I Wish Life Had a Rewind Button
Thursday, November 11th, 2010The audio portion of this broadcast is no longer available on-line.
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Send to friendWhen I go to the studio to record my radio programs, I take advantage of this wonderful technology that allows me to correct any mistake I make. Anytime I bobble a word, I just stop and back up and start again. Then my engineer can edit out all those bobbles and you never hear them. We call them "out-takes."
I've often thought how nice it would be if life gave me the luxury of "out-takes." Then, any time I said something I wish I hadn't said, I could just stop the tape, rewind it and do it right, and those poor word choices would never be heard. Or any time I made a bad decision, I could just delete it like I do on my computer. One zap of the delete button, and that bad decision with all its after-effects is gone forever!
Some of you would like to rewind your life and change some poor choices you've made. Perhaps choices of mates, or friends, or jobs which have proven to be hurtful and difficult. Some of you would like to rewind your life and eliminate years of sin and rebellion, when you "did your own thing" and suffered the consequences of it.
If my life had a rewind button, I'd be a better mother than I was. I'd manage my money much better. I'd eliminate a lot of wasted time I spent on things that weren't really important. Oh, I can think of so many things I'd do better if my life had a rewind button.
You know, it's very important that we all recognize our mistakes and learn from them. But when we live in regret, frequently wishing and dreaming of what might have been, we know we're headed down the wrong road.
How many times have you asked God to forgive you for the same sin? He knows our frame and remembers that we are dust, and so He gives us many second chances. That, of course, does not mean we will not have to suffer the consequences of our sin. Sin always brings its aftermath and God doesn't deliver us from that. But He can deliver us from guilt and He makes it possible for us to start over again with a clean slate.
Although life doesn't have a rewind button, we have a God of second chances, and therefore, whatever regrets we may have, we can, because of God's astonishing grace, live free from regret. I want to give you some practical suggestions on how you can recover from failure, even though you can't backspace and strike over! Even though life has no rewind button!
In order to recover from failure, step one is to admit we've failed. For many this is the hardest thing to do, but until we admit our failures without excuses, we won't be able to find our way back.
What's your first reaction when you know you've failed? I can tell you what mine is–I want to run away. I don't want to face it, I want to forget it or ignore it. Now, I imagine that's a common reaction for most of us.
And then, along with the run-away reaction, my tendency is to rationalize and excuse my failure. It's amazing how good I am at finding ways to escape from blame when I've failed. You know, it's very common to hear people these days blaming all their failures on others. It's become popular to nail our parents as the cause of our failures, or our social status, or our bad breaks. Oh, we can find lots of scape-goats, when we're forced to acknowledge that we've failed. But as long as we refuse to take the responsibility and be held accountable for our failures, we will be unable to recover from them.
Let me encourage you to simply admit to God that you've failed. And when you do, leave off all the qualifying phrases that usually follow. You know what I mean: "I failed in that relationship, but if he had just tried to understand me, we could have worked it out." Or, "I failed to show the love of Christ to that difficult coworker, but believe me, I'm nicer to her than most people. No one can get along with her." Leave off the phrases that start with "but," and just admit you've failed.
That's called confession. While it may be true that other people promoted or contributed to our failure through failures of their own, you and I can only confess for ourselves, and until we are willing to be accountable for our failures, we'll never recover from them.
When you've truly confessed your failure to God with a repentant heart and found His forgiveness (as of course you will), then ask Him if there is someone else to whom you must admit your failure and/or ask for forgiveness.
This is hard to do, I know, but it is really a necessary step in recovering from failure. But let me say this: It's not nearly as difficult as it seems. The decision is the hard part. Satan wants to keep us from finding healing, and so I'm convinced he puts this terror in our hearts about going to someone and confessing our failure. You will be amazed at the great freedom and relief that will flood your heart and mind once you've confessed your failure to God and to any others where necessary.
Then analyze your failure so you can learn from it. Was the failure one that you could see coming, or did it take you by surprise? For example, you may have failed in your moral behavior because you allowed yourself to get involved in a relationship that you knew from the beginning was not right. Or you started lowering your standards one by one, little by little, until you found yourself in moral failure. That's a failure that could have been foreseen.
In this type of failure, we need to retrace our steps and discover precisely where we made the first mistake that led to the failure. What was the first standard we lowered? What are the biblical principles we ignored? In this way, we can very precisely confess our failures to God, and know exactly where we need to fortify our lives to prevent that same pattern from occurring again.
Perhaps, however, your failure really was not something you saw coming. You thought you were doing the right thing, you didn't see the dangers, and the failure took you by surprise, so to speak. It's important you understand how it could have taken you unaware. Where were you deceived? What wisdom did you lack? Did you seek adequate and appropriate counsel? Were you too hasty? Those kinds of questions will uncover many things about how you failed which will help you to avoid those mistakes in the future. Failure can indeed be the backdoor to success.
Are you trying to recover from failure? It may be that you are wasting a lot of time and energy beating yourself over the head, feeling guilty, wallowing in regret instead of learning from your failures and moving forward. God does not want you to live in regret, and though our lives do not have rewind buttons, we have a God of grace who is able to help us recover and go forward.
Once you've faced the failure, confessed it as your own, and tried to analyze the steps which led to that failure, then the next step is to understand that Jesus has the power and the desire to redeem you from that failure and from living in regret. It might be good to memorize Philippians 3:13-14:
But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
I believe one of our enemy's most effective weapons against us is to keep us totally bound by our past failures. Even when we've asked for forgiveness and know God has forgiven us; even when we've made the changes God requires of us and been obedient; even when it happened long ago and everyone else has forgotten, we often are still remembering our failures and unable to recover from them as a result.
Is that where you are today? If God can and has forgiven you and is no longer condemning you for your past failures, what right do you have not to forgive yourself? Is that not an arrogant attitude? After all, what did you expect from yourself ? Did you forget that you were born in sin and have a sin nature within you that wants to do its own thing all the time? Did you think you were different from the rest of us and should be able to make it through life without failing?
I'm coming to the place where my failures don't surprise me any longer. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm not grieved by my failures nor that I take them lightly. Quite the opposite. But the more I get to know Jesus, the more I see that in myself I am totally unreliable and prone to fail.
However, the great and wonderful news is that because of Jesus, I can be victorious. I can have His power in me, giving me the desire to do what's right and making it possible for me to do it. But Jesus is the only answer. I just have to throw myself on Him and tell Him what He already knows: I'm weak and on my own, I'm going to fail all over the place. However, by allowing Him to live His life through me, I can be victorious.
My dear friend, there is hope for you today. Don't give up and don't live in regret. God has something better for you.
As I talk to people all across the country and read the letters they write me, one of the recurring themes I hear is regret from past failures. Oh, how we wish we could rewind our lives and start over again and do it right. But you know what–even if we could, we'd just make other mistakes. There's no denying the fact that we are prone to wander, as the old hymn puts it, and we have no option but to throw ourselves on the mercy and grace of our forgiving God.
Can you see that admitting we have failed and knowing how likely it is we'll fail again drives us back to the one person who can keep us from failing? It's one of those paradoxes of Scripture: When I learn what a failure I am in myself, then I am forced to put my life in the hands of Jesus, who can strengthen me so that I can recover from past failures and avoid future ones.
You'll never recover from failure until you come as a child to Jesus, not only confessing and repenting, but totally committing yourself to Him. What does that mean? It means you're going to spend lots of time getting to know Him; it means prayer and God's Word will be integral parts of your life, your highest priorities; it means you will daily give over the rights of your life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, so that His power can work in you. You really cannot recover from failure without Him in control of your life.
Believe me, I'm living proof of that, as there have been many failures in my life, failures that are considered by some to be fatal. But not by God. He loves to demonstrate His power through weak vessels. I can say with the Psalmist:
You have turned my wailing into dancing; you have removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks forever. (Psalm 30:11-12)
