Fruitful Failure: Accept Responsibility for Your Failures
Issue #434, October 21, 2026 Failure is an inevitable reality of every leader’s journey, but learning to make failure fruitful requires deliberate effort. In the previous issue, we looked at the first principle of “FAILS” from the life of David: Find a new definition of failure. Now, we’ll look at how to Accept responsibility for […]
Fruitful Failure: Find a New Definition of Failure
Issue #433, October 7, 2026 All leaders fail, but not all leaders find ways to make failure fruitful. The fear of failure often keeps leaders from moving forward and the pain of failure keeps them from trying again. Effective leaders turn failures into opportunities to grow by changing their perception of and response to failure. […]
Joshua: Gaining Wisdom through Failure
Issue #399, May 28, 2025 Joshua received a spirit of wisdom from Moses—but that didn’t mean his path would be free of failure. In fact, one of his early leadership mistakes with the Gibeonites became a powerful lesson in gaining wisdom through failure. This happened in his interaction with the Gibeonites, a nearby group of […]
#369 Secure Leaders Accept Mistakes
March 13, 2024 Leaders make mistakes and those they lead make mistakes! But there are many ways that leaders respond to the mistakes. Their response indicates their own level of security as a leader. The story of Joseph is a model of leadership in many ways. When Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, it was […]
#334 Barnabas: Serving with Failure
September 28, 2022 Barnabas was a great leader and we have reflected on many great things from his life. But he was not perfect! Two incidents are recorded for us that reveal his imperfections. 36 Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we […]
#328 Barnabas Serving with Encouragement
July 6, 2022 If I asked you to name the top 10 leaders in the New Testament church, I doubt that Barnabas would be on the list. Yet, he served the church in amazing ways. He was the catalyst for Paul’s acceptance into the church. Barnabas helped establish the church where followers of Jesus were […]
#327 A Flourishing World: Failure is Anticipated
June 22, 2022 God’s world was beautiful and perfect! It was filled with all the ingredients that would allow flourishing to continue for generations. Yet, while God had created a perfect and flourishing world, He was not caught off guard by the failure of Adam and Eve! As He cursed the serpent, He revealed His […]
Leading with Grace: Share it.
December 11, 2019 Leaders who learn to receive God’s grace and integrate grace into their daily lives are then ready to share this grace with others. As they do, they recall the words of Paul: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the […]
David: Failing Forward
Issue #146, January 7, 2015 After Adam and Eve’s first sin, David’s affair with Bathsheba is perhaps the most widely known failure of all time. It is ironic that after all the great lessons we have learned from David’s life, we read in 2 Samuel 11-12 the sad story of lust, adultery, and murder. Yet […]
Moses: First Attempts at Leadership
Issue #49, February 9, 2011 Moses’ first recorded leadership act was a disaster! One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Glancing this way and that and seeing […]