Failure can be devastating! Long after the event, our bad choices and actions can weigh us down and colour our self-image in negative ways. It can be hard to forgive yourself and forget what went wrong.
How does God see your failures?
There are many ways to answer that question, but one of the best comes from the night that Jesus was arrested and crucified.
At nightfall, Jesus took his disciples to a garden east of Jerusalem and asked them to pray for him. However, they fell asleep. When he found them, he said, “Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?” (Matthew 26:40) and urged them to pray for him.
When he came back a second time, instead of finding dedicated, praying disciples, he found his friends sleeping again. This time, Jesus did not wake them. Rather, he let them sleep while he prayed one more time.
With his enemies closing in, Jesus returned to the disciples and said, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look the time is near… Rise, let us go!” (verses 45-46). Those last four words are important!
When Jesus’ friends failed him, he did not say that they were disqualified and could not be his followers anymore. He did not yell and scream or shame them for their lack of discipline. He did not point out every other time they failed to do what they should have done.
Instead, Jesus simply said, “Rise, let us go!” In other words, “You missed that opportunity. It is gone and there is nothing that can be done about that, so get up and do the next thing you can do!”
To be clear, I am not condoning sin or even carelessness. However, it is worth remembering that Jesus knows that we sometimes drop the ball and that we do not always live out of our best intentions. “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (verse 41). Jesus graciously responds to that weakness by saying, “Start over and try again!”. In fact, the Bible has a word for that. It is called repentance.
While we need to learn from past mistakes, it is never helpful to dwell on what cannot be changed. It is much more useful to look forward and make the most of the next opportunity that comes along.
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