Epic Fail

You and I have something in common. We fail. We make mistakes. We blow it. And sometimes our mistakes are no big deal. So you burn the popcorn or you forget to pick up the milk on the way home. Other times our mistakes cause a great deal of pain to ourselves and to those that we care about. I'm encouraged by the truth that we can grow from failure, that our failures don't have to have the last word, but can actually pave the way to future success. We can decide that we will not simply fail, but that we will fail forward. I think about two important characters in the New Testament. I think about Judas Iscariot and I think about Simon Peter. They had so much in common. They both knew Jesus. They both learned personally from Jesus and they were both part of his exclusive internship program. And they both also, they knew the pain of failure, terrible failure. Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. At about that same time, Peter also betrayed his savior. He denied Jesus three times. And both of them were heart-broken. But it is as this point in the story that their stories diverge. Its an important difference between Judas and Peter. Judas chose to lock in his failure. He took his own life. He gave up on the future, he lost hope. Peter, on the other hand, hung on, believed that there was something possible in the future and because of the forgiveness of Jesus, Peter became a key leader in the early church. That's good news. We can be encouraged by the fact that our failures do not have to be final. Power and freedom are released into the life of the believer when we recognized that with Jesus, failure can be a stepping-stone to future success.