Experience comes through mistakes?

Are you a 'mistake maker'? Oscar Wilde reminds us, "Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes." If you are anything like me, you intend to do something one way, but when push comes to shove, you find yourself taking a few shortcuts here and there. You start well, but somehow end up with the end looking a bit different than you might have imagined - all because you took those shortcuts. God isn't going to send us to hell for our shortcuts, but he also doesn't want us to develop the habit of always seeking the easiest path in life. He wants to ensure we grow - learning as much as we can from those things that didn't end up exactly as we had hoped!

Proverbs 19:2 tells us, "Enthusiasm without knowledge is no good; haste makes mistakes." To make mistakes is part of human nature. We might not want to admit it, but we make mistakes every day. When we repeat them day after day, we might just want to take some time to explore why we continue to make those same mistakes! We are meant to learn from our mistakes. As our passage tells us, mistakes are linked to 'haste'. It is one thing to do something because there is an urgency associated with it, but when the 'urgency' is because of our procrastination to perform the task in the first place, the 'haste' is really a mistake!

Learn from what you find yourself doing in 'haste' - with more urgency than would be warranted had we responded promptly to the need to perform the task. We also need to remember haste leads to careless actions. We make decisions based upon the urgency of the situation, not the well-orchestrated performance of one who has prepared for the moment. Impetuous decisions lead to impetuous actions. Outcomes from those types of decisions oftentimes leave us feeling kind of guilty and foolish. Why? We actually knew better than to make those decisions, but we didn't take the 'learning' from the last time we made a similar mistake and apply it to the present set of circumstances. 

Experience might just be what comes from making mistakes, but growth is what God really desires! We can 'experience' a great many things, but until we 'experience' growth, we will likely continue to make the same silly mistakes time and time again! Just sayin!

Learning from mistakes

 

I don't usually post images on my feed, but today this one caught my eye and it made me ponder just a little bit how much we all probably try to 'erase' our mistakes. I don't think I am in this alone, am I? The times we make mistakes can be quite painful, with our memories lending to the painfulness by constantly helping us to recall just how miserably we failed! I think we all get carried away in the memories from time to time - recounting just how far from the mark we were when we hit that 'bottom' place. The mistakes of our past are not something we should ever discount, though. They are indeed 'stepping stones' into the throne room of grace. Were it not for those mistakes, how close to Jesus would you be today? I daresay those mistakes have actually drawn you closer to him! There is something 'humiliating' in making the same mistake, I know this, but there is something 'liberating' in bringing those mistakes (even the ones we repeat time and time again) to the foot of the Cross.

How happy he is whose wrong-doing is forgiven, and whose sin is covered! How happy is the man whose sin the Lord does not hold against him, and in whose spirit there is nothing false. (Psalm 32:1-2)

What is the lesson God is teaching you today? It may come out of a recent failure - a 'trip-up', so to speak. That lapse in judgment, or total disregard for the warnings you were receiving to 'not proceed', what has it taught you? What have you done with the moment of your failure? Have you 'memorialized' it by giving it 'space' in your mind so you can keep rehearsing how poorly you responded? We tend to beat ourselves up over failure, while God welcomes us into his presence with open arms, asking us to see ourselves as he sees us - sin erased, grace given, and the opportunity to learn from the failure set before us. He doesn't erase the learning - he erases the guilt and shame of the sin. He allows the learning because it teaches us to depend upon his 'niggling' that comes to warn us we are about to proceed into something that is clearly not good for us. It teaches us to rely upon his wisdom, to listen to his voice, and to lean into his strength when our own flesh is battling to take the lead.

I think we equate forgiveness with 'erasure' of the mistake, the memory of it, and even the chance to learn from it. We want it ALL gone - as though it never happened at all. Go figure! We are like cats trying to cover over our recently deposited 'duty' in the litter box! Despite all the efforts to make it look like it is 'all gone', there is still that tell-tale odor! There will be signs of sin in our life - it leaves an 'odor', so to speak. God removes the 'dirtiness' of our sin through his grace and he helps us to not return to it as we learn the processes of obedience in our lives. Herein is where we stumble a bit - we forget that forgiveness involves the processes of obedience - taking the right steps time and time again as revealed to us in his Word and times of prayerful thought. Eventually, the 'stench' of the sin as we remember it will go away - but we need to continue to learn to take the right steps to keep us from returning to the 'pile of duty' once again! Just sayin!