Last week in my Digital Art class I talked about the importance of mistakes and failures in the creative process. In fact, in order to truly create you should fail. It’s part of innovating, pushing the boundaries, and exploring the unknown. After you resolve your initial anger, grief, or frustration at the mistake, give yourself the chance to think clearly and proceed productively. You reap the value of mistakes when you reflect and act on the mistake. Ask why it happened. Identify any weak points. View your mistake with a new mindset to discover what it could become or what could be salvaged now, even though it is different than you first intended.
In life just like with art you should give yourself the grace and patience to recover from failure. We all make mistakes, but don’t let them hold you back from growing beyond them. Some failures are unintentional mistakes. You forget something, you misspeak, or you fall short despite sincere effort. Other failures seem right due to ignorance, but later with more knowledge and wisdom you realize you messed up or chose the wrong path. Finally other failures are intentional. You know they are the wrong thing to do, but you defiantly proceed deceiving yourself that the pleasure and payoff are worth the risk. Usually you don’t feel bad about a failure until you suffer its consequences. Typically the stronger the consequence, the more grief you experience. But you are not doomed to wallow in regret. You can learn from mistakes to somewhat heal what’s broken, to receive forgiveness, to become stronger, and to experience victory in the future.
It can be difficult to learn from and recover from ignorant and intentional failures. This is especially true when you fail a lot or you are stuck in a pattern of repeated mistakes. There are some things you can do to help in various situations, but fundamentally you need God’s help. The reality is that you and I have inherited a deadly lifestyle for which their is no cure within ourselves. We tend to choose our own way instead of God’s way. The Bible calls it sin and it can be traced all the way back to the first man and woman, Adam and Eve (Genesis 3). Because of your brokenness, selfishness, and limited understanding you sin. It might seem to work for a season, but actually it dishonors God, hurts others, and enslaves you. In time sin slowly kills you by separating you further and further from God and the love and life only he provides. Just look at our fallen world and you see how true this is. Fortunately, God understands you and your destructive waywardness. Yet amazingly he still loves you. He wants to forgive you, heal you, and free you from your sin and failure. He even wants to restore the harmful impact the sin of others has had on you. He sent Jesus, God the Son, to innocently die on a cross and rise again on your behalf to pay the price for your sin. If you trust and obey Jesus you can experience his joyful, victorious, and everlasting life. But if you reject Jesus you have no hope of defeating sin. Eventually you will be judged. Your desire to live for yourself and not for God will banish you from his presence where there is only torment forever. Don’t go there.
The greatest lesson you can learn from failure is to give it to God and let him redeem it. He promises in all things to work for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28). Your sin nature will fight against turning to God. Typically you will either deny your failure or give up hope that you can change. When in denial you are either blinded to the destructive nature of your failure or you pridefully justify your action. In either case ask God to open your eyes and to break your heart to see if there is any offensive way in you (Psalm 139:23-24). When hopeless you give in to guilt and suffer defeat. You figure since you keep messing up there is no way out. Or given the tragedy of a particular failure you just can’t forgive yourself and you assume that no one else will forgive you either. Stop. Don’t let guilt push you further from God. There is hope. Recognize that guilt is actually meant to turn you to God. Place your guilt, failures, inadequacies, and struggles at the cross of Jesus. Confess your sin, then leave that burden with him. He promises to forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). Then forgive yourself as he has forgiven you and move forward relying on Jesus for victory.
Realize that your victory in Jesus doesn’t mean you won’t still make unintentional mistakes. At times you may even sin. But if you desire to trust and obey Jesus you won’t continue to practice sin or let sin define you. Don’t let Satan use that sin to destroy your joyful fellowship with God. Instead listen to the conviction of God’s Spirit in you and quickly confess your sin and trust God to restore you. None of us are above failure or good enough to save ourselves (Romans 3:10-12, 3:23-26, 6:23). But praise God that he is the master artist who makes no mistakes. He takes you with your failures as a lump of clay and lovingly transforms you into a beautiful vessel with the glorious purpose of serving him and others.
P. S. If you feel defeated right now, you might be encouraged by Lauren Daigle’s song, “Hold on To Me”. You can search for it on YouTube or I put a link to the song on the lightrunner.org website at the end of this blog note.