KEY PRINCIPLES FROM THIS MESSAGE:
A pastor’s job is to hold up the “mirror”; however, the conviction must come from God the Holy Spirit when YOU look intently, humbly, and honestly at what He reveals to you through His Word.
Sin has the direct result of not only diverting our eyes from Jesus Christ, but ultimately, it becomes a deterrent to endurance. In fact, it is rightly categorized as discouraging to God’s children.
P.G. Muller on Jesus in Hebrew 12:2: “He strode ahead of all believers in faith and led faith to its definitive end.“
Hindsight Is 20/20 – blog 1/29/26
We ought to aspire to do the very best we can, with the very best intentions, and along the way we ought to expect to fail miserably. In the presence of failure, we have two options: wallow in it and be haunted by it for the rest of our lives or learn from it and be sanctified to God’s glory! Our human nature (and others’, too) prefers the prior, while our new nature (along with God) prefers the latter. Same set of circumstances, two very different outcomes! Nothing more than perspective. Paul had this nailed down later on in his life, also.
The very best we can ever ask of ourselves is to make the best decisions we can in the present, exercising integrity to whatever data and knowledge we currently have at our disposal. We cannot look back on our lives with debilitating disgust after we’ve learned wisdom from God’s Word. What we must remember is, in that moment, we did the best we could. God sees the heart, remember. While we’re always responsible for our failures, God is merciful to the ignorant and immature.
My encouragement here is to do as Paul wrote, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead” (Philippians 3:13b). I’m not suggesting you don’t learn from your mistakes – that’d be a huge missed opportunity for you. What I’m saying is that you mustn’t allow past failures to cripple your future.
Your past does not define who you are – God does. You are not the sum of your mistakes, my friend. You are the sum of God’s work in you. Remember even your mistakes were ordained by God. Sure, you suffer for them, but God’s ways include you bringing glory to Him, to His good pleasure, despite your failures.