I applaud his realistic look at his situation. All of us should ask to be given the facts of the day; the hard facts; the full facts of each day; today. If you have sought out people who will give you a true look at your situation (not an invented, delusional, negative view or a fantasy-filled, illusionary, positive outlook) and have indeed concluded that failure looms . . . read on.

“Failing” Technique

A “falling technique” is a vital part of a profession or sport in which falling is inevitable and imminent (e.g., football or tae kwon do). These activities even require participants to prepare for the fall, and then to take the fall. Actually, the experts say that if you try to avoid the fall, you will be injured by the fall! And they recommend that “in everyday life, when you start to fall, instead of trying to avoid the fall and being injured in the effort, take the fall in a controlled manner or even purposely fall in a safe manner before falling uncontrollably.”

So, applying that idea, how should we fail in a controlled manner, or fail safely? What’s our technique for purposefully failing in a safe rather than an unsafe manner?

1. Fail-Safe Spirituality

In clever double entendre, a famous newspaper declares its uniqueness with the words, “We live in Financial Times.” Actually, not! We live in spiritual times . . . which include the possibility of failure. “Failed-states” do not refer to nation-states alone. It can refer to personal states as well. Recent suicides of high-profile individuals are proofs of the reality of failing unsafely.

I propose two spiritual imperatives in facing imminent failure. Both imperatives ought to be pursued without attempting to manipulate or obligate God to correct our woe-filled situation. That is, we do not try to suddenly become pious or throw offerings to get God to act on our behalf. He already knows when and how we are trying to maneuver or manage Him. And yet He is merciful to us.

These spiritual imperatives are premised on a strong theology (i.e., right thinking about God). 1 Our God is a radically good God. God is eager to out-love mere human fathers. The Lord Jesus notes that even earthly fathers will not give a serpent or stone to a son who asks for fish or bread (Luke 11:10–13). Further, the Bible confirms that God is also really able: able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or think (Ephesians 3:20).

While optimism may be one of the timeless characteristics of leadership, the Bible instead uses hope as the operative word in the middle of uncontrollable and unpredictable realities. Hope is optimism built on strong theology. Otherwise optimism will be merely self-made, generated by the very self that got us onto the messy precipice of failure in the first place.

Our spiritual imperatives in the face of prospective failure call for a basic and dynamic two-way communication with this good and able God of the Bible.

Talk to God

Intensify your prayer-life. Converse with God more deeply and more often than ever before. It is startling how much we do not pray at times when we most need to pray.

What might you pray for in the face of failure? Talk to God about:

Protection: Ask God for protection from Satan; from unpredictable circumstances; and from unwise moves on your part. Ask God to protect your endurance, i.e., your character, in the middle of the upcoming failure. An amazing gift of the good and able God is the provision of His grace for the journey as it happens, not just before or afterwards. I’ll go one step further here: God Himself perseveres on behalf of the saints, to finish the good work that He has started in you, to complete what He created (Philippians 1:6). Let Him persevere on your behalf while you endure hardship. Depending on your own ability to persevere is too much of a challenge at this difficult time. Ask God for strength to endure the upcoming adversity.

Correction: You live at a most sensitive and potentially sensible time of your life. While you are shaking, quaking, and likely breaking under the weight of some of your own decisions and actions, you are especially open to hearing God, perhaps like never before. In a series of paradoxes, the stronger you think you are, the weaker you really are. The more important you feel you are, the less relevant you have become in terms of solutions. Your previous hallucinations of unlimited success are being corrected by the reality of unlimited feelings of failure. You once couldn’t tolerate criticism; now you are becoming your own best, or rather, your own worst critic. The same reality to which you thought you were entitled, which revolved around you, is completely outside your grasp. You have now come to the edge of your intellectual and emotional capacity.

Instead of first figuring out what you may have done wrong business-wise or organizationally, ask God for heart-correction. What wrong values have you unintentionally nurtured? What must you change in attitude and behavior? Of what should you repent? How should you reorient your perspective, vision, and habits? Is God possibly disciplining you as a favored kid (Hebrews 12:6)? What is God calling you to surrender? God seeks to place you in a “I give in to you, Lord” situation (not “I give up on life, Lord” situation). He welcomes you to surrender control, not responsibility, at this grueling season of your life. Pray for correction. Such prayer reveals a repentant, relinquished, and open heart.

Intervention: Facing a failure that is about to consume us is not unique to us. In Christian conviction, God is the master of time and space, personally exercising His power to rescue His servants from the coming doom. Even nature often shakes at the reality of this divine brinkmanship, of His timing and spacing of rescue. When Moses stood at the verge of the Red Sea with impending catastrophe as the only foreseeable scenario, he cried for God’s intervention. And God parted the sea (Exodus 14:21). God is still the God of marvels and miracles who can provide His way in or your way out. Ask Him!

Above all, when you talk to God in the face of forthcoming failure, I recommend praying within a three-fold prism: God’s glory; our good; and the advance of the gospel. The psalmist regularly petitioned God “for Your name’s sake”2 And, for another example, in their sins of forgetfulness, unbelief, and ungratefulness, the children of Israel (like us) rebelled against God, and “Yet he saved them for his name’s sake, so that he might make known his mighty power” (Psalm 106:8).

At other times, the psalmist desired that God would look great (among believers and unbelievers) by answering his prayers. The psalmist was not asking God to protect his own public image in the community but to exalt God’s saving reputation among all people (cf. Exodus 14:18). We, too, do not pray for the sake of a clear PR image. Instead, “image-loss,” the loss of our projected and perceived image, may well be the crux of brokenness as the point of our losses. We pray for God’s reputation to be enhanced among believers and unbelievers through His answer to our prayers. Fortunately, this good and able God is also good and able in “omni-tasking.” While receiving due glory by His response to our prayers, He also accomplishes our good. Even God’s discipline is for the good of His children and the advance of His gospel (Philippians 1:12ff).

As you keep talking to God while failing well, listen to God too. You may have sought direction during stable times; now your prayer for direction overflows into intently and intentionally listening to Him for guidance.

Listen to God

There is no sure way of listening to God except by hearing Him in the Bible. Again, it is amazing how much we do not read His Word when we most need to hear from Him. Consult with Him in His Word as you pray for direction—for direction in your minute-by-minute decision-making, for your next and immediate action. Since your failure is yet to materialize (you still have time left, even if it’s just a short time), prayerfully listen to God in His Word for direction. By your alert reading (or your having memorized Scripture), our good and able God is able to direct you to angles of understanding that you never knew existed; to courses of action that you never considered; to options for action that you can still take—all specific to your situation.

After listening to God in His Scriptures, gain godly counsel from experienced mentors, older friends, even peers. None of them arrived at their current season in life unscathed by defeat and untouched by failure. While I was on the verge of failing, God gave me two 75-year-old, spiritually wise giants. If it weren’t for their empathy and love for me, they wouldn’t have treated my hardship seriously at all! They had seen so much and survived, even succeeded, in spite of and through failure. Another older friend alerted me to keep up with physical conditioning for “being worn out causes mental mistakes.” And yet another 70-year-old friend simply decided to be there for me; he turned up at our offices and did his work from there, rather than working from his house . . . for a whole year. I could talk to and listen to him any time.

2. Fail-Safe Practicality

I’d like to share some deep gains from my own experience in the exercise of listening to God and His counselors. I hope you will gather some practical steps in how to apply fail-safe spirituality.

Personal Discernment: I learned from my mentors to grow in discernment, especially in self-understanding and business wisdom. The primary time we grow is when we are down. Analyze your position as thoroughly and as objectively as you can. While realizing that you are the one most aware of the details and complexity of the situation, bounce around questions about your own judgment—your assumptions, decisions, and actions—with mentors. Good mentors are gently brutal, and overall you will be encouraged to action. Write out the “take-aways” from your meeting. We possess a marvelous, human ability to forget the intensity and the lessons of experience unless we intentionally record and recover them. Write them all down, and then check back with the list often.

Last week an influential man wept in my office, just about to fail in his life’s dream, having invested over 20 years to grow his enterprise. Because I had written out over 100 leadership lessons that I learned during my own period of near-failure, I was able to place some courage and hope into this friend’s heart. I recognize that you, too, need hope (again, optimism based on solid theology) to help you continue through each upcoming moment. Self-understanding will help you with hope in a back-door sort of way.

Discernment also calls you to look at realistic worst-case scenarios. Potentially real scenarios are not necessarily realistic. We can make out the problem to be worse than it is. Someone who is existentially close to a hopeless and uncontrollable situation doesn’t possess independence or impartiality in analysis or solutions. In my case, while speaking to these wise counselors, I came up with ideas for solutions. And they, often unknowingly, gave me new ideas to explore and apply in my situation. Additionally, as often happens on a counselor’s couch, we sometimes come to good decisions about our “next–actions” just by listening to ourselves speak aloud to one who lends us an ear. In my case, I was able to forestall some dimensions of the impending problem. Discernment also kept me from falling into self-fulfilling prophecy by always remembering that the threat of failure is not the same as failure.

Visit Scripture—for wisdom, start with the book of the Proverbs and for faith, stay in the Psalms. Then visit with your wise counselors (they are all around you if you look) as often as possible.

Active Disclosure: Intensify relevant communication to all relevant parties. Prioritize to whom and for whom you are responsible; determine what they need to know and how to best communicate it. Make your message as honest, consistent, and straightforward as you possibly can. If you don’t initiate regular communication, those vested with you will create make-believe stories about you and the upcoming failure. Anticipate their questions and concerns. Keep communicating and connecting clearly, consistently, and candidly with your constituents! Whether you owe the government or “the little guy,” talk to them. Talk to them even if you can’t meet their expectations. In addition to transparency of information, declare your good intent. If you have to choose between those who can help themselves (government) and those who can’t afford losses, take care of the small guy first, and then chip-away at those other debt obligations. Even if people do not trust you, communicating your intent frequently will help to plead your case, to overcome the trust-deficit, as they absorb your wish to pursue the best-possible resolution in the fairest possible manner.

Strategic Decisions: My mentors inspired me, and I want to reinforce this not-so obvious, obvious conviction: this is definitely not the time to shut down personally. Your first strategic decision must be to soldier on. This is the time to consider various solution initiatives—short-term and long-term options. Usually what constitutes a major problem does not have a lasting solution that can be accomplished by a program within a specific time limit. Hence, you must diversify initiatives to solutions, just as the wise diversify their investments. Look at areas in which you have already failed, and address them as best as you can with the information at hand. This information will include impartial input from God, His Word, wise counselors, and circumstantial realities. In addition to short and long-term benefits, think through matters of short and long-term regret. What decision would you regret over the long run? Engage in hard-work (intellectually and practically), trusting God’s provision for new initiatives to pursue. In uncertainty, you face threats but also opportunities for personal and professional change. Perhaps you need to change habits of life, mind, heart, and body. Perhaps you need to move into another business or find other income avenues, such as a temporary job, all of which you may end up enjoying after all.

I’ve also learned it’s important to strategically decide to serve people worse off than ourselves. When we give to others of our time, money, and energy, we experience less self-pity, a better perspective on worse situations, and more humble gratitude. There are people experiencing failure all around you, and you can participate in their need even as you are headed down the precipice. A part of the Christian hope is an increasing conviction that life is someday not going to be as bad as it seems; that others are also enduring suffering; and that by creatively serving those who have it worse, we honor God and find strength for tomorrow.

Fresh Dreams: Evaluate everything outside your core business and the assumptions behind them. Then consider alternative dreams and goals, beyond a mere line-extension of your business history, and ponder ways God might use you that you have never considered. I recommend that you diligently guard against self-pitying sullenness and sloth; it can be just as much a trap as the greed and avarice which possibly caused this failure scenario. Instead, get up early every morning and go to work. Share honestly with them but don’t make your upcoming failure a burden on your loved ones. Do not quit. (Or better, I learned from my mentors, to go ahead and quit at night, but to be sure to start up again the next morning.)

I also invite you to consider new aspirations for your life—brand new lifemodels and revenue streams—post-failure. Talk to God and listen to Him (and others) about His next steps for your new season. Setbacks are not permanent; failure is not final. You may not be able to avoid failure, but you can certainly avoid disaster. So pray and plan for what else you can be and do after the pain of failure subsides.

The brink of failure serves as the platform for innovation and fresh dreams. And you will soon join the elite clan of those who give hope to others on the ragged edge of failure. When you share how new vision is stimulating you into action, even the most humiliating failure can be thus redeemed into a profitable future.

Conclusions

Yes, failure may be at the door, but you can fail safe and fail well. Talk to God and listen to Him daily and first. Then go into your failure with great anticipation that the good and able God is working out His glory, your good, and the advance of the gospel. Indeed, how you handle upcoming failure is the greatest preparation for the next season of your life of success and ministry. Falling, or failing, while occasional, is not uncommon to existence. You are not the first one to experience it. Actually, the younger you are the greater the chances of recovery, though not learning, unless you use it as a time to exponentially increase your learning. Though it feels that way, and despite how bad it gets, you are not unique in your problems, nor is the time unique in its problem. What is happening to you, in long-term perspective, regularly happens in personal and social history. It may happen to you again, and you will have more opportunities to learn.

So anticipate the failure, discern your position, disclose the information, decide on your next actions, and dream of a new future with God at the helm of your life and very present in your problems. You can fail safely. Go into your failure with hope (optimism based on good theology, remember?), hard work (the Proverbs recommends it), and endurance (the New Testament has much to say on this strength of character—look it up). No one wants you around them if you have never failed, because they’ll never know if you have what it takes when life becomes hard, long, and tough.

If you are about to fail, you might as well fail well—much like those who learn “falling techniques.” You will survive, and you will have a chance to grow. You’ve got our good and able God behind, around, above, and under you. Best of all, He is in you, because you welcomed His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to be your eternal savior, an eternity that includes this earthly pilgrimage of ups and downs, sin and forgiveness, success and failure.

You cannot be fail-proof, but you can be fail-safe. Safety and failure do go together if addressed with wisdom. Failure need not be fatal. Fail-safe, and fail thee well, dear friend.

I close with the psalmist’s comfort: “The LORD delights in a man’s way; he makes his steps firm; though he stumble [i.e., nearly fails], he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him [i.e., you] with his hand” (Psalm 37:23-4).

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1 I write this article in the spirit, name, and truth of the Bible’s worldview—a tested narrative of people throughout history and geography who were varied degrees and distances from failure and who gained divine perspective and peace in the middle of anxiety, fear, and disappointment.

2 In simple (not simplistic) faith, believers pray in Jesus’s name to the Father. I really don’t know how to pray in any other name. In my reply to the Chairman friend (in my earlier illustration), a Buddhist by tradition married to a believing Christian wife, I wrote, “I am glad to have heard from you, though your circumstances seem demanding. But with the intervention of the Almighty and True God, they will not be daunting. Go ahead and ask Him (I believe you said your wife knows His name) for wisdom and help in this difficult situation. You run a very large operation, and these are unnatural times for all the whole world. None of us have the intellectual or emotional capacity to handle all that comes to us . . . another reason to go to Him by His name.”