Last Friday, Silicon Valley Bank (henceforth SVB) failed. At the time of its failure,SVB had assets of almost $200 billion. It was the second largest bank failure in the history of the United States. While bank failures are nothing new, the failure of SVB was the first and most dramatic bank failure since 2008, and its failure has sent shockwaves through the financial world. SVB was the darling of the tech elite. It catered to high net worth individuals, technology startups, private equity funds, and also had a venture capital arm. Its leadership frequently appeared on CNBC, and it was the toast of the investor class. However, none of this could avert a fateful decision that caused the bank to fail.

In recent months. the Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates to tame inflation. This had led to some serious challenges in the financial sector. Interest is the cost of money. When interest rates go up, borrowing goes down. When borrowing goes down, banks suffer. We tend to forget that banks are businesses. They make money by taking customer deposits and then lending those deposits. The difference is their profit. Banks are required by the government to only keep a percentage of what is deposited on hand. However, they are free to invest (lend) the rest. Although there are limits to the type and size of investments they can make, SVB and its Chief Executive Officer Greg Becker was among those who successfully lobbied the Trump Administration to loosen those restrictions in 2017 on banks of its size . As a result, they engaged in behavior that was too risky for a bank of its kind. This led to serious trouble.

No one knew how much trouble until SVB decided to sell $21 billion of its assets at loss of almost $2 billion. This decision was interpreted by the financial markets as a crisis of liquidity. Liquidity is the economic term for cash. Every bank needs enough cash to ensure that its customers can make withdrawals as necessary. But if you have to sell cash to generate cash and are willing to lose cash to do it, that its bad sign. And that is exactly what happened at SVB. In the world of finance, this state of affairs is called an “unrealized loss.” Simply put, the assets that they sold were worth less than the price they paid when they purchased them. The fact that they were willing to sell them at a loss alarmed their customers, who feared that the bank may not be solvent. So everyone who had money at SVB rushed to withdraw it, only to discover that their money was gone. And just like that, SVB imploded.

SVB’s implosion is full of lessons. Chief among them is the reminder that all of us have ideas, relationships, strategies and even possessions that are no longer worth the price that we paid for them—they have lost value. All of us suffer losses, and sometimes we don’t even realize that we have lost until it’s too late. Such was the case with Samson.

Samson is one the most popular characters in the Bible. He is known and celebrated for his physical strength. But as strong as he may have been physically, Samson had a weakness for women. Throughout his career as a judge of Israel, he repeatedly allowed his weakness to override his reason, divert his focus, and jeopardize his calling. But despite his weakness, the grace of God allowed him to continue providing leadership for almost two decades. Finally, his weakness caught up with him. It caught up with him in the form of a woman named Delilah.

She was deployed by Samson’s enemies to discover the secret of his strength, a secret that he had never revealed. On three occasions, Delilah asked Samson to reveal his secret. Each time, Samson would give her the wrong answer. While it was apparent that Samson was playing games, it was also apparent that Delilah was not. Whenever Samson gave her an answer, she would use the information he provided to arrange his capture by the enemy. Each time, she would discover that she had been fooled and was forced to watch as Samson escaped. Once again, she asked him to reveal the secret of his strength. Finally, as one translation puts it, “he told her all his heart.” Just as before, she informed his enemies and arranged to have him captured. And just as before, Samson thought he could escape. But according to Judges 16:20

Then she said, “The Philistines are on you, Samson!” He woke up, thinking, “I’ll go out, like always, and shake free.” He didn’t realize that God had abandoned him.

Samson didn’t realize that he had lost the source of his strength—his connection with God. And he didn’t realize that he had lost it until he needed it the most.

Question: What losses haven’t you realized?

Question: What ideas, relationships, strategies or practices have you invested in that no longer have value?

Question: What are you assuming still works that no longer does?

Samson lost his eyes, his reputation, and eventually his life.

What happened to Samson didn’t have to happen. But like SVB, he didn’t realize what he had lost until it was too late.

Do yourself a favor: cut you losses before it’s too late. Doing so may help you avoid a failure.