- Hey guys, it's Chris,
I'm gonna do something a little bit different here.
If you follow me for the funny,
I hope you'll stick around for the inspiration.
I am a self-professed screw-up.
Like many other funny people in the world,
I developed my sense of humor as a coping mechanism
for trauma I experienced throughout my life.
Some of the trauma and hardship I experienced
was at the hands of other people.
A lot of the hardship I've experienced
came as a result of my own poor choices.
So today I wanna talk about reframing your failures.
We all fail.
I've had incredible failures.
I've experienced failures that have literally
altered the course of my life.
And each time I felt like I was at my lowest place,
I would look up and I would cry out to God.
I always thought of the verse, Jeremiah 29:11,
"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord,
"they're plans the prosper you, not to harm you,
"plans to give a hope and a future."
Well, then why am I here?
Why am I going through this?
Why is everything so messed up?
But then I remembered, that's just it.
God has a perfect plan for each one of our life.
However, just as He has a plan for us,
He also gave us free will,
and that free will is often what causes us
to get outside of His plan, off of His path,
into our own plan and on our own path.
And see, my life has been an entire series of events
of me basically trying to walk on God's path
and then taking my eyes off of Jesus,
getting on my own path, falling down,
and then having to make my way back to that point
where I feel like I'm again following the path
that God has laid out for me.
Psalm 1:6 says, "For the Lord watches over
"the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked
"leads to destruction."
Now I don't like to think of myself as a wicked person,
but the simple fact is, whenever we're operating
outside of God's will, outside of His plan,
we are not going to operate in His blessing.
The paths that we take that may look fruitful to us
are ultimately going to lead to destruction.
But here's the great thing: We've all messed up.
We've all had failures.
And God has been there with us
through every single one of them.
Proverbs 5:21 says, "For the Lord sees clearly
"what a man does, examining every path he takes."
Psalm 139:5 says, "You go before me and follow me.
"You place your hand of blessing on my head.
"You go before me and follow me."
He is everywhere.
On every way that you look, God has been there.
Oftentimes, we weren't looking for him
because we had our eyes set on the things
that we were focused on,
on the things that we wanted to achieve, or the things
that were important to us at that time.
For a really long time, I couldn't accept my failures.
They would eat me up, they would just destroy me.
Regret used to cripple me.
Here's the simple truth:
You can't be a different person yesterday.
What you've done is done.
The mistakes that you've made are made,
but you can be a new person today, tomorrow,
and the day after.
You can take the lessons you learned
from the mistakes that you made
and create something better for yourself.
But here's the real beauty with God.
Not only does He want you to move beyond your mistakes
and move beyond your past, He wants to use your past
as a part of your story for the future.
Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that all things work together
"for good to those who love God,
"to those who are called according to His purpose."
Just as Joseph who, some 20 years earlier,
was thrown in a pit by his own brothers, by his own family,
would later go on to tell them,
"You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good.
"He brought me to this position
"so that I could save the lives of many people."
You, too, are now called to take those bad experiences,
those failures, those mistakes, those pains,
those heartaches, and use that in your life
to bless and help bring other people
out of their dark places.
I remember in the midst of one of my greatest failures,
I cried out to God and I said,
I said, "God I get it.
"I made a mistake.
"There's a lesson that I'm meant to learn here.
"But I promise you, I would have learned it
"without having to fall this hard, I promise.
"Really, you could have taken it easy on me."
And God told me very clearly in my spirit,
"It's not about the lesson I needed you to learn.
"It's about the lesson I need you to teach."
You see, the greatest teacher in life is experience,
real, true, genuine experience.
So as you think about the failures in your life,
think about the people that you love.
For me, I have children,
and I think, okay, I wish I didn't have to go through this.
I wish I had done this better.
The fact is, I didn't do it better.
I went through it.
It's part of me now.
I now have priceless experience.
I have now been through the flames.
I have now been through the worst,
and I can hopefully impart some wisdom, some knowledge
into my children and help them avoid
ever making the same mistake that I did,
and hopefully help prevent them from experiencing
the same kind of pain and hardship that I did.
That, for me, makes everything I've done,
every regret I have,
if it somehow helps spare my children,
it's worth it.
So as you think about your own failures,
maybe it could be the loss of a job.
Maybe it could be broken relationships.
Maybe it could be regrets
of things that you never accomplished,
things that you gave up on.
Maybe dreams that you didn't pursue.
Think about the people that you love.
Think about the people that you care about.
Think about how you can take your experiences
and you can help impact them.
Or maybe, maybe there's gonna come a point in your life
where you're gonna come across somebody
at their lowest point,
going through exactly what you've been through,
and now you have something
that not just anybody else can give them.
You have precious first-hand experience
as to how you not only went through it, but you overcame it,
and that, my friend, means that you can give someone hope.
And there's nothing more powerful than hope.
Reframe your mistakes, reframe your failures.
Think about the way that God can use you
and let Him do the rest.
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