of some unnecessary feelings of pain, guilt, and grief. However, there is a fourth response that we will be talking about today.
4) The Phoenix response – When we fail, we acknowledge the ashes around us, we learn why we failed, and we rise to meet the next challenge.
As we study John 4 today, let’s do so with a clear idea of who we want to be when failure strikes.
-Scott
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