The Failure / Aptitude Connection

Have you ever had the same message communicated to you several times in a short period of time? In recent weeks, I have experienced the same two messages coming to me from very different avenues. The first message is an encouragement that God's gifts and call on my life are evident and that there my life and ministry is intentioned for great effectiveness. The second is a cautionary message to guard my heart.

With so many sources carrying the message to me, I can't help but think I really need to be listening. As I have attempted to listen and process the round table discussion, devotional from my Pastor, and friends prayer, I believe there is a message which I must be paying attention to.

Part of me wonders why I have heard these two messages coming from the same source at the same time. As I have prayed and pondered these words, I have arrived at this conclusion, aptitude and failure are proportionally linked. Most of us tend to think of failure in light of what has been accomplished. We look at national ministers moral indiscretions and exclaim at the fall. We think about how these mighty men of God had accomplished so much but threw it way for the pleasures of sin for a season. I agree these events are tragic and heartbreaking. However, I think there is something much worse — the death of potential.

I think the greatest failures are not the great ones that fall but the those that are meant to be great in God's kingdom that never get off the ground. The more potential God has stored in your heart and mind that goes wasted, the greater the failure. That is why I believe the failure is proportionally linked to aptitude.

Let me give this a fuller explanation. I believe that every person on the planet has a divine calling for their life. I believe that all the necessary gifts, talents, abilities, and passions are placed in side of the hearts of men and women. The greatest failures are those whose callings are missed or dismissed and all the gifts and talents God has placed in them goes to waste. Much the way our culture shakes its head as we see students with all the potential necessary to be doctors, lawyers, professors, and astronauts become burger flippers, sandwich makers, drug dealers, and bums, I believe God's heart breaks as we take the gifts he has given us and waste them.

The greatest failures in life are not the ones who find careers below their intellectual aptitude. Hardly. We need the goods and services provided be almost every profession. No, the greatest failures are those who never discover all the things God has put inside them to do. And it is the world that is worse off for it. All the songs we will never hear, all the books we will never read, all the art we will never see, diseases that won't be cured, lives that won't be changed... all because someone selfishly chose to bury their potential until they could be buried with it.