When I was involved in college athletics, our training contained a significant amount of weightlifting done throughout the year. As part of that effort, once or twice a year we would have “max day” where the objective was to find out the maximum amount that you could lift in a particular exercise, which would provide a starting point for assigning a specific training regimen that included a number of repetitions at a certain percentage of the maximum for that exercise, with the objective of ultimately increasing your maximum lifts as training progressed.
The difficulty on the max day is that there is really only one way to find out what the maximum amount of weight that you can lift – you keep adding more weight until you finally are unable to perform your lift. In other words, the object of the day is to fail. But while that is the object of the day, the object of the training program is to take that knowledge of failure and use it to devise a way to get stronger, so that the weight that you failed with previously will now be a challenge that can be surpassed.
This is not my attempt to advocate for failure. However, what I am advocating for is the idea that it is only through failure that we will find out what we are truly capable of. For us to grow beyond our current limits, we need to first find those limits, and then seek ways to extend them, but we don’t do that unless we first find our limits. Unfortunately, while I can understand the appeal of getting close to the limit without experiencing the physical or emotional challenges of failure, the reality is that until we have failed, we are merely imposing artificial limitations upon ourselves. Further, if we devise a plan for growth that is then based upon our self-imposed limits, the end result may be simply that we are well equipped to reach a goal that was always attainable because it didn’t require our best efforts.
There’s a story told by Jesus that’s referred to as the “parable of the talents.” While a talent was a measure of money, it does well for us today that we understand talent to be synonymous with ability. Three servants are entrusted with talents while their master goes away. The one servant who is chastised upon the master’s return is the one who buried the talent so that it could be returned, intact, to the master when he asked for it back. The servant’s reasoning was that he didn’t want to risk losing what he had and have nothing to give back. Unfortunately, it was his fear of failure that kept him from doing what the other servants did (and what the master expected), which was to use the talent and grow it. The chastised servant had failed to realize that the greatest failure is being so paralyzed by the fear of failure that you decide to do absolutely nothing at all.
As individuals and as a society, we have so much more that we can accomplish. Those things that we fail at today need not represent a permanent barrier beyond which we cannot progress, and we need not be afraid of failure. If we are willing to embrace failure as a learning tool that provides us with valuable feedback, we can devise and implement strategies to strengthen our weaknesses and allow us to reach beyond our previous points of failure. The impossible becomes possible, the inconceivable becomes conceivable, and we advance. So, for those issues that seem insurmountable today, push yourself to the limits to see how far you can go. And if you fall short, take stock of what is left to overcome, and devise a strategy that will help you get to your ultimate objective.
Peace and blessings – Pastor Aaron