Failing Forward

That is the name of our series in the biblical book of 2 Corinthians this fall. Good morning. My name's René. Super glad to have you with us. Well, the other day, our oldest son, Jonathan, sent me a link to a half hour collection of actual TV news bloopers. Here is just a 60 second preview. Watch this. Little did their neighbors know that in this quiet corner, this quite pretty little corner in the Kent countryside, the cottage just over my shoulder is where-- You know, on the lighter side though, Dave, I really appreciate, Dave gave me a mug like this. Did I just do that on here? I didn't know it had anything in it. But he's a man in form. He was man of the match here at the Community Shield game match. Now that's the kind of thing that never happens to you in live television.

All right, well, Utah baseball took its lumps in its first few years in the Pac-12, which historically is one of the best baseball conferences in the nation. Oops. Sorry. Welcome to YouTube. That's gonna make somebody's something. Yeah, like maybe somebody's sermon. You know, my point is this. These are highly paid, trained professionals, and yet they still make mistakes. The point is this, everybody fails. Would you agree with that? We all make mistakes. In fact, here's the truth. You have failed many times in your past. You are failing right now at something in your present, and you will fail many times in your future. Thus endeth the encouraging lesson for today. Let's close in a word of prayer, right?

Now, my point is the question is not, will you or I ever fail in life? We will make mistakes. We will even have moral failures and ethical failures. The question is, how will you handle failure? That right there, your answer to this question is the key to really living an undaunted life in the face of your own failures. I've been reading a great book by John Maxwell called "Failing Forward," and I thought, what a great title for the message today, because that's exactly what we're going to be talking about. As we continue our series in 2 Corinthians, we'll be in chapter seven. I love this because chapter seven is all about how we can fail, not backward, but how we can fail forward.

This section is so great on this, and it's part of my own story. I'll never forget. When I was a teenager, I confessed to my own stepdad, Jet Turner, who was a pastor himself, a sin that I'd been struggling with. I'd said something to somebody in a fit of bad temper, and I just could not get over the regret. It had crushed this person, and I was as miserable about it. And so my stepdad says, "Well, René, have you confessed this to God?" And I said, "Yes, Dad, of course." In fact, I keep confessing it over and over and over again. It's like I'm consumed by regret over what I did. I'm just stuck. And he says, "René, I want you to look up a Bible verse." And this is what was so genius, honestly, about the way he always counseled me. He would never just give me the answer. He would say, "Here's a Bible, René. I want you to look up a verse, and then you tell me what you think the Bible is teaching on this topic." He did that every time.

So he says, "I want you to look up 2 Corinthians chapter seven, verse 10." This verse you see on your screens here. "And I want you to read this out loud to me," he said. "And so I did, and this verse changed the way I view failure." Now, it's a lesson I'm still learning, but this was transformative for me, and it happens to be the key verse in the section of 2 Corinthians that we look at today. So let's do what I did with my stepdad years ago as a teenager, and let's read this verse out loud together, okay? Wherever you're joining us from, just read this out loud with me. Here we go. "Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves," what? "No regret, but worldly sorrow brings death." Paul's saying there's two different kinds of sorrow that you can have when you mess up. There's godly sorrow that actually gets somewhere, and there's worldly sorrow that's full of lasting regret and just leads to death.

Paul's saying there are two alternatives, really, when I fail, break down or break through. Now, how would you like to have a breakthrough in some area where you've just been feeling regret right now? It's so easy for us to think that when I blow it, what God wants for me is just to be miserable with lasting remorse and keep telling myself over and over again, "Why did you do that? You're such a stupid failure." But Paul's saying that's not what God wants for you. God doesn't want you to live in lasting regret at all. That's worldly sorrow that leads to breakdown and death. Godly sorrow does not leave any regret and leads to breakthrough, salvation, and life. So how would you love to have a breakthrough right now in some areas where you've been feeling nothing but regret in your life? Let's get there today.

Here's the background to this text, the Corinthians, the first century Christians here in the city of Corinth, they were a mess. They had failed in some spectacular ways, morally, theologically, relationally. We find out in 1 Corinthians, they were getting drunk on communion wine in church services. They were viciously suing and slandering each other, being very, very divisive somewhere, sexually immoral in ways that were even raising the eyebrows of the pagans. And so Paul had written them a corrective letter and now he follows up with this letter that we've been studying. And we don't know many more details on that. That's good because that means we can all apply this to our own sins and failures.

And we can see in Paul's response to them two things. How can I help others fail forward? And how can I fail forward? First, how do I help others fail forward when I see that they are messing up? This is super important because my response can either help things or can absolutely make things worse if I'm not careful, right? So what do we see Paul doing here? First, you start positively. You start positive. This is very important. If you are going to talk about what is wrong, start out with what is right. Look at what the apostle Paul does here, verses three and four. I do not say these things to condemn you. He's not interested in just condemning them. I've said before that you have such a place in our hearts that we would live or die with you. He's saying, people, we're not gonna abandon you. We are in this together for the long run.

Now he says, I have spoken to you with great frankness. Yes, I've been very candid about where I think that you guys need to shape up, but I also have great confidence and not just confidence, great confidence. I'm greatly encouraged, not just encouraged, greatly encouraged in all our troubles. My joy knows no bounds because I'm not just joyful. I have boundless joy because of you. Isn't that fascinating Paul's candor, his frankness about where they need to improve? It is matched by confidence and encouragement and joy that he just radiates toward them. Here's my question for you. And I want you to think about this here. Toward your children or your spouse or the people in your life. What do you radiate? Do you radiate a spirit of criticism and correction? Or do you radiate frankness? Yes. And also confidence and encouragement and joy. That is how you are going to really help people change. Tell them you're confident in their future.

Now I know this is not easy when somebody has just messed up. You know, last weekend, the NBA Finals ended, unfortunately with the Lakers winning, but I don't want to talk about that now. And a player named Jimmy Butler who plays for Miami, although his team lost, his performance was so great in the NBA Finals this year that all the sports commentators are saying he has basically assured his own legend as an NBA superstar. And yet, if you remember his rookie season, and it was terrible, he averaged just 2.6 points per game. If you had looked at him then, you would never guess the superstar player that he would become, but his past has not determined his future. My point is this, you can't look at one player, one game, or even one season and conclude what kind of player somebody is going to be. And this is exactly what Paul is saying to these Corinthians. He's saying, yes, you messed up this season, but I have great confidence in you.

This idea of starting positively and staying positive is so important that I'm gonna return, I'm gonna circle back to this in just a minute. But first, you start positive. Second, share personally. Share personally. Famous psychologist, Eric Fromm, once wrote something that I read, and it really changed the way that I communicate. He said, "A flawless way to get people to open up to you is to open up to them." You reveal feelings inside your own heart. And this is exactly what Paul does. And this is so winsome in verses five through seven. He says, "For when we came into Macedonia, we had no rest. We were harassed at every turn. We felt conflicts on the outside and fears within." He's not trying to puff himself up. He's being very self-deprecating there. He says, "But God who comforts the downcast like us, we were downcast, we were depressed, comforted us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming, but also by the comfort that you had given him."

He told us about your longing for me, your deep sorrow, your ardent concern for me, so my joy was greater than ever. Do you see what's happening here? First of all, Paul is talking about his own feelings and his own weaknesses, and that he is also not just putting down and criticizing the Corinthians. He's also pointing out the things that they did right, that they were empathetic for him. Isn't that fascinating? He's not just like a dog owner that points down to the ground and says to the dog, "Look at what you just did." Paul doesn't say that to... Look at what you just did. He says, "I wanna show you your future because you guys have a lot of potential. You guys did some great things for me. I love you. You give me a lot of joy." He is doing basically what marriage counselors call sharing I messages, not just you did this, you did that, you, you, you. Here's how I felt. Here's how you made me feel. I felt upset. I felt worried.

So can you do that with people in your life that you're trying to help? For instance, your teenager breaks curfew instead of you are so busted, Mr. Let me just tell you what's gonna happen to you because you broke curfew. No, say, I was worried. I felt scared because let me tell you something that happened to me that was terrible one day when I broke curfew. And this is why I felt so scared for you. So how do you help somebody fail forward? You start and stay positive. You share personally and then you speak truthfully. You gotta be truthful. You do not love somebody if you hide the truth from them. One of my pastoral mentors from Peninsula Bible Church, Ray Steadman once said, "We often let people go on and on in a destructive path because we say we love them too much to hurt them, but I do not know anything more self-deceptive than that statement."

It is true that we don't wanna hurt someone, but you know who that someone is? It's us. We don't wanna hurt ourselves. We know that if we say these things to this person, he's gonna get angry at us, that'll hurt us, and that is what we are avoiding. Well, Paul definitely does not avoid some short-term pain to get long-term gain in this relationship. He says, "Watch this, even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it, I see that my letter hurt you, but that's not what he was going through, but only for a little while. Yet now," he says, "I am happy. Watch this, not because you were made sorry." Now press pause here in just a second. Are you getting this? Just look at these words for a minute. He's saying, "I'm not happy that you were sorry." The Corinthians feeling sorry for what they did was not Paul's endgame. His endgame was not for them to feel hurt. The endgame was for them to change.

"I am happy because your sorrow led you to repentance." For, he says, "You became sorrowful as God intended with godly sorrow that was productive that went somewhere. And so in the end, you were not harmed by us in any way." Are you seeing how completely counter-cultural right now? This approach is for us in our culture. We are in what some people have called a cancel culture. In other words, if you blow it, if you hurt me, if you say something that I disagree with, that I want you to become sorrowful, actually I want to harm you. I'm gonna cancel you, I'm gonna ruin your business. I'm gonna hope you feel terrible about this forever. That's not what Paul says to the Corinthians even though they had hurt him with their slander. But Christians say this, "I do not want to destroy my enemy. I wanna transform my enemy by loving my enemy." That's a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. Do you agree with that?

This is exactly what the Apostle Paul is doing here and this would be so revolutionary for our culture if people actually practiced this today. So be patient. Keep developing the relationship. Keep the lines of communication open. Keep loving. That is how to help others fail forward. Okay, now that's great. But what about myself? This is how to help others fail forward. How do I fail forward? That's a little bit more complicated, isn't it? I saw this Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. Calvin brags to his tiger Hobbes, "You know, I thrive on change." And Hobbes says, "You, you threw a fit this morning because your mom put less jelly on your toast than yesterday." And Calvin says, "Well, I thrive on making other people change." And that's how we can feel sometimes. I love helping other people change. I know a lot of pastors who became pastors because they love to point out how other people need to change and maybe you feel the same way too. It's kind of like a delightful hobby, right? But myself changing, that's where I get sensitive. That's where I get defensive. That's a whole nother matter.

Now we need to learn how I can change myself, how I can fail forward and that circles us back to verse 10, our key verse. And I really want to dig into this, this word repentance. What do you think repentance means? Well, watch this, in the original Greek, it means changing my mind, changing my orientation, my way of thinking, what I dwell on. My mental focus is turning from my sin toward God and his grace. When I first learned in that car, when my stepdad had me read verse 10 out loud, when I first learned that this was the definition of repentance, I realized a few things. First of all, I realized that a lot of what we imagine as repentance is not repentance at all. What we imagine repentance to be is something like an obsessive regret. Why do I do such stupid stuff? That's not changing what you think. That's just beating yourself up. You're thinking about the exact same thing, your sin only a negative way maybe instead of a positive way. But it's not changing your thinking or your direction at all.

Stop thinking that the guiltier you feel, the more spiritual you are, you know? God has some of you watching today, just so you can hear this. Jesus was crucified for you. So you can stop crucifying yourself. Dwelling on regret is not repentance. It is worldly sorrow that leads back to death. Paul says real repentance leads to salvation, leads to life. And if the difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow isn't clear to you yet, let me try to explain it a couple of different ways. Let me explain it first with this chart that's also in your notes. Failing backward is what I call worldly sorrow. Failing forward, that's godly sorrow. Failing backward, worldly sorrow involves blaming, defensiveness, deflecting, it's my wife's fault, my husband's fault, my kids, my parents, the pressure I'm under, the way I was raised, and obsessing on your behavior as we've been talking about. Why did I do that? You get stuck in self-focus. It's not god-focus. It's still just, you're just as self-focused as you were when you were sinning. You're just stuck in shame. And of course that leads to relapsing because you will move toward whatever it is that you focus on. You end up feeling so terrible that you self-medicate with the same exact terrible thing that you feel so terrible about. That's worldly sorrow that leads to death, falling backward.

Godly sorrow, failing forward instead of blaming, you are owning it. Taking responsibility, saying, yep, this is my fault, my responsibility, I'm gonna deal with this. And instead of obsessing, you are confessing the exact nature of your wrongs to somebody else and to God. And instead of relapsing, you are learning. You're growing. You're moving forward. This is how godly sorrow leads to life. And you see the Corinthians doing this exact thing in the next verse, verse 11. Paul says, see what this godly sorrow has produced in you. Now look at that. Godly sorrow is productive. You know, it doesn't leave you stuck. See what it has produced in you. What earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves. Now stop there for a second because in English, you want to clear yourselves, kind of has the implication of you're trying to exonerate yourself and get out of responsibility. That's not what this means in the Greek at all. It means more like you want to clear the air, you want to keep the communication going, you want to get to the bottom of this.

He says, what indignation this has produced in you. What alarm? You know, they're taking this seriously. What longing, they want to do something about it. What concern, concern for the relationship. What readiness to see justice done. They are ready to take positive steps. I love that word readiness. They're ready to work on it. They're teachable. They want to take this bad thing and move forward. Now listen, if your attention has been divided up to this moment, like you're over in the kitchen making coffee or something like that, I want you to focus on something for just a second because here is the sermon in a sentence. I want to give you a sentence that's really one question that I learned from my friend, Pastor Ray Johnston. One question that really has the power to change the rest of your life. This one question is so important that it should be the primary question asked by every single parent of every teenager. This question is so important, it should be the primary question asked by any person who's discouraged by his or her marriage. This question is for everyone feeling discouraged about themselves. This one question is for everybody wanting to change their lives, wanting to stop an addiction, wanting to get healthy, wanting to change their attitude. This one question can turn into a frame of reference for how you see everything in life. It is that paradigm shifting. And once it does, by becoming a habitual way that you look at every failure, every challenge, this one question also makes you into the encourager that other people need in their life. This question makes you into the spouse that everybody wishes they were married to. It makes you into the parent that every kid wishes they had. It makes you into the friend, the boss, the leader, the teacher that everybody longs for. And here it is. Wouldn't you love to know what it is? The question is this, what can this become? Not what just happened, but what comes next? What can this become?

And where do we learn this question? Well, Jesus. Think about it. One day, Jesus looked at some young inexperienced people and made an astounding statement to people who really had not ever shown any potential. He said, "Follow me and I will make you into fishers of men." And those rejects ended up changing the world. I mean, when he said this, it's not like any of those original disciples were exactly first round draft picks, right? I mean, he had Peter whose mouth was always open and his foot was always in it. He had Thomas who greeted every new opportunity with, "Well, I doubt it." And so on, but the risen Jesus met them and they changed the world. And later the risen Jesus met Paul. When Paul was a persecutor of Christians, but when Jesus met Paul, did he say a word to Paul about his past and about his failures? No, what did Jesus say to the apostle Paul? "Let me tell you what you will become." He said, "You, you Paul, you are my chosen instrument to bring my name to the Gentiles and their kings." And Paul changed the world.

And then this is how Paul in turn treats other people like the Corinthians here in our text. They were a mess. But he says, "Let me tell you, I've got great confidence in you. Let me tell you what you'll become." And guess what? They did become a great church. We know this from history. Listen, here's the point. If you picture God as constantly saying to you, you know, "Look what you just did. Look at the mess you just made on the rug." That's not what God's saying to you. God is saying, "Let's talk about what you can become by my grace." That's what the cross of Christ is all about. And Jesus' resurrection to new life, it means I can die to my old life and be raised to newness of life. That changes everything.

Now you say, "Well, that's great kind of theoretically." But what does this kind of repentance look like in real life today? Well, check this out. Each week in this series, I am interviewing another undaunted person. And this week I did a Zoom chat with Natalie Bradley, who's one of our recovery ministry leaders here at TLC. And I want you to listen to her story. I grew up in a Christian home and I went to a Christian school, kindergarten, all the way through college. And I was really surrounded by the Bible and Christian people. And I loved God. I accepted the Lord into my life when I was six. My family dynamic, there were a lot of secrets. And with those secrets, I started to find ways to numb or to cope with the reality 'cause reality was a little too scary. It changed. So the interesting thing about alcoholism is the isms. Maybe it's not the drinking at the time, but it's boys. Maybe it was exercise. I know for a while I went through this period where it was just, I was obsessed with everything I ate and what was going into my hand. It was consuming.

Yeah, so I went to Biola. And then when I met my husband, we also did a young life together and we're volunteer leaders there and like led Bible studies in our home. And at that time, alcoholism hadn't progressed. It is a progressive disease. And so where it used to be just a fun thing, we'd go to the wineries with the girlfriends or whatever, started to haunt me. Like I would wake up the next morning and be like, what did I say? Or it was just those regrets that started to carry, to come with me when I drank. God showed me, I had a problem with drinking and that with my drinking, 'cause to me alcoholism was you drank every day. That wasn't my story. I did it. But when I drank, there was wreckage and I didn't wanna live in that shame anymore. And I came to a crossroads where I got to, a friend asked me, how was I doing? And I had a choice to say, to be honest and to confess and pour out that remorse to her or to brush it under the rug and just keep carrying that shame. And I laid it all out and I confessed. And I said, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. And she said, well, I do and God does. And just brought me along. And it was like that broken place of sorrow. God said, I am here and I am gonna surround you. And he did. He surrounded me with godly women who still to this day mentor me daily.

How has this experience helped you understand and appreciate God's grace in Christ? Oh man, that might make me cry. To see God, to see and to know that God loves me. I was fearful. I had a lot of fear. And now to just lean into his grace and to see, yeah, you really went down a scary path, but yet I came along and I picked you back up and to experience that in my life, it is in that brokenness that I believe God has his message.

Natalie, if people want to attend a recovery meeting at Twin Lakes Church, when do you meet and how can they find out more about it? We have a Monday night meeting that's for all recoveries. But you're a shopaholic, you're a workaholic, you name it. Something that's holding you in bondage, come. That's at 7 p.m. Thursday is for alcoholics and narcotics only. And that's at 7 p.m. And then I'm super excited. We are launching the first women's only recovery meeting, Wednesdays at 11. And that's starting on November 4th. And you can also email recovery@tlc.org and somebody will respond and guide you where you need. I wanna encourage people, if you feel like you might be struggling, come to our recovery meetings. And there is no shame in coming. It's anonymous, we don't announce who comes. And we have a live and Zoom option. So if you're more comfortable zooming in from home, you can do that and just listen. And I encourage you to listen five times. You'll get some answers. I really believe you will.

Wow, what a great living example of this question. What can this become? You know, her alcoholism has turned into a dynamic ministry for Natalie. In fact, she's in seminary right now getting her master's degree. And your change can positively impact people too. Look at verse 13 as we wrap this up. Paul says, "By all this, we are encouraged." By what? By the fact that the Corinthians have learned how to fail forward. When we fail forward, it encourages other people. Watch this. In addition to our own encouragement, we were especially delighted to see how happy Titus was because his spirit has been refreshed by all of you. When we fail forward, there is for other people encouragement and delight and happiness and refreshment. Why? Because they look at what's happening in our lives and they see, wow, all this stuff about the grace of God. It's really true. And that's so important for them to learn through your life because you know what? They're going to fail and they're going to need to see in you how to fail forward. How to say not just what just happened, but what can this become?

Here's the big idea today. Regret looks back. Faith looks forward. And you see this all throughout the Bible. You know, Judas, he was remorseful over his betrayal of Jesus. The Bible says so. But his regret only led to suicide because all he did was look back. That's not what God wants for you. Now, the very same night, Peter also betrayed Jesus and he also wept in deep remorse. But when offered forgiveness by Jesus, he took it and moved into his future. Listen, please listen to me right now as we wrap this up. If you feel like you're kind of crumpled in a heap right now, feeling defeated by your failures and addictions, I've got good news for you. In fact, it's great news. God is in your corner. He loves you. He is ready to lift you up. He's ready to get you going and growing and revive back to life again. There is no sin that you have done that God's grace is not greater. There is no mistake you could ever make that God's grace cannot redeem. God is so eager to get you back on track.

But you know what? To do that, there's only one thing you need to do. You need to leave behind the prison of regret and move forward into faith. And you know how you do that? Not by burying your regrets. They just come back to haunt you like zombies, but by giving your regrets to Jesus, nailing them to that cross with him. So let's do that right now. Let's make some progress. Would you bow in a word of prayer with me wherever you are? Let's pray this together. I just invite you to pray this in your heart with me. Lord, it's true, I have failed, but I wanna fail forward as you want me to do. I wanna receive your grace right now in place of my sin. I believe that Jesus was crucified for me so I can stop crucifying myself. And I can be raised to new life because Jesus was also raised for me. And I believe that your grace not only forgives me, but gives me the power to become what you have always planned for me to become. And so right now in this moment today, I wanna turn my life over to you as my Lord and as my savior. I personally and humbly ask you, help me continue to grow. And Lord, I also wanna pray right now for all of those who are suffering in any way, but specifically those impacted by COVID. God, we pray for an end to this crisis. We pray for wisdom and for strength. And in this election season, we pray for us personally and for our nation. Help us collectively to become what you want us to become. And we pray all of this Lord in Jesus name, amen.