If you’ve ever felt like a failure, you’re not alone.
We all struggle with feeling like a failure at one time or another—maybe as a mom, as a wife, as a friend, in ministry, at work, at holding our tongues, at loving the unlovable. Life brings us lots of opportunities to fail.
How often have I made a simple mistake, like driving away from the grocery store before putting my groceries in the car? Then I get home and the chatter begins. I am so stupid. What’s wrong with me? I’m such a failure.
My friend, Renee Swope wrote, “When our thoughts heap condemning statements like these on us, we get buried in discouragement and defeat. Failure gets the final say. We become our own worst critic, and once again Satan loves it. Whether you are saying these things to yourself or you are repeating what someone else has said, once again they are exactly what the enemy wants you to believe.”
Conviction that leads to repentance comes from the Holy Spirit ( John 16:8).
Accusation that leads to condemnation comes from the accuser (Revelation 12:10).
Conviction from the Holy Spirit will be about a specific behavior and will never attach your identity to that behavior. You lied to your coworker… You flirted with your neighbor… You shamed your child. These statements are specific.
Accusation and Condemnation makes broad, sweeping generalizations about your character and identity, such as, You’re a failure… You’re unreliable… You’re a misfit.
Conviction’s purpose is to conform you to the image of Christ.
Condemnation’s purpose is to contain you and rename you. Scripture assures us that the accuser will be completely defeated in the end, but until then, he accuses us before God day and night (Revelation 12:10).
When you slap a label on your identity other than who God says you are, the enemy takes a victory lap around your heart. Click & Tweet! Learn from your mistakes under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit, but don’t get stuck there. Don’t sew a label on your heart. Accept God’s forgiveness and then move on.
Many men and women failed in the Bible, and yet God did not label them according to their failure. David committed adultery, and yet God referred to him as “a man after my own heart” (Acts 13:22). Moses and Gideon both began as cowards, and yet God called them courageous. Peter denied he even knew Jesus, and yet Jesus labeled him “the rock.”
Dr. Neil Anderson once said, “One reason we doubt God’s love is that we have an adversary who uses every little offense to accuse us of being good-for-nothings. But your advocate, Jesus Christ, is more powerful than your adversary. He has canceled the debt of your sins—past, present, and future. No matter what you do or how you fail, God has no reason not to love you and accept you completely.”
If you have sewn the label of “failure” onto your heart like a kid with her name sewn into her clothes before going off to camp, cut it out or rip it off. Then sew on a new label with the truth of who you really are. You are a dearly loved, chosen, forgiven, redeemed child of God. Click & Tweet!
What label have you sewn onto your heart that needs to be removed today? Leave a comment and let’s rip them off together!
Do the voices in your head say you’re not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough…or just not enough, period?
It’s time to stop listening to lies that sabotage your confidence and to embrace the truth of who God says you are.
Join me for 7 days to transform your thought life by replacing the lies that steal your confidence with God’s truth >>> CLICK HERE to join today! It’s FREE.
Comments 13
I constantly put the label on myself of failure. I feel no matter what I start or try to do I will not complete it and once again be a failure. I’m really working hard at trying to write out goals and dreams and work on each one. Just putting one foot in front of the other and focusing on what the outcome would mean to me and my family.
I am constantly told by myself and my boyfriend that I am nothing and that I will never be good enough for anyone. That I have nothing good to offer anyone. I battle this In my mind daily and I am also told by my boyfriend as well.
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Elle, you don’t need to have a boyfriend who is telling you things like that. God has something better for you.
I’ve been a Christian since I was 15. I did everything my parents or my church taught. I was a shelter child and very niave , so much that when I went into nurses training at 18 I learned the facts of Life( or as I later told my husband be sure and tell the boys about the birds and the bees). I thank God for protecting me all those years. When I got married and made a home, had 3 children, the oldest a girl. She was very bright could read when she was 4. She brought me one of my nursing books, and asked me to explain what she was reading. I put them up told her when she could understand what she was reading she could have them again. She was in kindergarten at a Christian School at the time. My mother taught that getting married, making a home, and having children was what my goal in life should be. I wasn’t sure if she was right, but it was the only goal I set. I always tried to be what Mom and Dad and Jesus wanted me to be. I got the JOY backwards. Till I moved to SC where I got JOY in the right order(best move Jesus made in my life). He’s still working on me etc. I know Satan tried everything to break up my JOY. He was trying to find that one thing to attack me with. That your not good enough. He went way back to my childhood to find the one thing I went to South Carolina to get away from. Living up to my mother’s goals for me. Well your books and the things we are studying in the women’s Sunday school class.(The Bait of Satan), a book I highly recommend. Have been God’s way of getting me back on track since my husband died almost 5 years ago. Yes Satan has a way to get you to go his way, but only for a short time till God shows you how much he loves and cares for you. Satan’s Bait this time was my husband’s illness that caused his death. I’m a nurse could I have done something more? He attacked the only thing I could see that I wasn’t good enough to change at the time. I didn’t blame God, I blamed my husband for dieing before we both could retire and do some traveling. He was 65 when he died in October, I would turn 65 in December. So now I’m a widow. I know what the Bible says and I know the examples of many in the Bible who were or became widows. I’m not going to let Satan bait that trap of your not good enough again. So pray for me and if you want to use what I wrote, you can it may be of help to someone else. I appreciate your emails to me the last one was a great help. Yours in Christ till we meet again. Sandra Snyder (smaesnyder@yahoo.com)
Sharon, I’m always telling myself that I’m a failure every time I mess up. I just can’t seem to silence those lies of the enemy. I’ve read so many of your books and have been encouraged! I just have to silence the voice of the enemy. It takes practice and diligence.
Will you continue to pray for me.
Can’t wait to come to your conference 😊
This is what I needed. I have really been had a problem with self condimnation. I had labeled myself a fool, failure, and even began to think I had lost my salvation or was never a true believer. I have intently been praying and asking God for the truth. Thank you for the post.This is the second aanswer I have received today. I’m cuting out the label’s
Thank you, sharon. This world can break your heart and kill you, if you let it. This life is hard. Specially when your trying to make changes in your life. Keep me in prayer. I appreciate it! And thank you for reminding me i am not a failure. God bless!
“I’m a failure” thinking is pride turned on its head–born from the idea that I, and I alone, am somehow a creation of a higher-than-normal-humans order, that I have every right to consider myself so naturally superior as to be above human faults and foibles. Of course “human” is a key word: no one (with the possible exception of some poor souls lost in deep schizophrenia) berates herself for being unable to breathe underwater or fly unassisted.
Maybe I should add that I’m a professional freelance writer and that “impostor syndrome” (the idea that you’re an inferior specimen and whatever praise you get is just dumb luck) runs rampant in that field. It could be that creativity and melancholy temperaments go together; or that a lot of our work (fiction or nonfiction or business copy) involves imagining worst-case scenarios; or that we have to deal with all these people who think that anyone who passed high school English is a “writer” and they shouldn’t have to pay THAT much for our talent, especially when it’s going online and the “end users” won’t be paying ANYTHING to read it.
Can’t do enough! R I P
Some labels come off easier than others, the ones that stick can cut deep, but God is deeper still.
Sharon, you are truly sent by God to encourage me at this moment in my life. I have struggled with “who I am” for years. I often feel “less than” instead of “more than a conqueror”. I used to beat myself up with discouraging words and condemn myself. I cannot tell you how freeing your words are. I have been a born again Christian for many, many years and have finally reached a point where I can’t take beating myself up with condemning words any more! Thank you for the words you write in your blog. I know the devil has told me lies about myself and I would go over and over them until I believe they were the “truth”. I am trying to repeat Scripture to myself now and defeat the lies and Satan in my thought life.
Thanks again for helping me in my struggle to discover “whose I am”.
I know that God has forgiven me for the mistakes I have made in the past and he is guiding me to an amazing future and everlasting life with him. My problem is that Satan uses my eldest daughter and mother of my four precious grandchildren to subtly remind me every now and then of the mistakes of my past. If I confront her she calls me selfish and only thinking of myself. She is a Christian as well and I can’t understand why she does this to me. It only happens a couple times a year but when it does happen, it puts me into such a deep depression that I have a hard time climbing out of it. Any advice I could get on how to deal with this would be helpful. God bless all of you.