Tim Hetzner – Daily Devotions

Moving From Failure to Success – Part 1/4

“…and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.” (Hebrews 11:34)

The writer of Hebrews said: ‘I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets…whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies’ (vv. 32-34). Some of the biggest success stories in Scripture are about people who struggled with weaknesses and character flaws. They were mired in seeming failure and defeat, yet by God’s grace they overcame the obstacles and odds stacked against them. The overriding theme of the Bible is resurrection – getting back up again!

Here is the question: if you can’t avoid failure, and you’re not supposed to give in to it or let it color your thinking, how do you handle it?

First, change your attitude. Cartoon character Homer Simpson summarized the attitude of many of us when he said, ‘Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is – never try.’ Suffice it to say, Homer is a classic underachiever! In another episode, he quips, ‘Trying is the first step toward failure.’ The bottom line is, Homer never tries, so like many real people, he stays stuck.

The people who succeed in life have faith and persistence. They refuse to give up; they have decided not to let failure defeat them. Note the words “whose weakness was turned to strength.” You may start out weak, but by God’s grace, you can become strong. You can rise from the ashes of failure, achieve your goals, and live the life God intends. How do we know? Because God’s Word says so!

Prayer

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Who Are Your True Friends?

“One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” (Proverbs 18:24)

Cicero said, ‘Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.’ The fact is, it’s impossible to have more than a few close friends because true friendship takes time, attention, and commitment. ‘One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother’ (v. 24).

The hallmarks of real friendship include these:

1) Trust. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.”

2) Giving and receiving. Sometimes one person will be the primary giver, and sometimes the other. But true friendships are always two-sided.

3) Sharing your lives. Helen Keller said: “My friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my deprivation.”

4) Mutual enjoyment. In a true friendship, you spend time together just for the joy of it. What you do isn’t necessarily of significance. Unfortunately, the busyness of life makes us forget what a joy this can be.

5) Respecting one another. How do you build respect? By not letting obstacles or circumstances, become more important than the relationship. When the pressure is on, you continue to treat one another with patience and kindness. And when the relationship is struggling, you work to preserve it.

Prayer

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Heed Your Own Advice

“My son, pay attention to my wisdom, turn your ear to my words of insight.” (Proverbs 5:1)

Solomon told his son: ‘Pay attention to my wisdom…the lips of an immoral woman are as sweet as honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil. But in the end she is as bitter as poison, as dangerous as a double-edged sword…Stay away from her! Don’t go near the door of her house! If you do, you will lose your honour and will lose to merciless people all you have achieved. Strangers will consume your wealth, and someone else will enjoy the fruit of your labour…You will say…“If only I had not ignored all the warnings…now I must face public disgrace”’ (vv. 1, 3-4, 8-10, 12, 14).

It’s always easier to dispense good advice than to follow it. Solomon’s life proves it. He tells us repeatedly and with great conviction that only fools fall into adultery. Yet he failed to heed his own advice and God’s explicit warning about taking too ‘many wives, or his heart will be led astray’ (Deuteronomy 17:17 ). Solomon married seven hundred women. And what was the result? ‘His wives turned his heart after other gods; and his heart was not loyal to the LORD’ (1 Kings 11:4).

Here is an interesting question: was the reason Solomon had so much to say about this particular subject because it represented an area of struggle and vulnerability in his own life? Sometimes leaders do that; they speak out against areas of weakness they see in their own lives. One thing is certain; if Solomon had taken the advice he gave his son, his life story would have been very different.

So, the word for today is – heed your own advice.

Prayer

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Treasure Your Children

“Children are a heritage from the LORD, offspring a reward from him.” (Psalm 127:3)

A Christian psychologist writes: “Several months ago, I talked to a man who described one of the most painful experiences of his life. When he was seventeen, he was one of the stars on his high school football team. But his father, a very successful man in the city, was always too busy to come and see him play.

Quickly, the final game of the season came around—which happened to be the state championship. The boy was desperate to have his dad there. On the night of the big game, he was on the field warming up when he looked into the stadium just in time to see his father arrive with two other men, each wearing a business suit. They stood talking together for a moment or two and then left.

The man who told me this story is now fifty-eight years of age, and yet he had tears streaming down his cheeks as he relived that moment long ago.

‘It’s been forty years since that night, and yet the rejection and pain are as vivid as ever. I was struck again by the awesome influence a father has in the lives of his children. When he is uninvolved—when he doesn’t show love or care for them—it creates a vacuum that reverberates for decades.

My friend’s father died not long ago. As he stood by his dad’s body in the mortuary, he said, “Dad, I never really knew you. We could have shared so much love together—but you never had time for me.”’

If you’re a parent or grandparent, remember that children are a gift from God. Treasure and enjoy them.

Prayer

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Give Your Worries to God

“And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:7)

When you feel anxious and afraid, here are two things you should do:

1) Find a ‘faith friend.’ When anxiety grabs your mind, one of the most powerful ways to break the worry spiral is to disclose it to a ‘faith friend.’ When Israel went out to occupy the Promised Land, here is what God said to them: ‘Is anyone afraid or fainthearted? Let him go home so that his fellow soldiers will not become disheartened too’ (Deuteronomy 20:8). Pessimism, fright, and discouragement are contagious—and so is courage!

2) Take action and face your fear. Sermons about how God will take care of you aren’t, in and of themselves, sufficient to remove anxiety from your life. You must do certain things, like stepping out in trust. The way to get God’s peace from your head to the rest of your body is to trust Him to the point where you can confront your fears head-on.

So, with that in mind:

David said, ‘In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, LORD, make me dwell in safety’ (Psalm 4:8).

Today, give your worries to God!

Prayer

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Hear God’s Voice

“Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says.” (Revelation 2:11)

You can read the same Scripture on different occasions, and it will speak to you in totally different ways. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus is attributed with saying, ‘You never step into the same river twice.’ And you never read the same Bible verse the same way twice. That is a testament to its heavenly author. His illumination is based on His intimate and unlimited knowledge of your circumstances, your desires, your fears, your past, your personality, and your destiny. But you must take time to listen and cultivate your sensitivity to what He is saying.

The story is told of a music trainer hired to work with opera singers who could not hit certain notes even though they fell within their vocal range. It was a musical mystery. The trainer did extensive testing on their vocal cords, but he couldn’t find any reason why they couldn’t hit those notes. Then, on a whim, he tested their hearing. And what he discovered was that these opera singers could not sing a note they could not hear. The problem wasn’t singing. The problem was hearing.

‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says.’ Until you hear the voice of God, you won’t be able to sing His song. Why? Because you’re out of tune. That’s how we get trapped in sinful lifestyles and negative cycles and destructive patterns. But when you open up the Bible and truly hear the voice of God – His loving voice, His affirming voice, His graceful voice, His convicting voice, His authoritative voice, His powerful voice – your life begins to harmonize with the Holy Spirit.

Prayer

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Hold Fast

“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” (Hebrews 10:23)

You will notice that during the creation process, God counts days based on the previous nights. The Bible doesn’t say, ‘The morning and evening were the first day.’ No, it says, ‘God called…the evening and the morning…the first day’ (Genesis 1:5). That means God specializes in bringing light out of darkness – you just have to get through one to get to the other!

God told Moses that the angel of death would come at night, and wherever he saw the blood of the lamb on the doorposts, the inhabitants of that house would be saved (see Exodus 12:12-13). Exodus states that God ‘sent a…wind that blew all night until there was dry land…and the Israelites walked through’ (Exodus 14:21-22). The psalmist wrote, ‘Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning’ (Psalm 30:5).

The dawn is all the more brilliant because of the darkness that preceded it, just as your progress is all the more rewarding when set against a backdrop of pain, gain, and breakthrough. Great mornings come by getting through rough nights. When you see somebody who is having a great day, chances are you’re looking at somebody who has been through a long night. When you hear them shouting the victory, it may be because they have spent the night praying and weeping before God.

The Bible says, ‘Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise’ (Hebrews 10:23). Trusting God is more than just wishful thinking. It’s knowing that if He said it, He will do it. It’s realizing He doesn’t just control creation, He controls your circumstances. So, ‘hold fast’.

Prayer

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Fulfilling God’s Plan for Your Life

“Do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.” (Ephesians 5:17)

To fulfill God’s plan for your life, you need to do these:

1) Map out your day. Plan your time and stick to your plan. Only one out of three people do that. One leadership expert says, ‘It’s…rare…that I get up in the morning wondering what I’ll be doing that day.’ That’s why he is a leader – and an expert!

2) Keep first things first. Goethe said, ‘Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.’ Most of us don’t get to our most important tasks until mid-afternoon. We complete low-priority tasks first so we will have a sense of accomplishment. That’s unwise. And if you plan your day but don’t follow through, your results will be the same as those who don’t plan at all. As Dwight Eisenhower observed, ‘Taking first things first…often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion.’

3) Be focused but flexible. Expect the unexpected and learn to adapt. Conditions constantly change, and so must your methods of getting things done.

4) Learn to delegate. People tend to fall into two categories: clingers and dumpers. Clingers refuse to let go of anything they think is important, whether or not they’re the best person for the job. Their goal is perfection. Dumpers, on the other hand, are quick to off-load tasks without giving much thought to how well the job gets done. Their goal is to get it off their desk ASAP. Proper delegation calls for being wise, secure in who you are, and generous towards others. It also means the job gets done right – and in the end, that is what you want.

Prayer

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Just As I Am

“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.” (1 Corinthians 15:10)

There is a tale about a boy who comes home and doesn’t know his mom is visiting with their pastor. He carries a dead rat in his hand. ‘Mom, you’ll never guess what. There was a rat running around in the garage. I saw it, threw a stone, and hit it. It just lay there, so I went over and stamped on it. Then I picked it up and hurled it against the wall.’ Then he sees the pastor, and if his mom’s looks could kill, he knew that he would be one dead kid. So, he holds the rat up and adds in a pious voice, ‘And then the dear Lord called him home.’ That’s the kind of talk people slip into when they want to hide their flaws and appear more ‘spiritual’.

The old hymn ‘Just as I Am, Without One Plea’ is about taking off the mask and knowing that God loves you in spite of your problems. If there was a true ‘just as I am’ church where people could bring their baggage and brokenness, if there was a group where everyone was loved and no one faked it, we couldn’t make enough room for them inside the building.

Paul acknowledged that sometimes he acted like Dr. Jekyll, other times like Mr. Hyde. He talked of the times when he wanted to do good but evil took over. But he refused to throw in the towel because he realized he was a work in progress. ‘I…do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect’ (vv. 9-10).

Prayer

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Insecurity in Leadership

“For they loved human praise more than praise from God.” (John 12:43)

The Bible says: ‘Many people did believe in him, however, including some of the Jewish leaders. But they wouldn’t admit it for fear that the Pharisees would expel them from the synagogue. For they loved human praise more than the praise of God’ (vv. 42-43). How secure are you as a leader? When someone else has a great idea, do you support it or suppress it? Do you celebrate other people’s successes, or feel threatened by them? If your answers are that you suppress and feel threatened, you have a problem with insecurity and you need to deal with it in order to fully succeed in what God has called you to do.

Observe:

1) Insecure leaders create insecurity in others. The old saying goes, ‘You cannot give what you do not have.’ Likewise, without security, you cannot make others feel secure. And to be an effective leader, the kind that others want to follow, you need to make those who follow you feel good about themselves.

2) Insecure leaders take more from people than they give. They are on a constant quest for recognition, validation, and love. Because of that, their attention is on finding security and not imparting it to others. They are mostly takers, not givers, and takers don’t make good leaders.

3) Insecure leaders continually limit their best people. They hoard power. In fact, the better their followers are, the more threatened the leaders feel – and the harder they work to limit their followers’ success and recognition.

If these things describe you, read this: ‘Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other’ (Romans 12:10).

Prayer

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