Failing Forward
We have seen some Fabulous Failures these years. I am amazed at the way we like to watch a train wreck and the attendant tragedy and loss of faith that occurs. Whether we are talking Britney Spears or some Preacher on TV we seem to glory in another person’s agony, pain and failure. I think we like it because it takes our attention off our own failures.
I confess that the other day I watched the Britney special and had to feel sorry for her. She is trapped in a place where no matter what happens in her life it is in a tighter glass bowl than any person should have to withstand. If 50 cars a day followed you everywhere you would have a lot of stuff in the news as well. We have the luxury that our whole lives are not on the news/gossip channels.
The Fabulous Failures of Jimmy Swaggart and John Hagee are two TV Preachers that had very different outcomes of their failures. Oh, they both preach, but one has a restored reputation and one is still seen as a shell of who they could and would have been. John Hagee has gone through redemption and has renewed his sense of holy obligation for the family of God. While he has failed he learned from that failure and has moved forward. That is what we have to do if we are to become new creations in God.
So then how do we become a different person? Paul says that this is the method : So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: “Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life - and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”
We can be renewed by our failures - if we use them as learning tools that can inform and transform the thoughts and habits we have. Paul is speaking of the way that God seeks our maturing and building up so that we can become the fullness of who we were designed to be. That will never occur if we sit in victimization, hurt, or entitlement. God has a great plan to turn those times that we fail into a new and powerful promise of the future.
This week will you join me in learning and renewing yourself in the failures that you have seen? Will you join me in renewing your mind with the greatness that God can teach you? If so, move forward and quit looking back with regret rather than lenses of the lessons.
Blessings,
Pastor Greg
I confess that the other day I watched the Britney special and had to feel sorry for her. She is trapped in a place where no matter what happens in her life it is in a tighter glass bowl than any person should have to withstand. If 50 cars a day followed you everywhere you would have a lot of stuff in the news as well. We have the luxury that our whole lives are not on the news/gossip channels.
The Fabulous Failures of Jimmy Swaggart and John Hagee are two TV Preachers that had very different outcomes of their failures. Oh, they both preach, but one has a restored reputation and one is still seen as a shell of who they could and would have been. John Hagee has gone through redemption and has renewed his sense of holy obligation for the family of God. While he has failed he learned from that failure and has moved forward. That is what we have to do if we are to become new creations in God.
So then how do we become a different person? Paul says that this is the method : So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: “Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life - and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”
We can be renewed by our failures - if we use them as learning tools that can inform and transform the thoughts and habits we have. Paul is speaking of the way that God seeks our maturing and building up so that we can become the fullness of who we were designed to be. That will never occur if we sit in victimization, hurt, or entitlement. God has a great plan to turn those times that we fail into a new and powerful promise of the future.
This week will you join me in learning and renewing yourself in the failures that you have seen? Will you join me in renewing your mind with the greatness that God can teach you? If so, move forward and quit looking back with regret rather than lenses of the lessons.
Blessings,
Pastor Greg
posted by Covenant of the Cross at
10:57 AM
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