What keeps you from investing your life? What keeps you from moving to financial freedom? I’ll tell you what it is: fear.

In the Bible you can find financial principles that God guarantees. God promises that if you follow them, you will be blessed. But they require faith, and that scares a lot of people. They are afraid of doing things God’s way.

Many kinds of fear can hold you back. One type of fear is self-doubt, which says: “You’ve failed in the past, so you’re never going to try again.” But just because you fail doesn’t mean you should give up. Everybody fails; it’s the only way you learn what works! God uses ordinary people who choose to keep on going after failure instead of giving up.

Two disciples—Judas and Peter—denied Jesus before his Crucifixion. They committed the same sin, but the difference was the way each reacted to his failure. Judas focused on his sin and not the forgiveness of God. His remorse overwhelmed him, and he ultimately took his own life.

But when Peter realized his sin, he prayed, repented, and asked God for forgiveness. Then Jesus chose Peter to preach on Pentecost, and 3,000 people were saved the first day. Jesus chose to build the church on the biggest failure in the bunch.

What a God! He didn’t choose the superstar. He chose the guy who had blown it the worst.

You may have really messed up financially or in other ways. But it doesn’t matter where you’ve been. What matters is the direction you are going right now.

In the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, a rich man entrusted his money to his three servants before he left for a long trip. When he returned, he asked for an account from the servants. Two of them had doubled the master’s money, but the third had been afraid and had hidden his portion instead of working and investing it. His fear disappointed and angered his master, who said, “Take the money from this servant, and give it to the one with the ten bags of silver” (Matthew 25:28 NLT). The master took away everything the servant had been given.

When you try to do things God’s way, fear often emerges. Satan will try to get you to ignore God’s principles for money management by making you afraid of failure or making you doubt your ability to be a good steward of God’s money.

But if you’re going to be successful in life, you must move against your fears. You have to do the very thing that you fear the most!

When you move forward in faith and follow God’s guidelines for financial peace, you will experience God’s blessing and even more resources and responsibility.

As Matthew 25:29 says, “To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away” (NLT).