You're listening to the Allender Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender.

Each week, we dive into topics that reflect something of what it means to foster hope and

healing in a world so in need of restoration. These conversations grow out of the work we do

with individuals and communities across the country,

which you can learn more about at the Allender Center.org.

Let me confess that most of the topics that I'm privileged to engage during these podcasts, I enjoy.

I enjoy doing these podcasts.

But I have been so reluctant to do the series that I'm intending to do, and that is to address the issue of failure.

Obviously, everyone fails, everyone knows that we fail.

And yet there's something about the nature of failure that cuts to the very quick of our sense of being, our identity, our relationship with others, are just our grasp of

what it means to live well in this life.

So as I thought about what I wanted to even call this, I came to this word, I want to address

it because there is a sense in which failure isn't just an entity.

It feels like a presence, virtually like a person.

It feels like something has the power to take away our heart and our life and our joy,

whether those are small or catastrophic failures.

So as we address this, it becomes very, very important to acknowledge that none of this

come into this topic easily or well, and especially the one speaking.

Let me give a context for what prompted,

at least for my thinking, the issue of how to address failure. This summer, I bought a

GoPro, GoPro 7, and planned to just experiment with the possibility of a few vlogs.

If you don't know what a vlog is, I don't really either, other than it's sort of a video blog.

...