A Crash Course in Joy

Some of the most successful people I know have discovered that failure is an inevitable part of success. The only way you’re ever going to get from where you are to where you want to be is to leave where you’ve always been. And leaving the “familiar” is scary. Our fear of failure keeps us stuck. The sooner we get over our embarrassment of failure, the sooner we’ll be able to get on with life transformation.

You may remember the first time you got on a bicycle – without training wheels, of course – how scary it was. Everything felt so awkward. You got on, you rode a ways, and you fell. You got back on, you rode a ways, and you fell. But you didn’t quit. You stayed with it. Soon you were able to ride like the wind.

Failure didn’t stop us when we were kids. Why do we allow failure to stop us now?

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” ~ James 1.2-4

I don’t know of anyone who lives this out in their day to day lives better than my friends Jerry and Gina. They’ve been through one of the most devastating things a couple can go through. They watched their business that had once been vibrant and profitable dwindle down to a trickle. For seven years they tried everything they knew to keep it afloat. They buried themselves in debt trying to keep their employees on the payroll. Nothing worked. They eventually filed bankruptcy.

Today Jerry & Gina are two of the most positive people I know. They’re at peace with their lives – and they’re at peace with God. Today they’ll tell you their lives have never been better. Things didn’t go at all the way they had hoped. But they’ve accepted the way things are. And they trust God in the trials.

And Jerry and Gina have learned one of the most powerful lessons on earth: God loves us and cares for us in ways we can never truly grasp as long as things are comfortable in our lives.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, when you face trials of many kinds” – knowing that God’s got it. Get up. Keep going. We can embrace the trials – and failures – in life when we know that ultimately God is the One who’s going to take us from where we are to where he wants us to be.