The best way to avoid failure …

So many re-tweet and re-post the platitudes that praise the value of failure, claiming failure is the best teacher of all!

You haven’t met the thousands I’ve seen in clinical counseling, pastoral counseling, and pastoral care whose lives were wrecked because of failure.

Those empty platitudes hailing failure for it’s great capacity to take us to success don’t tell the stories of the many who were bowled over by failure. They didn’t immediately bounce back up. Failure was harsh and painful. Many never fully recovered.

And the vast majority of those people uttered something along the lines of wishing they had listened and learned first so they could have done things right the first time.

Why?

Because “success” is the best teacher of “success,” not failure!

Another way of putting it, obedience is a great teacher of success. Instead of jumping out and doing things our way without listening to, learning from, or looking toward God, our best means of achieving real success in living is to first listen to the Word of God, and then obey it.

“There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death,” Proverbs 14:12. Some can quickly learn from their failures and make better choices. Many do not. Failure is not the virtue so many “leaders” praise it as being.

That’s why God directs us to listen to and learn from Him, and then act on His leading for us.

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path,” Psalm 119:105.

God’s Word does not mislead us. If we start with God, listen to Him, learn from Him, and apply His Word directly to our lives, we have the surest path to and through life we can possibly have.

The best way to live “successfully” is to avoid failure. And the best way to avoid failure is to obey God.

It certainly beats trying to learn from human trial and error.

Scotty