The Right Response to Failure

Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Sunday, our Youth Pastor Josh taught a message on "The Right Response to Failure". Instead of "a live your dreams" or "what your future holds"  type message. (It was Graduation Sunday.)
I got that fortune a few weeks ago while having lunch with my daughter. I thought it was correct. Without failure, you can't have success at all.

Josh said the wrong way to respond to failure is to:

1. Walk away from God
2. Hide your failure
3.Change what you believe

See, when we sin and mess up, we sometimes walk away from God thinking that He couldn't possibly love us because we just messed up. That's so far from the truth.

Nothing you can do will make God love you any less.
Just like nothing you can do will make God love you any more.

Adam and Eve tried to walk away from God and hide. Remember? But God wants a relationship with us, just like He did them. He knows where you are. And He knows what you did.
 But He loves you anyway!

You are fully and unconditionally loved by your Heavenly Father.

Period.

No if's, and's, or but's about it.

Trying to hide what you've done doesn't work because the truth ALWAYS comes out.
It might take a while, but the truth will always prevail!

Then, sometimes, we change what we believe. Josh used the example of sex before marriage. Maybe you were raised to believe you should wait for marriage.

Then you mess up and have sex. Over time, you justify it by saying maybe you thought about it all wrong before and stuff. That's just you changing what you believe so you don't feel so bad about messing up.

Listen, YOU ARE GOING TO MESS UP!

We all are and we all do!

The right way to handle when you mess up is run to God!

God's love is not emotional like our's is. His love is from a blood covenant.

When you fully grasp the reality of His love, you will turn to Him when you mess up.
That's exactly what He wants you to do.