I WANT YOU TO FAIL

I want you to fail. Not all the time. Hardly at all actually. But unless you're trying, stretching, striving, and seeking to reach your fullest potential, you're almost certainly not failing enough! The path to success is paved with failures! And in Tasmania, we are surrounded by a culture that hates to fail. Ironically, this guarantees that we rarely succeed like we should! Fear. Fear of change. Fear of failure. Fear of hard work. Fear of facing challenges. If you want to be a success you must overcome these fears and occasionally fail!

As a believer you should be used to failing - because you are striving to be all God wants you to be beyond where you are currently. Yet, as you've experienced, you are not yet who you will fully be. Along God's journey for your life your sense of who God has made you to be grows. This sense of identity is honed by our failures. I think I am something but after continual repeated miserable failures I realise I am not. On the hand, I become curious about another pursuit, try it, fail, learn from it, grow my curiousity about it, keep trying and eventually succeed. Without a preparedness to fail you can never succeed.

For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.
First Timothy 4:10

One of the people I've been coaching was presented to me when she was 5 (she is now 12). At just 5 years of age her potential as a champion tennis player was obvious. But she had some obstacles to overcome. She had a number of dietary restrictions (dairy, nuts, gluten) which has meant that we have had figure out how best to fuel and build her. But by far her biggest disadvantage, and her severest handicap, is her perfectionism. Nothing has come close to causing the damage that this wretched disease has done to her. Two weeks ago, durng the school holidays, we trained together two hours a day. (We had previously only ever done one hour sessions a couple of times a week.) She was training for the try-outs to represent Tasmania - only the best of best girls would be chosen - and she was determined to be one of them. But she had tried-out last year and failed.

This year she was determined. When failure comes knocking, send Determination to answer the door! She knew that in order to reach her potential she had reach. Our training session were brutal. One earlier morning our court was covered in black ice and the temperature was still around 1ºC  then it started raining. But she continued to train. The day before the lead-up tournament to the try-outs, we trained even harder and did so under match conditions. While I felt like a bully, I beat her to 'love' in three of the five sets we played and only conceded three games. She got in her Mum's car after our session and cried. She had once again tasted failure on the eve of everything she had been working so hard for. But the next day, she brought her door-greeter with her (Determination) and dished out a few lessons of her own. Then in the try-outs she earned her place onto the State Team to represent Tasmania in Brisbane in October. Without facing failure she could never have succeeded. After her try-outs I told her that she played an almost perfect game. "But I made so many mistakes!" I then explained that under match-conditions she was always going to make mistakes. Whenever you are trying to succeed there will always be failures along the way.

"Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able."
Lke 13:24

Tasmania desperately needs people to strive toward fulfilling their potential. They are created by God to do so. There are Tasmanians whose destinies involve learning what's necessary to find cures for 'incurable' diseases. There are Tasmanians who have a destined purpose to produce art, music, literature that will literature mold a generation and change the course of history. There are Tasmanians who have a destiny to start businesses that provide cost effective solutions to those in need. There are Tasmanians who are called by their Creator to be in Government and positions of civic responsibility that will ensure that our State can prosper and flourish. There are Tasmanians whom God is calling to be a vital part of a local church that will grow bigger than anything the culture currently says is possible - not merely a church of dozens, or even hundreds.

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. 
Second Corinthians 9:8

Will you fail? Will you be who God has called you to be? Will you answer your fears' door-knocking by sending Determination to answer the door? Will you give your life so fully to Christ that you are prepared to humbly take your position in the picture that Christ is presenting to the world? Today, pictures are generally made up of small dots called 'pixels'. The bigger and more detailed the picture, the smaller and the greater the number of pixels required. One of the problems we have in Tasmania is that too many pixels want to be the picture - not make up the picture. Jesus is the 'Picture'. Not us. 

Because we don't want the picture of our lives visible to the world to look bad, we refuse to join the other pixels who are striving to form the grandest picture they can of Christ. This fear of failure then impacts directly on our spiritual health. But just as John The Baptist said, I must decrease and He must increase (John 3:30). Please fail more. Please. Tasmania urgently needs Christians who have tasted, learned from, and overcome failures - who understand that life is not about them and their needs. In other words, it's not that we want or need you fail as if that is the end of the story. Failure for winners is never the end of the story. Failure for winners is the schooling, strength, and strategy for success. And Tasmania must have you succeed beyond anything you've ever enjoyed thus far. Your success is our success. But wait, I hear a knock at our door. Shall we answer it? Or shall we send our Door-greeter?

Ps. Andrew

Life And Sport

Life As Sport

I love tennis. I love playing it. I love watching it. When I grew up nearly everyone I knew played tennis. A trip down to the local Corio tennis club meant that you would have to take your turn on the benches for one of the six courts to become free. During this time it was easy to tell when Wimbledon was being played because people would trot off to work and school bleary-eyed from having stayed up all night to watch it on TV. It was the twilight of Australia's dominance as a tennis nation. Players like Newcombe, Roach, Dent, Alexander were hero worshiped. This meant that young Aussie kids wanted to become like these heroes and it very common for professional tennis coaching to be offered through Government Schools (like the one I went to) to help make this a reality.

I started being coached from the age of 11 and playing in junior tournaments shortly after. I was committed to being a professional tennis player as I grew up. During my early teenage years I travelled Victoria playing most of the major junior tournaments. When I was 16 I bought my first racquet stringing machine to try and alleviate the spiralling costs of restrings. This is a craft I have maintained over the past 27 years and am still a member of the professional racquet stringers association (USRSA). But I also began to learn that my destiny lay not in playing tennis professionally, but in what I am now doing today.

When I arrived in Tasmania in 1995 to take over the pastorate of a small semi-rural church I was reluctant to get involved in tennis here because I wanted to focus on the church without divided loyalties. But as I settled into the pastorate I found that tennis became a healthy distraction. I offered my coaching services in a voluntary capacity to the local club which was soon received with much appreciation and over the years I have coached dozens and dozens of children in the basics of how to play tennis. Most recently I was received by the governing body of tennis in Australia (Tennis Australia) as a registered "Hotshots" coach and made a member of their coaching fraternity. I am now working at recruiting young people to the game of tennis.


Last weekend I was interviewed by two newspaper journalists. In recent weeks I had been doing media interviews about my comments regarding the proposed Gunns Pulp Mill at Longreach (just 20 kilometres or so from where I live). But these most recent interviews were about tennis. I was asked by both journalists why I thought it was important for children to play tennis. I answered that tennis is not only about fun and exercise which counters our growing obesity rates, and it was not only a game that could be played at any age (unlike most contact sports), it was also a game of rules which highlighted that even in the midst of tense of competition we have to keep within certain boundaries- which is a great way to view life. Playing tennis is a great life-skills teacher.

So I was thrilled when I read F.W. Boreham make similar comments about his love for cricket. He loved watching cricket. Whenever the cricket was on at the MCG he would work his pastoral duties in the morning and then take the afternoon off to go and watch the cricket. Boreham admits to being a poor cricket player but a great cricket lover. It seems that sport and spirituality have a lot in common. The apostle Paul uses certain athletic metaphors to encourage the Corinthian believers in their walk with Christ.

For most Australians sport is more important than religion. But I wonder how many Australians realise how many of the principles involved in sport are also the essence of what the Christian life is all about? In cricket there is a bowler trying to get you out much like the enemy of our souls is constantly trying to do. As long as the three stumps stand in unbroken union behind everything the batter does he is safe in much the same way that the Christian is undergirded by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In cricket some balls just have to be left alone and allowed to pass through to the Keeper in much the same way that not every attack of the Enemy is worthy of our response. The game of cricket is played over two innings in much the same way that Christian's life is marked by two innings- before Christ and after- and the Word that guides him is marked also by two divisions- Old and New Testaments. The two teams are comprised of twelve players each, similar to the governments of the Old Testament where twelve patriarchs ruled and the New Testament where twelve apostles ruled. In cricket it is often the case that the fastest balls bowled are the easiest to hit for a six just as life's toughest struggles are often the most maturing. Each game of cricket is overseen by an umpire just as life is also overseen by the Umpire.

Perhaps a similar process could be undertaken for just about any sport. Rules, an umpire, boundaries, struggle, a goal and cooperation with team members are all essential ingredients to successful living, especially successful Christian living. The next time you play tennis (or any other sport) you are not just exercising your body and mind, you are honing your life skills to be able to live more fully for God.

Andrew Corbett
www.andrewcorbett.net