All of us, from time to time, have an experience one could classify as a “failure.”

The frustration, hurt or disappointment we sense when our goals are not met is a feeling common to all.

Some develop feelings about failure that cause them to begin to fear failure. But failure can be your greatest tool for achieving success. We all need to grasp the fact that great failure comes from not learning from the experience.

One of the greatest automobile companies in the world today developed by learning from failure and turning it into success.

Fujio Cho, president of the Toyota Motor Corporation, stated in 2002: “We place the highest value on actual implementation and taking action. There are many things one doesn’t understand, and therefore, we ask them why don’t you just go ahead and take action, try to do something? You realize how little you know and you face your own failures and you simply can correct these failures and redo it again and at the second trial you realize another mistake or another thing you didn’t like so you can redo it once again. So by constant improvement, or, should I say, the improvement based upon action, one can rise to the higher level of practice and knowledge.”

2 Peter 3:18 admonishes us to “grow in grace and … knowledge.” Everyone in God’s Church must aim higher, seeking a truly higher level of growth, continually striving to turn any failure into success.

In order to capitalize on failure, let’s look at four keys:

1) An experience is not a failure if we keep trying.

There are basically two worlds in life: The crowded world of the defeated—those who quit—and the roomy world of the successful—those who persist. So many have given up when a little more effort and patience would have achieved success. Remember, our goal is to “endure to the end.” Overcome and succeed.

There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no failure—except from within.

James Long stated, “One reason God created time was so that there would be a place to bury the failures of the past.”

Booker T. Washington said, “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.” Remember always: God does not get discouraged; therefore, neither should we.

2) An experience is not a failure if we discover how we failed.

Read Proverbs 24:16. After we fail, we then can put that knowledge to use in order to succeed. We must put any failure to work for us.

D.H. Lawrence said, “If only we could have two lives: the first in which to make one’s mistakes, which seem as if they have to be made; and the second in which to profit by them.”

Read Herbert W. Armstrong’s Autobiography, Vol. 1, pages 36-40, where he elaborated on the $2-per-week lesson. Mr. Armstrong wrote, “But that $2-per-week lesson learned at 18 turned a seemingly hopeless failure into a worldwide ever-expanding success.”

3) In failure we can often better know ourselves.

Reading biographies of great men and women, it becomes evident that many successful people started out in life as failures, but because they failed, they found themselves and their life’s work.

As Benjamin Franklin noted, “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond and to know one’s self.”

How many of us can relate to failure in so many areas of our life before God’s calling? (John 6:44). God called us out of failure to become successful.

Build strength out of weakness. God’s law guides us always out of failure; it is a light to our paths (Psalm 111:10). In Psalm 119:92, David says he would have perished in failure but for God’s law. Verses 97-105 show us by David’s example that we can have freedom from failure.

4) An experience is not a failure if we become better disciplined individuals.

God’s law is all about disciplined living. David, in Psalm 51, demonstrates his change of mind and seeks God.

Revelation 2:26 demonstrates that individually we must become successful in failure, overcoming daily, growing in righteousness.

Let us ensure we are successful in failure.

Be sure not to fail to think on these things!