Author: Leaman Ralph

 – All right here we are, “Stress Busters” the series, the name of the series iStress Busters,” all the different ways that stress can affect us. We’re on Lesson Number Four of this series and tin his particular lesson, we’re going to be talking about stress from failure, stress from failure. Well, in our series thus far on stress, we’ve talked about the problem of stress in general and also the problem of stress that is caused by worry, nd the particular problems that stress causes in our work lives. I’ve talked to some people and it seems to me that they think that, you know, just listening to these lessons is what’s going to lessen the stress in their lives. You know, they have this equation in their mind, okay, I’m going to binge-watch “Stress Busters” online, and after I’ve listened to these lessons, I’ll be fine. You know, the stress of my life is going to go down. Well, hopefully,, the lessons that I’m sharing with you may be soothing, and perhaps you might feel reassured that someone understands you, someone understands that you may be going through these problems of stress. However, here’s the big however, nothing changes stress in the stress level until there is a real change in your life. There’s no change in your stress level until there’s a change in your life. For example, if you’ve begun living, you know, one day at a time, you know, trusting God to provide for you one day at a time, or if you’ve begun just not going past your limits, understanding that you have limits, and not going past your limits, well, if you don’t do those things, you’ll still have the, it’s not just understanding the principle of the thing. You’ve got to do the thing. You’ve got to make a real change, and unless you balance your workload and your attitude toward your work, you’re not going to achieve the peace of mind that we’ve been talking about, and I always say, you know what, what’s the point of succeeding in your career if you burn out? What’s the point? What’s the point of all the work that you do and all the effort that you make if your body and your mind are so deteriorated by stress that you don’t even have the strength to enjoy what you’ve accomplished? So the point I’m making here at the outset is these lessons don’t help unless you respond to them unless you take the material and you take the advice and you take the things that are taught and practically, you know, insert them into your lives and use them. All right, so this time we look at the stress that is created by failure and what we can do about it. Well, here’s the first thing I want to say about that. Our society rewards success and punishes failure. Our society rewards success and punishes failure. There’s a great pressure, you know, to make it, to get it together, to excel at something or other. To excel is popular, it’s in, it’s lovely. Just to be ordinary, not so much. No prizes for being just ordinary. We love winners, and we ignore everybody else in our society, in our western society anyways. From Little League to college to careers, the message is always the same. Making it is what life is all about. So you go to the best schools because you want to go to the best schools to get the best advantage so that you can make it, ’cause making it is, you know, the goal. Success is the goal. So as a result, you know, we grow up with a deep-seated need to succeed. Now I’m not, you know, I’m not promoting failure here. I’m just saying that in our society, we have a great need to succeed, and we punish failure, we punish failure. It’s not always a conscious, but it is visible in the highs and the lows that we feel as we chase success in whatever field we happen to be in. So not surprisingly, therefore, there’s a great stress associated with the pursuit of success. If we and it’s a double-edged sword, if we succeed, we’re stressed to keep that success, and if we fail, we’re stressed because of the consequences of our failure, and the continued desire to succeed. Now, different types of stress are associated with failure, two types of stress associated that I want to talk about. The first is the stress caused by the failure itself. I mean, it is stressful to fail because failure brings all kinds of negative consequences. You know, a loss of health for example. If you have an accident, you know, you lose your health, you lose your wealth, the loss of your reputation. You know, you’re a young person, you do foolish things, you film yourself doing foolish or immoral things online, and it’s just one night, it’s one crazy night, but that image and that film and that video iareout there forever, even future employers are taking a look at that before they consider you for a job. You know, you lose your reputation, or if you commit a crime. I mean, we never talk about that, but you know, you write a bad check,, or you write a lot of bad checks or steal something or you cheat or whatever, and you’re convicted for that, and some, you have to go to prison, or you’re guilty of some immortality of some kind, some public immoral failure, and you lose your reputation because of it. That’s a failing. The loss of self-esteem, how many have this self-hatred that they have to deal with all the time? A loss of relationships, children who lose their parents? You know, how difficult is it for children when they have to be told, well, your mom’s going to live over here and your dad’s going to live over there, you know, and you’re going to spend a weekend over here, and then you’re going to spend a weekend over there, and now you have a new mom or a new dad or whatever, and they have different rules, they have different families. Very difficult on children and of course, very difficult on adults, the stress of failing at a relationship. So whatever the failure, there’s usually a pain or loss of some kind, and the pain and the loss create natural stress in the person. You know, people are so afraid of admitting that they may be failing at marriage that they keep it a secret because they know that there are a lot of negative consequences that come with a failure at marriage. So therefore they say nothing, make it worse, and the marriage fails, and then all the negative consequences that come with it, and the stress that comes from the failure of that relationship. So there’s stress caused by failure of, you know, so many different kinds. Then there’s stress caused by the fear of failure, not by the failure itself, but the apprehension that we may fail, that perhaps we might not succeed. We worry about failing, we worry about not making it, not being good enough, not living up to someone else’s expectations, whatever. You know, the student, we know the story, right, of the student who knows the material front and back, who’s aced every test so far, but they worry sick until the results are in, they’re so afraid of failure. So whether we fail or we’re afraid of failing, the experience causes stress, and this stress can immobilize us and keep us from either enjoying our success or keep us from trying anything that involves any degree of risk. Because if there’s any risk involved, that means that I might fail, and I don’t want to suffer the consequences, I don’t want to suffer the stress and the pain that comes with failure, so I’m not even going to try. So how do we deal with this type of failure, this stress from failure? Well, two main ideas that I want to talk about that help Christians, remember, my perspective is always talking about Christians who have to deal with stress, and so two main ideas that’ll help Christians deal with the stress that accompanies failure and the fear of failure that I would like to share with you, and the first idea is this. Understand that failure is normal. Failure is normal. Ah, what a relief to know that failure is normal. The problem with the success-oriented evolutionary mindset that exists in this world is that failure is seen as some form of aberration instead of being the norm. You know, the basic concept of the Christian religion taught in every first chapter of the Bible is that failure, once begun by Adam’s sin, is inevitable. We live in a technological bubble here in the West and in a kind of social time warp in North America. Look at history. It’s been one war and one disaster and one pandemic after another, never stopping, always increasing, a testimony of God’s pronouncement in the garden that the earth was cursed and society would be in labor until the end. What’s there not to understand when God is telling, you know, the earth is cursed, will be in labor, you know, until the end of time, until the, you know, eventually the earth and the heavens, you know, will be destroyed? Technically, we are advanced, and because of this, we have the illusion that the world is a better place, but in reality, the earth continues to deteriorate, and man is as evil selfish, and cruel as he ever was. But because of this illusion, you know, this technological illusion that we have, all shiny and bright and new, we can go faster, we can go better, you know, look what we can do with our phones and with our, you know, we’re sending rockets to Mars and all that business, because of this illusion, and also because of a godless philosophy that for a century has made our society believe that we are simply evolving to higher and higher life forms, we see failure as something that needs to be eliminated. We see failure as just being unnatural. It’s impeding the general progress of humanity. We just have to get rid of failure, because it is seen as something unnatural. Those who fail are considered less than human, less than what is naturally, you know, what naturally ought to be. This idea here, it creates stress, and it creates stress because it goes against reality and it goes against what’s essentially true. The truth of the matter is that there is an inner principle in all people that induces them to fail. I mean, failure is normal, success is tasurprise. This is why we honor success. This is why we get excited over success, because failure is the norm. That principle that I’m talking about within all human beings is called sin. The Bible tells us that because of sin, man fails. He fails to do what he should, and he fails to avoid doing what he shouldn’t do. In Romans chapter three verse 23, Paul summarizes it. He says “For all have sinned,” and what is sin? A fail, failing to keep God’s laws, that’s the fail. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” What is the glory of God? Well, perfection, complete success, that’s the glory. Paul said all have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God. So when we understand that failure is normal, it helps relieve the stress from failure in several ways. First of all, it allows us to be just a little more charitable with ourselves and others who fail, because we all share this characteristic. Criticism of self and others for their failings is the single greatest generator of stress. I mean, there’s an entire, you know, psychological method of therapy that is based on developing positive self-talk to silence the critic, you know, that is within all of us. This idea here gives direction and motivation to our actions. We help out because we can relate, and perhaps we’ll be the ones who will need help one day. We do that when we understand that failure is normal, and it also sends us searching for an answer to failure outside of ourselves, outside of our achievements and willpower, and our success philosophies. Because if all fail, then no one ras the answer. How many books come out to describe how we really can get success? And yet the books keep coming out all the time. It’s like diet books. You know, they keep, every year there’s hundreds and hundreds of diet books come out. You’d think that eventually one would come out and it would be the answer. It’s the same thing with the success books. You’d think after hundreds of years of people writing books about how to succeed, we’d figure it out, and yet there’s a new book coming out every month. Like Paul in Romans chapter seven verse 25, who recognized the overwhelming failure of his own life, regardless of his superior efforts at success, here is Paul the Apostle who cries out, “Who can save me from this body of sin?” When he says “body of sin,” what is he saying? Failure, who can save me from this failure of my life? When failure brings us to this point, we finally learn the ultimate answer to our failings given by God in Romans chapter eight verse one where he says, “There is now therefore “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” I add the, like a parent theoretical statement, just to clarify this. “There is now therefore no condemnation,” brackets, “for failure for those who are in Christ Jesus.” What does God condemn us for? Well, he condemns us for our failure, our failure to obey his commands, our failures to be perfect as he is perfect. And so the ultimate answer to failure is not success, but rather faith in Jesus Christ, and with that faith comes peace that dispels the stress that accompanies the impossible race for perfect achievement at work, perfect achievement at raising children. You know, what do we parents say, how many times have I heard parents say raising children is the most gguilt-producingactivity that one can do? Why, because raising children shows you how weak you are. It reveals to you, you know, how easily you can make mistakes. It demonstrates how little you know. We feel guilty because why? We want to be perfect parents because we want our children to be perfect. We don’t want them to fail. When we understand this, it gives us an understanding of the world and ourselves ainwhatever we try to do. Another idea about failure that we need to know, aside from the fact that failure is normal, is this. Failure is a good teacher. Failure is a good teacher. Now, failure is not pleasant, but man’s approach to failure is not some quest to eliminate it, but rather to learn from it. You know, a quick look at history will show us that those who saw failure as a teacher didn’t succeed in eliminating failure from their lives, but they did achieve great things despite failure. You know, Abraham Lincoln, for example, failed at many attempts to gain political office before he became the President of the United States. Thomas Edison did 2,000 failed experiments before he found the correct elements for his first incandescent bulb. 2,000 failed experiments. Winston Churchill said, and I quote, “Success is going from failure to failure “without loss of enthusiasm.” I like that. “Success is going from failure to failure “without loss of enthusiasm.” Here’s a man who understood that failure was the norm. In the Bible, we have countless examples of men and women who failed in their lives, failed in their relationships, but they were used by God in great ways despite their failings. If we choose to, we can learn many things from the failures in our own lives. For example, we can learn about God through failure. There is an endless amount of information we can learn about God, and failure is a great teacher because when we fail, we usually can see the distance between ourselves and God. Isn’t that unusual? It’s when we fail, morally, spiritually, when we fail at these things, we recognize God is over there and I’m over here, and there is such a chasm between us, and my failing has revealed how wide that chasm is between myself and God. You know, when we justify or hide or deny, we lose the opportunity for God to teach us the difference between ourselves and him, and when we begin to see the differences between ourselves and him, we grow in humility, and that humility gives us peace, it gives us joy, it gives us comfort. You know David, the psalmist, the king, David rejoiced in his newfound knowledge of God’s gracious and forgiving spirit, but he only was able to do this after he acknowledged his failure with Bathsheba. We know the story. He seduced this woman, this other man’s wife, and then of course she became pregnant, and after the pregnancy, he conspired to have the man killed and lied about it. You know, it was just one bad thing after another until the prophet came to reveal and expose David’s sin, and David confessed it and repented. Then he wrote about hisexperiencec, and listened to to what hesaid aboutt this experience of failure and what resulted from his failure. He says, “How blessed is he “whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! “How blessed is the man to whom the Lord “does not impute iniquity, “and in whose spirit there is no deceit!” He’s saying how blessed, he doesn’t say how blessed is the rich man, the man whose stomach is full, the man who’s got 15 kids. He didn’t say that. He says, “How blessed is he, “the one whose transgression is forgiven.” He’s talking about himself here of course, and he’s saying what a blessing to have my failure forgiven, to have my failure covered over. “How blessed is the man to whom the Lord “does not impute iniquity “and in whose spirit is no deceit,” meaning I’m not lying about my failure. I’m owning up to it. He goes on to say, “When I kept silent about my sin, “my body wasted away “through my groaning all day long. “For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. “My vitality was drained away “as with the fever heat of the summer.” Do you see the stress he’s talking about here? His failure,  and in his case, his moral failure, created tremendous stress as he hid from it, ae denied it, aandhe tried to push it away. He goes on to say, “I acknowledged my sin,” the turnaround, “I acknowledged my sin,” change the word sin to failure, “I acknowledge my failure to you, “and my iniquity I did not hide. “I said, ‘I will confess my transgression to the Lord.’ “And you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah. “Therefore, let everyone who is godly, “pray to you in a time when you may be found. “Surely in a flood of great waters, they will reach him. “You are my hiding place. “You preserve me from trouble. “You surround me with songs of deliverance.” Now, does this sound like a man who is overstressed because of failing? He says, “I will instruct you and teach you “in the way which you should go. “I will counsel you with my eye upon you. “Do not be as the horse or as the mule “which have no understanding, “whose trappings include bit and bridle “to hold them in check. “Otherwise they will not come near to you. “Many are the sorrows of the wicked, “but he who trusts in the Lord, “lovingkindness shall surround him. “Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous ones, “and shout for joy all who are upright in heart.” This is the sinner who’s talking here. This is the guy who failed, and failed miserably, who is saying all these pleasant and joyful things, a man who was weighed down by the stress of his failure, who finally cried out to God for forgiveness and acknowledge his failings. And then, so I say, we can learn about God and how good he is and what he gives us and what he provides for us, and then secondly, we can learn about ourselves. Failure teaches us about us. Failure is the way that God draws a kind of a chalk line if you wish around our physical abilities, our spiritual maturity, or our emotional strength. Here you are, you’re this strong and no stronger. You’re this capable, but no more capable than that. Without failure, we rarely can get an objective view of ourselves. Then thirdly, through failure, we can learn what is truly important. A failure brings loss, and loss helps us to reevaluate what is truly valuable to us in our lives. You know, I knew a Christian man who suffered a heart attack and realized that you know, his truck and his guns and his buddies, ’cause he was a good old boy, all of this business, these things were not going to be missed as much as his little children were going to be missed if he died from a heart attack. He learned that his family was what was important to him. Even though he’d been preached at for 30 years, the threat of losing them finally brought the lesson home. Failure, even if it’s the failure of our health, acts like a pair of glasses that bring into perspective what counts what is important, and what we reed in this life. Failure is a great teacher in this regard. A lot of the stress caused by failure is due not only to the loss that we encounter, but also the fact that we failed to learn the lessons of failure, and we continue to produce the stressful things in our lives caused by ignorance of God and ignorance of ourselves and ignorance of our life. We don’t let failure teach us anything, and so we continue to repeat the mistakes that cause failure and we gain the accompanying stress that comes with it. So what have I said, you know, so far? We’ve kind of gone in a lot of different directions, so what have I said so far? Well, first of all, I’ve said that stress is caused by failure itself, or the fear of failure. Secondly, we live in a world that is unkind to failure, and so we’re stressed even more at the mere thought of failure. Never mind failing, just the fear of failing causes stress in us. Now, dealing with the stress caused by failure is possible. We have to understand that failure is normal. You’re going to mess up so you better get used to it. Don’t be afraid of trying, because, because of, you might fail. As forgiven people, we have a right to start over again. Try to learn from failure so that you can avoid repeating mistakes, and also enrich your life. So let’s apply the lesson to Christians and have a spiritual exercise here as we kind of end up with this lesson on stress from failure. So here’s a little exercise that you can do along with me here, okay? First of all, I want you to think about your worst failure. You know it, you know it. Your worst failure, whether it’s a financial thing, a family thing, a crime, or a spiritual thing. Think of, as far as you’re concerned, your worst failure. Okay, number two, ask God to forgive you. Just ask him to forgive you. Lord Jesus, I did this thing, you know I did this thing. I need you to forgive me. Please forgive me. I want to tell you something. If God forgives you, then you can forgive yourself. See, a lot of people, just can’t forgive themselves, and they don’t know why they can’t forgive themselves. Well, it’s because you can’t forgive yourselves unless God forgives you first. If he forgives you, then you can forgive you. If he doesn’t forgive you, or if he hasn’t forgiven you, no wonder you can’t forgive yourself. You’re still carrying that burden around. Now remember, I’m talking to Christians here. If you’re not a Christian, well obviously, the way to receive forgiveness, as Peter says in Acts chapter two verse 38, you need to repent of your sins and be baptized and as you go into the waters of baptism, the blood of Christ washes away all of your sins. But I’m talking to Christians now, and if you’re a Christian and you’ve still got to a sin that’s on your mind and your heart, then ask God to forgive you and know that he has. 1 John chapter one verses seven to nine talks about that. If we acknowledge our sin to God he is faithful to forgive us, and the blood of Christ washes away all of our sins. Remember, if God forgives you, then you can forgive yourself. Then one last little exercise. Tonight I want you to write down two things that you’ve learned from that failure that you talked about. You know, I said to you, think about your worst failure, then ask God to forgive you for that failure. I also want you to write down two things. What did you learn from that failure, either in the past or just as we’ve talked about it tonight, and then finally, move on with your life? Move on with your life. So many Christians, you know, make the mistake of always looking bbackward There’s nothing back there. The only thing that’s back there is failure. Know that the cross of Christ takes care of failure. Failure in the past, failure in the present, failure in the future, the cross of Christ takes care of all of that. Paul tells us, he forgets what lies behind, and what does he do? He keeps his eyes forward. I’ll tell you right now, the stress that comes from failure, most of the time it comes because we inflict it upon ourselves by looking back at the things we’ve done, at the things we’ve failed at, at the things that we didn’t quite measure up and whatever, you know. Don’t do that. Stop doing that. Stop looking back. Tell yourself, to stop looking back. Look forward, only look forward to the hope that we have in Christ Jesus. Doing that will eliminate the stress that comes from failure. You know, nostress accompanies the contemplation of heaven. I never feel stressfulen I think about heaven, when I think about the end when I think about how it’ll be when I’m with Christ with a glorified body and no sin and no death. You know, that doesn’t cause me stress, and I encourage people not to look back. That’ll just stress you out ’cause you’re just going to see your failings. Look forward to what God has promised and what od has prepared for us. Okay, so that’s our lesson tonight or today about failure, stress, and failure. Remember, we’ve got different resources. We’ve got the study sheet that you can download and work with as we go through it, and in this particular lesson, we also have the bonus material for a lesson, for this lesson. We have small group discussion sheets that you can download. If you happen to be ain   all group and you want to have an extra exercise to do, then I encourage you to download that material and work with that. Well, that’s our lesson for tonight. We’re going to continue with Lesson Number Five in this series, and I hope to see you for that one. Take care, God bless you, and we’ll see you soon.As found on YouTubeꜱʟɪᴍᴄʀʏꜱᴛᴀʟ The World’s Only Slimming Crystal Water Bottles! The unique combination of crystals is so powerful that it has been used for decades by crystal healing experts to help thousands of men and women change their lives for the better ➯➱ ➫ ➪➬ ᴛʏᴘᴇ ᴏʀ ᴘᴀꜱᴛᴇ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ ʜᴇʀᴇ [Official] ᵘᵖᵗᵒ ⁷⁰% ᵒᶠᶠ ᵗᵒᵈᵃʸ!