Overcoming the Fear of Failure

By Alexandra Copeland 

A great man of God once said that the greatest enemy of success is the fear of failure. If we’re honest, at the core of every human being is a desire for success. Heavenly Father has ingrained this desire in our make-up. He created human beings in His very own image, and through the Lord Jesus Christ, He has made us His children. Galatians 3:26(NLT) tells us, “For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” God is our Heavenly Father, and we’re His kids. As His children, quite naturally and super-naturally, our Father has characteristics and qualities within His nature that He has made sure we have as well. One of them is of course the desire to produce and make things happen. We will aspire to be successful because our Father is a Success. We need not fight this part of our nature. Instead, we ought to celebrate it!

If you’ve ever failed when you’ve tried to accomplish something in life, you know how bad this feels. For some people, it is devastating, and their hopes and dreams for life are tremendously impacted. They might stop trying to accomplish anything new or pursue other goals because they have developed a fear of failure. The Old Testament tells us about some of Solomon’s frustrations. He knew a little bit about this kind of disappointment.

Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 2:20(NLT), “So I gave up in despair, questioning the value of all my hard work in this world.” As you might know, Solomon is believed to be one of the wisest people that has ever lived. He made the mistake that many of us make. He set out to explore and gain intelligence about certain things and became so enthralled in his pursuits that he left the tremendous comfort and peace of God. He found that many of the things he occupied his time with where not worth pursuing. In fact, he ultimately found they were meaningless. In the same way that many of us do, Solomon sought out to find the kind of success that fills a longing none of us can explain. But in the end, Solomon was disappointed with his pursuit, and gave up in despair.  

It is important for us to know that Heavenly Father will not impede our efforts as we set out on the quest to satisfy our soul’s longing. Even though He knows that some of our endeavors will lead to disappointment, He will not come between us and our need to explore different goals and aspirations. He wants us to pull back the layers and discover our true purpose, because it will draw us closer to Him. So, the reality that we each have something planted within cannot be ignored, because it is the potential that God has put there Himself. Whatever He has created us to be and do is in us this very second. And it is also essential to understand that success will always be more than accomplishing goals and aspirations. It is defined by the reality of actually being and doing what God has placed within us to be and do.  

As we pull back the layers, and set out to accomplish certain things, we in fact do fail at some of them. We might fall down, but we owe it to God and ourselves to get back up in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. When our view and thinking about the potential God has placed within doesn’t match His original intended purpose for it, our longing will not be fulfilled. We will end up chasing a dream that isn’t ours to chase. Instead of plummeting in despair and fear, a better way is to recognize that we’ve gained valuable insight as to what we SHOULDN’T do and what isn’t going to work for us. In other words, failure can teach us all we need to know about a path that seemed right but wasn’t right.  

The next step is to then get on the right path, and to allow ourselves to be guided by the Spirit to it. We need the kind of spiritual guidance that is fail proof—the kind of guidance that will transform our fear of failure to the joy of success!  

Jesus Christ said in John 16:13(NLT), “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the future.” Our disappointments are very often part of the training we endure in the earth. Overcoming a fear of failure requires us to view disappointments from this lens. They help us better understand and appreciate our relationship with God through Christ, and they bring our purpose within God’s Will and Plan into better view. We will sometimes take the reins and try to steer ourselves without God’s direction and help, and this is always a mistake. Because of the accomplishment of Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary, we are saved by God’s grace. Through this salvation, we can receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and he comes to dwell inside our body temples. You and I don’t know it all. We need to grow in grace and in the knowledge of God, and the Spirit will help us.  

As believers, we are required by God to know, study, and read the Bible. But more is needed for successfully navigating life on earth. We need guidance that only the Spirit of God can provide. The Spirit’s occupation is to guide us into ALL truth. He’s not going to tell us anything other than what he has heard from Jesus Christ. He’s going to guide us according to the path of purpose that God has laid before us. We can’t see this path clearly sometimes, but the Spirit knows it through and through, and he cannot fail. His counsel and guidance is perfect and successful beyond comprehension.  

Our disappointments about the failures we’ve endured can leave us feeling depleted and sad, but a disappointment doesn’t have to stifle us. It doesn’t have to cause stagnation, fear, and bewilderment. We must see it as a sign that we need to alter our course and let Jesus take the wheel. We must get on board with God’s plan in a greater way, because He will always lead us to success!■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved. 

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

“Overcoming the Fear of Failure”, by Alexandra Copeland. Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.