How to Handle Failure
Big Idea: God understands human failures and sins, offers limitless forgiveness through grace, and transforms sins into growth when confessed and surrendered.
Last week, we discussed our weaknesses - limitations in our lives that are beyond our control. Next week, we'll discuss how to handle temptations, but today I want to focus on a personal and challenging topic: our failures. The things in life that we call mistakes, bad choices, regrets, self-inflicted wounds. The things in life that the Bible calls sin.
As you look around you this morning, we all have something in common – we're all sinners. The only thing that's different is the details. You're a sinner, I'm a sinner. As one person said, in a parody of the self-esteem manual titled I'm OK, You're OK, he said we need to write a book called You're Not OK, and I'm Not OK.
All of us have regrets. The details are different. The degrees are different. Whether or not others know the details is different. But we're all in the same boat – our natures are identical. There is not much difference between us. You and I look pretty good to each other. But if you got past the façade in my life, you'd find some pretty ugly things. If I managed to get past the façade in your life, I'd probably be surprised at what I found.
C.S. Lewis compared himself to a fellow patient who, having arrived earlier, can offer helpful advice. If we handed out paper for you to anonymously list your current and past failures, reading those notes aloud in this church would reveal a fascinating collection of sins. If we could display our life's failures on a screen, we would feel shocked by their number and relieved to know we're not alone in our struggles.
Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The human heart is most deceitful and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?" Everyone in this room has either a hidden sin or a regrettable past decision. Thomas Aquinas once said, "The act of sin may pass, and yet the guilt remains." The Bible says in Psalm 38:4: "My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear."
This morning, I would surmise that we are all experts at failure. We all have secrets and regrets – current and past – with which we have to deal. I'd like to help you become an expert in dealing with failure. This is an area of expertise that you and I are going to use over and over and over again. So I'd like this morning to give you four steps to expertly deal with failure. When a truck carrying hazardous materials tips over, specialized crews can arrive within minutes to clean up the waste.
Four Steps to Handle Failure
I'd like to give you four steps this morning that you can take to deal with the hazardous waste in your life. They're not magical steps, but rather, they're biblical principles on how to handle failure.
Accept that God understands your failure.
Coping with failure is tough, especially if you feel like you're alone and that no one understands your struggles. The fact is, you're right – other people might be surprised by the failures in your life, but God isn't. Psalm 103:13-14 says: "The LORD is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. For he understands how weak we are; he knows we are only dust."
When God looks at your life and sees your failures, he's not surprised. He remembers what you're made of. He knows that you've inherited a sinful nature. God isn't shocked in the least by the failures in your life! In fact, based on the people God tends to use, I'd say that he more than understands failures – he uses them! He took a habitual liar and made him the father of Israel. He appointed a violent murderer to lead Israel through the desert for forty years. He called an adulterer and murderer a man after his own heart. Jesus chose an outspoken individual and made him the rock upon which he built the church. It's pretty hard to find anyone that God used in a powerful way who didn't fail in a dramatic fashion. And God not only isn't surprised, God is actually a specialist in using broken people to accomplish his purposes.
I remember as a teenager wrestling with an area of sin in my life. I became convinced that I was alone in my sin. Nobody else would understand, I thought, and certainly not God. I finally mustered the courage to discuss my failure with my friends and found out they also faced similar struggles. And I remember discovering that not only did other people understand, God understood too. John 224-25 says: "But Jesus didn't trust them, because he knew what people were really like. No one needed to tell him about human nature."
Listen: God is never surprised by your failures. He knows them better than you know them. He saw them coming long before they happened. What an amazing fact: that God understands your failures and sins, no matter how severe they may be! That's the first step in dealing with your weakness. Accept that God understands your failure.
Believe that God's love and forgiveness can handle your failures.
Believe that no matter how big or severe your sins and failures are, God's love and forgiveness can handle it. Isaiah 1:18 says:
"Come now; let us argue this out," says the LORD. "No matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can remove it. I can make you as clean as freshly fallen snow. Even if you are stained as red as crimson, I can make you as white as wool."
The picture is of God as the expert dry-cleaner of souls. No matter how stained your soul may be with failure, there is no mistake so severe that God can't erase it from your record. Not only does God obliterate the stain, he obliterates the record. Romans 5:20 says: "But where sin increased, grace increased all the more." This could literally be translated, "Where sin is present, God's grace and forgiveness are even more present." The more we sin, the more God shows us his kindness and forgiveness. God's love and forgiveness can handle your failures and more.
Theologian Karl Barth was asked what he would say to Adolf Hitler, and he replied, "Jesus Christ died for your sins." Ron Nikkel, leader of Prison Fellowship International, gives a message to prisoners in which he says:
We don't know who will make it into heaven. Jesus indicated a lot of people will face surprises: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven." But we do know that some thieves and murderers will be there. Jesus promised heaven to the thief on the cross, and the apostle Paul was an accomplice to murder." Grace has no limit! We never have to worry that our sins are too great!
Paul wrote:
Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst. (1 Timothy 1:13-15)
One of the devil's most dangerous lies is that our sins are too great for God's grace. Let me tell you this morning – God's grace has no limits! No matter your past sins, God's grace can cover them all.
Edwin Lutzer wrote:
Christ's death on the cross included a sacrifice for all our sins, past, present, and future. Every sin that you will ever commit has already been paid for. There is no sin you will ever commit which has not already been included in Christ's death...
The greatest blunder of Christians is not their failure when trying to live for Christ; a greater mistake is that they do not understand God’s provision for sin, defeat, and guilt. We are successful to the extent that we understand God’s remedy for failure.
This morning, I’m inviting you to realize that God can handle your failures. I don’t know what they are, but God does. I might be surprised at what you’ve done, but God isn’t. He knows, and his love and forgiveness can handle anything you’ve done – no exceptions. God’s forgiveness is as good for big sins as it is for small ones. Step one is to accept the fact that God understands your failures. Step two is to believe that God’s love and forgiveness can handle your failures.
Confess your failure to God.
1 John 1:8-9 says, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."
The word "confess" carries the meaning of agreeing with God and admitting our failures. The minute we come and confess our sins to God, what we’re doing is agreeing with him about our true condition. And at that point, God says, “I’ll forgive you. I’ll never let you down in this respect. Time after time, when you confess your sins to me, I’ll forgive you and purify you time after time.”
Some of you have never done this. Perhaps you view God as some ogre who can’t wait to slam his fist down on you in condemnation. The fact is that God isn’t surprised by your failures. God’s grace and forgiveness are big enough to deal with your failures, and God has promised that if you come to him and say, “I can’t do it on my own. I lead a very imperfect life. I know I’m not good enough. But I realize that you’re offering me forgiveness as I confess my failures and follow your son Jesus.” If you come to him, God can forgive your failures, no matter how severe they may be. Some of you think that God’s tired of you, but God never becomes weary of hearing us confess our sins. You might get tired of confessing them, but God never tires of hearing them confessed and forgiving you.
Isaiah 44:22 says: "I have swept away your sins like the morning mists. I have scattered your offenses like the clouds. Oh, return to me, for I have paid the price to set you free." Listen this morning: God is not angry with you. He is not displeased with you if you depend solely on the death and life of Christ for your acceptance.
If Christ has paid the penalty for all your failures, why should you add continual regret to his work? Acknowledge that God comprehends your sins. Believe that God’s love and forgiveness can handle your failures, and confess them to God. I can tell you how liberating it is to experience God’s forgiveness on a fresh and continual basis. Every day as I confess my sins, it’s as if I’m given a fresh and complete start. That’s God’s nature. It’s his promise. It doesn’t mean that there won’t be natural consequences to your failures: there always are. But it does mean that if we confess our failures, God will never hold them against us.
Determine what God wants to accomplish through your failure.
You’re going to say, “What are you talking about? How can God achieve anything through my failures?" But what you don’t realize is that God is able to use our weaknesses, mistakes, and sins. He is a specialist who is able to work even our failures into his plans.
Gordon MacDonald, who has experienced significant failure himself, notes, “Broken-world experiences are usually the turnaround moments ushering people into greater and more powerful performances of character, courage, and achievement.”
A football coach said of his team, “We learn almost nothing in victory; but we learn much in defeat.” Moses was connected, educated, and talented, but he only became useful to God after experiencing a breakdown and rebuilding in his life. “In pain, failure, and brokenness, God does his finest work in the lives of people," says Gordon MacDonald. God never wastes a hurt, and he never wastes a failure. He wants to take even your failures and turn them into something beautiful in your life.
God understands your failures. His love and forgiveness are big enough to handle your failures, and more. He invites us to confess our sins and to even grow as a result of the failures in your life.
I imagined what would happen if everyone here wrote down their sins and failures on a piece of paper and submitted them. But I’ll tell you what happened here a couple of weeks ago at a concert of prayer. On that day, we wrote down our failures and took turns placing the list in the shredder at the front of the platform. I read the verse pronouncing God’s forgiveness, and we sang a verse from an old hymn:
My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought,
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
And then we moved on. I want you to take your greatest failure in life. I’d like you this morning to close your eyes and bring it to God – to confess it to him. And then I want you to claim Christ’s promise of forgiveness. Shred that failure in your mind – it’s gone forever. "As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12). And I’d like the privilege of announcing Christ’s forgiveness this morning for the worst thing that you’ve ever done.
Father: Corrie Ten Boom once said, "When we confess our sins, God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever. Then God places a sign out there that says, 'No Fishing Allowed.'"
As we come to you this morning, we confess our sins. We give you our greatest failures, and our deepest regrets, and we claim your promise to take them and cast them into the deepest ocean. Remove them from us as far as the east is from the west. No matter how deep the stain is of our sins, remove it. Obliterate the record of past wrongs and make us pure before you, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
