"How Do You Handle Failure?"

Failure. Not a word we like to talk about. But it’s a part of our reality. We’re human and a part of being human is experiencing failure.

Some of our failures are relatively minor, such as failing to signal when you decide to change lanes on the freeway (one of the failures my wife likes to remind me of!). Other failures aren’t quite that minor, but they’re not particularly life-changing either, such as the disagreement you had with someone close to you. Then there are the failures in life that you agonize over. You know the ones—they’re so awful you don’t want to discuss them and frankly, would prefer that no one knew about them.

How do you handle failure?

That’s not a throwaway question. How you handle failure is critical to your life. Will you allow me to illustrate from two well-known characters from the Bible?

Matthew 26 records events in the hours prior to Jesus’ crucifixion. Threading it’s way through this chapter are the stories of two men who handled their similar failures in completely different ways.

Each of these two men—Judas and Peter—were disciples of Christ. Each of these two men committed a horrible betrayal of their Master. Each of these two men came to see the awful enormity of their actions.

Similar men. Similar sin. Similar realization.

But that’s where the similarity ends.

Judas realized he couldn’t live with guilt.

Peter realized he couldn’t live without grace.

And that made all the difference.

Judas took his life, while Peter gave his life to God.

Judas’ life ended in tragedy, Peter’s in triumph. Why? Because of how they chose to handle their failure.

Peter used his failure as a springboard to realizing the necessity of God’s grace in his life. That experience became a turning-point in his life that thrust him into a leading role in the spread of Christianity in the first century. Peter’s failure was only a temporary point on his journey of grace.

Parents today still name their baby boys “Peter.” I’m not aware of any that call their newborns “Judas.”

How do you handle failure?