 Okay, man, so keep your place there. In Psalm chapter 73, the verse we're going to be looking at is also the verse of the week. Look down at verse number 26 of Psalm chapter 73 where the Bible reads, My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. So this morning we're going to talk about why you're a failure. We're going to talk about failure this morning. I was thinking about the titles of the sermons and maybe that doesn't strike the right tone, but we're going to talk about this idea of failure in our lives and failure is, you know, you say failure doesn't sound like something good, that doesn't sound like something that's edifying, but here's the thing, you know, even if you think in your life, you know, I don't want to fail, here's the thing, nobody wants to fail. Nobody wants to fail at things, nobody wants to fail at things that they're doing, they're trying, especially in this Christian life, we don't want to fail, but hopefully I can change your mindset this morning and make you realize that it's not about, you know, not failing that matters. So this morning I'm going to give you four points on failure and how to deal with failure in our lives. I'm going to give you four ideas, four tips to handle failure in your life. And if you think, well, I just don't want to fail in my life, well, you're going to have a hard time because the Bible says that my flesh and my heart faileth. You are going to fail. And that's the first point that I want to give you this morning is that failure is inevitable for everybody. Failure is going to happen. It's something that we are going to deal with. You say, why? Why is failure inevitable? I don't want to fail. Why is it okay to fail? You're going to fail because you're simply, you're not smart enough. You're not good enough. You're not fast enough. You're not strong enough. At some point your flesh, the Bible says here, will fail. You will fail at certain points. Just think about the best laid plans. You say, well, I want to be this person that plans for everything, but you can have the best laid plans and you are just not smart enough to think of everything. You are going to miss something. There's going to be outside circumstances that you didn't see coming that are going to cause you to fail. Something outside your control. Even if you are super smart and think of everything, you don't control this world around you. You don't control other people. You don't even control your brothers and sisters in Christ. You're not strong enough. Think of what the Bible is saying here, the flesh faileth. You're just not strong enough. I remember this reminds me of this verse. I used to watch back when I had a TV many, many years ago, but I used to watch fighters. I used to watch the WEC that was before the UFC. I used to watch, because I was a wrestler and I used to watch fighters. I used to add my favorite fighter that was fighting in whatever competition it was, mixed martial arts or whatever. The thing about it is you would have this idea when I was younger, like, no one can beat this guy. This guy is so good that nobody can beat this guy, but inevitably somebody that's stronger comes along. Somebody that's better comes along and everybody fails at some point. Even a person that you think is the best at whatever they're doing, they inevitably find somebody that can beat them and cause them to fail. There's always somebody tougher, faster, stronger, whatever it is, physically, where your flesh would just not be good enough to conquer everything. I mean, you're not stable enough. You're not stable enough to never fail. You're not consistent enough in your life to never fail. Look, you should be stable. You should be consistent. You should be all these things, but you're going to trip up. You're going to fail. So the first point that you need to realize is that failure is going to happen to you in your life. But the problem is, turn to Proverbs chapter 24. The problem is this, and the reason I bring up this first basic point is people don't expect it. People don't expect to fail. So many people, they can't recover from failure. Failure happens to them and it knocks them down and they can't recover from it. Look at Proverbs chapter 24 in verse number 16. This is why you have all this great biblical advice that God gives us in the book of Proverbs, Psalms, other places in the Bible we're going to look at this morning. But look at verse 16 of Proverbs chapter 16. See, it's not failure or not failure that sets people apart. It is reactions to failure that set people apart. That is the difference because everybody will fail. Failure is inevitable. Point number one, look at verse 16 of Proverbs 24. For a just man falleth seven times and riseeth up again. But here's the other side of the coin as Proverbs, always many times that one verse gives us both sides of the situation, but the wicked shall fall into mischief. Think of how drastic this verse is here. It's talking about a just person and a wicked person. So it's a wicked thing to fail to fall off one or two times. This is the inevitable saying of it's not about falling off the horse but whether or not you get on again. I mean I don't know if you've ever fallen off a horse but that is a very unpleasant experience. I have fallen off a horse many many times and it hurts. If you've never been on a horse the first time you get on a horse you feel like you're on like a skyscraper. It's way off the ground and when you fall down the ground is hard. It hurts. But it's whether or not you get on the horse again. This is what Proverbs 24-16 is talking about. It's talking about a just person. Somebody that's right, somebody that is doing the right thing is going to fail and then keep going and keep going and keep going. But it's the wicked who's going to fail and be like, I can't do that. Just go and get into trouble and go and get into other things that they shouldn't be getting into. So that's a great verse there. I mean look it's assuming in Proverbs 24-16 that both of these people were trying something good. They were trying something good worthwhile but the just will realize they will fall off, they will fail and they will realize okay that was something good. I failed at it. I'm going to keep trying to do that good thing. Whereas the wicked will say okay maybe you know a person that's a wicked person, very weak character, you know they'll try something good, they'll fail and then they'll just go into what they wanted to do in the first place. They'll just go into mischief, get into trouble. All right. I mean look a perfect example of this is just Christian growth. It's just Christian growth. Look there's a lot of new things taught to somebody who gets saved. Getting saved doesn't all sudden make you know anything in the Bible. You go and knock on somebody's door and they've never heard of Jesus, they've never heard of the Bible, they've never read a page in the Bible in their entire life. But then you explain the gospel to them and they get saved which is a very simple thing. The gospel is very simple. Even a child can understand the gospel. Somebody gets saved. That doesn't mean they know anything in the Bible. There's no magic that just happens where they just know everything that God wants for them in their life. So this is where Christian growth comes in. Somebody comes in, they get saved and they want to get into church and they want to start reading the Bible and finding out what God has for them in their life. There's a lot of new things taught there. There's a lot of new things for somebody that has just been living the way this world teaches and then all of a sudden they start reading the Bible, hearing the Bible preached and finding out like what do they need to do? They need to separate from all this wickedness. They need to raise their kids differently. They need to, I mean look, the Christian life looks different. You're like, it does? Well, you're not doing it right if it doesn't look different. The Christian life is supposed to look different. That's why we're a separated King James only church. The Bible teaches separation. That means you're actually doing something. That means you're taking the doctrines from the Bible and you're implementing those into standards in your life. I mean look, there's places I don't go. There's places I don't go. As I said, I don't even have a TV. I don't even have a TV. Look, I'm not against you if you have a TV, but you shouldn't have a TV either. But the point is this. You might trip up from time to time as you're implementing standards in your life, especially when you're getting started in a Christian life. I mean there's going to be times when you're implementing standards with your family where you go somewhere and you're like, yeah, we shouldn't have gone there. But look, in the Christian life, the nice thing about the Christian life and tripping up in the Christian life is if you're saved, you got this Holy Spirit inside you and you're going to know that you tripped up. You are going to know that, oh yeah, we shouldn't have gone there. But then what do you do? You just tune things up. Yeah, we don't go to that place because the last time we went there, they had a bunch of stuff on the TVs and I don't want my kids seeing that and things like this and you just tune things up in your life. I mean the Christian life and Christian growth, you are going to experience points of failure there. But the point is this, you have to keep getting up. You can't just fail, think you're going to do everything perfectly and then fail and stop, which is what a lot of people do. Think about other things in the Christian life. Think about a lot of ladies in this church, they homeschooled. A lot of ladies in this church homeschooled. Look, that's a foreign concept for many people. That is such a foreign concept to so many people that many people will never start. We'll talk about that in just a minute. But you just think about somebody that has a bad day, some mom that has a bad day homeschooling and I'm going to generalize the ladies here for just a minute. I'm going to stereotype ladies. Because here's the thing that a lot of ladies do. I've seen this over the years with many different ladies. Ladies do this. Because look, men and women are different. Men and women are different and I've seen this way more with ladies than I have with men. But here's what ladies will do. They will generalize bad days. A lady will have a bad day and be like, I am a complete failure. I am no good at this. It's just a bad day. That's all it is. Especially raising kids. Look, there's a lot of things that your kids do that you didn't know they were going to do that. This doesn't mean you're a failure as a parent. It just means that you just had a bad day. So look, there's all these different things and you just have to keep rising up seven times, eight times, nine times, 10 times. The difference isn't the failure. Every mom has felt like I must be not doing this right. Every single mom has felt that way. It's just a bad day, though. It's just a bad day. And the key is just rising up again, and just coming back and coming back and coming back. With guys, think about this. You get a new job. Just a secular example, you get a new job. I mean, you ever have a new job where you can learn everything and be good at it in one week? If you have, if that's your job, then it's not a skilled job. There's gonna be a lot of failure at new jobs, at new careers. I mean, look, you're just gonna, you're gonna mess things up. Quite simply. So the first lesson this morning is a simple one. Expect failure because it's going to happen. And that's what the Bible is telling us in Proverbs 24, 16. Turn to Proverbs chapter 22. Expect it. It's coming. Proverbs 22, look at verse number 13. This is also kind of repeated in Proverbs 26, 13. But Proverbs 22, verse number 13, the second lesson is this. So you expect failure, but here's the second lesson. Don't fear it. You don't have to enjoy it. I'm not saying you must enjoy failure in your life, but expect it, but don't be afraid of it. You cannot be afraid of failure. Look at Proverbs 22 and look at verse number 13. The Bible says the slothful man saith. So is a slothful man, like notice the pattern here that we're seeing in Proverbs. So here it's a slothful man, which is which is a wicked thing to be slothful. Like the Bible is pretty hard on people that are slothful, people that are lazy. But the Bible says here, the slothful man saith, there's a lion without. I shall be slain in the streets. What does that mean? Proverbs 26 says, says there's a lion in the way. A lion is in the streets. This is somebody who is using this as an excuse to not go out into the street. It's like, I can't go out and do that thing. This is going to happen. I'm like, this is somebody who's afraid of failure right here. So whether there's a lion or not is not really the point here. The point is that this person is not going out because of the fear of something other than the Lord. And the only thing that we're supposed to fear in this life is the Lord Himself. Such a fear something, even if there was a lion, and he was supposed to go out in the street, he should go out anyway. He's not supposed to be afraid of anything but the Lord. He just won't go out there because something bad may happen. So the second lesson is you cannot be afraid to fail. Look, many people just will not step out in their life because they're afraid that it won't work. They're afraid it won't go how they think it's going to go. For what? For fear of failure. But the point is there's always going to be a reason that you can think of to not step out and do especially what you're supposed to do in the Christian life. As you get saved and start implementing the Bible in your life, in your personal life, in your family life, there is always going to be a reason where you can say there's a lion in the way. And there's always many times the lions for us are other people. There's always going to be people out there that say, what are you doing that for? Turn to James chapter 4 and look at verse number 14. James chapter 4 and verse number 14. There's going to be plenty of people telling you why you can't do something or why you shouldn't do something, even something that's good, especially something that's good. And that's why, by the way, if you're ever thinking about encouraging somebody, encouraging your kids, encouraging a friend, telling them that they're not going to fail is not the answer. Don't tell somebody that a friend of yours that wants to maybe step into a new business or especially, this is the problem with the prosperity gospel, especially somebody starting the Christian life. Don't get somebody saved and they come to church and you're trying to encourage them to start growing in the Christian life and implementing change and learning Bible verses so they can maybe go out and share the gospel with people that they love. Don't tell them if you do this, everything is going to be great in your life. Don't call Joel Osteen on people because it's not true. It's not true. They're going to fail. They're going to fail and because they step out in their Christian life, there's probably a lot of trouble that's going to come their way. Jesus says you shall have persecution. There's going to be critics that come after you just for doing good. So encouraging somebody in the way saying, oh, you can do it. I mean, even raising your kid saying, hey, do this and it's going to work out and everything's going to be great. No, teach them that they may fail but they need to get up after they fail. Don't teach them that they're never going to fail. Teach them that you've got to try. You've got to try to do good and if somebody stops you, you've got to try again and you've got to keep trying. Look at James 4 verse 14. You can't fear failure. Fearing failure will stop you before you start. Look at James 4, 14. Whereas you know not what shall be on the moral. For what is your life even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away? So like we like to apply that verse to we don't know how long we're going to live. We better use this life to our best, you know, our best profit to what God wants us to do. But look at the very first part of the verse. It says, whereas you know not what shall be on the moral. You don't know. You don't know what's going to happen. The best laid plans. You just don't know they could be derailed for tribulation for persecution for just something that you just didn't see coming. But there's always going to be as you may have good friends is how you can tell like if people are your friends by the way. If you're trying to do good and you have people trying to encourage you and you fail and people are trying to encourage you while you're doing something good, those are your friends. If you have successes in doing good and those people encourage you, those are your friends. But it's the people that you need to worry about. And it's the people that when you fall down while trying to do something good, make sure it's doing something good. And those people like yeah, maybe you shouldn't have done that. I told you not to do that. It's the critics of the doing good and the critics because when you fail, especially if you didn't expect to fail and you're down on the ground and you're thinking about boy, I don't know if I should try that again. It's the critic that can crush you in that moment. It's the critic that can add that extra weight on top of you that can literally stop you from getting up seven times. I have a quote in my office. It's actually a quote by Teddy Roosevelt. It's it captures so much truth that I have it framed and it's in my office. And it's actually called, it's a famous quote from Teddy Roosevelt called The Man in the Arena. And it's this great quote, it's got a lot of biblical truth in it, but it's talking about somebody that has failed and about the person that's trying to push down on them during that failure and keep them from trying again. The quote, it goes like this. It says it's not the critic who counts. This is the critic. It says the critic, this person doesn't matter. They're not important. It says it's not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds could have done them better. Notice how it says, he says, the strong man. What does a strong man do? He fell down. He stumbled. And then he says the credit belongs to the man who's actually in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who's, you know, this guy's failing and I'm interjecting my own words here, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again. Because there's no effort without error or shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds. Who knows great enthusiasm, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause. See, he's doing a good thing. Who at best knows at the end, the triumph of high achievement. And who at worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be known with those cold and timid souls who will never know victory nor defeat. Those cold and timid souls who were afraid to fail and never started. It's just such a great quote from, from just a, you know, an epic personality in our history. But that's why I have it. What he's saying is, there's gonna be a lion. And he's talking about the credit belongs to the person that goes out there, whether there's a lion or not. And maybe he goes out there and he gets torn up by the lion. And he's all bloodied by the lion. But then he keeps going back out again and again and again, regardless of whether there's a lion or not. This is what everybody who succeeds has gone through, especially in the Christian life. Somebody that has succeeded for years in the Christian life has been torn up by the lion again and again and again. As a matter of fact, as you get more profitable in your Christian life, the lion gets bigger. How's that for a prosperity gospel? You're gonna have people coming after you harder. Why? Because Satan wants you out of the game. Because as you become profitable in your Christian life, you're gonna start getting other people saved. Satan can't send you to hell with him. He can't take away your salvation, but he can ruin your Christian life. He can push you down and keep you down on the ground and make you worthless to those around you. And capturing you in sin, making failure effective upon you. Look to be afraid is wrong. To be afraid of anything except the Lord is wrong. Turn to Second Timothy chapter 1. Second Timothy chapter 1, look at verse number 7. You're like, but I am afraid. But I'm afraid of doing these things. I'm afraid of, you know, separating from sin in my life. I'm afraid of having those conversations and separating from people who are drawing me into sin. I'm afraid of homeschooling my kids. That's intimidating. I'm afraid of it. Let me just tell you this one thing. Look down to Second Timothy chapter 1 in verse number 7. The Bible says, for God hath not given us the spirit of fear. So who did then? So if you have, I'm not saying your fear is not real. I'm not saying the fear you have in these things is not real. But if you are striving for something good and you are afraid, that fear is not from the Lord. God has given us the power, you know, the spirit of power and love the Bible says. And of a sound mind. This is where that muscle memory just needs to come in, where you just need to read the Bible and just says, it just says I have to do this and I'm afraid but you just do it anyway. Look, people that have gone to war will tell you this. They're like, I was afraid. Some guy that's won the, you know, the Medal of Honor, he's like, I was afraid. But they did it anyway. It's not about whether or not you're afraid, it's about what you do to overcome that. If you let the fear stop you, it's not from God. The problem with Christian growth is that most people just don't start. That's the overwhelming problem. That's the overwhelming problem with somebody that just gets saved. They just don't start because you know what they do? They're afraid. They're just like, I'm not that person. I'm not that Christian person. I'm not that, I didn't grow up that way. These Christians are these foreign people to them and they can just, it's just a foreign person that they think they could never be. But it's a cop-out. It's a cop-out. It's, it comes from fear that comes from Satan himself. It's a lion in the streets. You go out and I mean, but look on the, on the other side of that and you've all seen this. Some of you are this. You see somebody that, that gets saved at their door. And what do they do? They get in church and they just listen to the Bible and they start reading the Bible and they just start implementing. They listen, they read, and they implement. Within a year, you don't even recognize them. I'm serious. And you all can think of people that you know about this. Within a year, you're just like, what in the world? But in a good way. The power of God's Word to just completely transform somebody that just reads and listens and implements. And even though they may have that fear, they shut that fear down and they just keep reading and keep hearing and keep implementing. You know what they do? As the Bible says again and again and again and we could go to a dozen verses that say this, they hear and they fear the Lord. That's why the Bible says in the Old Testament, hear and fear. Because they hear and they fear the Lord. Look, there's nothing that I fear. You know, there's nothing you should fear more than the Lord. You shouldn't fear anything. But I mean, the fear of the Lord should overcome all of that. So that's the first thing. Expect failure. Expect failure. The second thing is don't fear failure. Turn to Ephesians chapter 4. Let's look at number 3. This may be the hardest one. This may be the hardest one. So you need to expect failure and you need to not fear failure. But turn to Ephesians chapter 4. Look at verse number 30. In the Christian life it's not that hard. But in your secular life around you and you're out at work and you're out in the world, it is a little bit harder. But the third one is this. Regarding failure, you're going to expect it. You're not to fear it. But you need to recognize it. You need to recognize failure. And Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 30 tells us how to, I mean, it's easy to recognize in the Christian life if you're saved. The Bible says and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God. Whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption. Look, folks, you have the down payment of the Holy Spirit inside you. Like this is a literal thing that has happened to you if you're saved. If you're saved you have the Holy Spirit inside you. You are the temple of the Holy Ghost, the Bible says. It's the Holy Spirit is in you and when you grieve the Holy Spirit, you can tell. When you fail in your Christian life, you can tell. Just listen to it. That's all you have to do to recognize that failure in your Christian life is just listen to the Holy Spirit inside you. That's one of the reasons God gave him to you. God put the Holy Spirit in you. Failing in the Christian life, I mean, you'll just know and then you adjust and you don't do that same thing again. You'll know we shouldn't have gone there. That was a mistake. We shouldn't be dealing with that type of thing anymore and you can adjust. You can change those standards in your life. Now, secular life and decisions is a little bit more difficult but it's still important that you recognize failure. It's not quite as easy but it's still important because, look, again, failure is coming. It's coming to you but you need to recognize it and let go of it as soon as possible. You need to recognize a bad idea and let go of it as soon as you possibly can. Don't hang on to bad ideas. You say, but it was my idea. But it's bad. Once you find out that it's bad, let it go. I've said this many times and I think this is probably pretty true. I've said that in my secular life, nine out of ten ideas turn out to be not good. I'm talking about just work life. You say, what do you mean? Are you an idiot? Why do you have so many bad ideas? But here's the thing. You have an idea and then something just turns out where the math doesn't work out right. Well, I was just a little too more expensive than I thought it was going to be or that efficiency wasn't what I thought it was going to be. But, look, I'm not talking about getting mystical here and like something gets difficult in your life and you quit. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about like, as soon as you know something is not going to work how you thought it was going to work, let it go. You know, I mean just something is not the way you thought it was supposed to be. Let it go. But a lot of people will just get things will get difficult in their life and they'll be like, oh, was it meant to be? And they'll quit. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is just an idea that you had that just turned out to be not the way you thought it was supposed to be. You have to let those ideas go. Alright? Here's number four. Turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 11. So, recognize failure. Recognize failure in your Christian life and your spiritual life. It's pretty easy to recognize failure because God gave you the Holy Spirit. But here's number four. And this is very important. You need to plan for failure. You say what in the world? The Bible tells us this. Look at Ecclesiastes chapter 11 and look at verse number one. You're like, plan to fail. What are you talking about? You need to always leave yourself and out. Look at Ecclesiastes chapter 11 in verse number one. The Bible says this. It says, Cast thy bread upon the waters for thou shalt find it after many days. Give a portion to seven and also to eight for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth. The Bible here is saying is spread things around a little bit. It's giving you some practical advice here to not put all your eggs in one basket. To not just say like I'm going everything on this and if this doesn't work out I'm just toast. The Bible is saying like hey you know you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know what's going to happen in the in the realm outside of your sphere of control. That's what Ecclesiastes is teaching us. If the clouds be full of rain they empty themselves on the earth. If the tree fall toward the south or toward the north in the place where the tree falleth there it shall be. Just saying like there's these things you have no control over. You have no control over where it rains. You have no control over where some tree falls over. You just you have no control over these things. So plan to not put all your eggs in one basket. He that observe it the wind shall not sow. And he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. There he's talking about the guy that's worried about the lion. He's talking about the guy that's like oh it might rain and I can't do anything. Or oh it might you know whatever. He's observing everything and just finding an excuse not to do anything. Instead he's saying no. Just kind of spread things around. You know plant a few different crops so if one fails or the market's down over here look this is very practical advice here. This is business advice. This is life advice right here. Talking about just I used to have a little side kind of side business that I used to do many many years ago where I would be I would do like side inventions. I would I would do like I would build inventions. And I would always plan for these just not work out. But I'd save up a couple of thousand dollars and I would invest like a couple thousand dollars in this invention. I would build the thing and I would try to market it and do whatever I was going to do with the thing. But I never like dropped all my life savings into one of these things. It was just I would save up some money and then I would be like all right I'm gonna take a I'm gonna take a two thousand dollar shot at this idea that I had. And I would do that and look it never really worked out in the way that I thought but it ended up working out in many different ways that I didn't think in like indirect ways. But the point is this. You kind of spread things around like I planned to fail. I plan for it to not work into everything be okay. Look inventing things is not easy. It's more than just having an idea. You have to build something that works. You have to make sure that there's no other patents out there on it. There's there's tons of things. There needs to be a market for it. You need to you need to learn that you know if there's what if I can build it and it works and there's no patent out there and I can have the patent but it cost me too much money to build it. Done. Any one of these things could derail you and many of those things did get derailed by these tiny little details. And they just have to be like okay that's not gonna work. But I'm good thing I didn't just invest every single thing that I ever earned into that thing and just destroyed my whole family over some stupid idea that didn't work out. That's what Ecclesiastes 11 is telling us. It's telling us to plan for failure. Don't be afraid of it but plan for it. Turn to 1st Corinthians chapter 10. Turn to 1st Corinthians chapter 10. So what's the conclusion of all this? The conclusion of all this is you know you're going to fail. You should not be afraid of failing. It's inevitable. It's inevitable that you're going to fail at things. But you need to plan for failure. Look, but there is some things in the Christian life that God tells us he guarantees that we will not fail at. Or at least we shouldn't fail at. Look at 1st Corinthians chapter 10 and verse number 13. This is a difference between somebody that's saved and somebody that's not saved right here. Look at 1st Corinthians chapter 10 and verse number 13. 1st Corinthians chapter 10 verse number 13. You have a promise from God that at least if you fail it's your fault which we'll go back to Psalm chapter 73 in just a minute. 1st Corinthians 10 13 says that there had no temptation taken you but such as is common to man. But God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you're able. But will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it. That's a great promise for your Christian life right there. What the Bible here is saying is that God promises and so you can't just put this, you can't put temptation on the world. You can't put temptation in the fact that you failed in the flesh as Psalm 73 said on the world or you can't put it on God. Because if you fail and you give in to temptation in your flesh if you're weak there you failed that was your choice to do that. That's what the Bible is telling us here. The Bible is saying hey you're still going to fail. I'm not you're never going to reach sinless perfection. You're still going to fail but it's your flesh that failed. Because God's telling you here that if you're saved you will be able to overcome these sins. It's just your choice whether you follow the flesh or follow the spirit. So you know don't blame God. It was you failing in the flesh. Everything else is just part of life. Everything else is just part of life, this failure. It's not about failing is the point this morning. It is about how you handle failing. I mean this is the difference between successful people and losers. People that just can't get it right. People that can't get anything right. Everybody looks at somebody that's successful in their Christian life, successful in whatever thing that they do and they're like oh man they just get everything right all the time. Wrong. It is their ability to deal with failure. That is the difference. They expect it. They don't fear it. They recognize it when it happens and they actually have planned for it to happen. That is the difference. So don't confuse difficulty with complete failure either because things that are worth doing are going to be difficult. And people I mean look people that succeed it's just that failure doesn't completely destroy them. That's the difference. Everybody else I mean if you think about it if you think about the fact just think about everybody lined up in a line and everybody's going to get knocked down but only a few people have the ability to get up. It's inevitable that you're going to get knocked down. This is why you see people get so much further in their Christian life, get so much further in anything that they do because they just have the ability to get up again and again and again. This is why you see people quit the Christian life right here because they don't have the ability to get back up. This is this is why you'll hear pastors say again and again and again that people come and people go in a church. Look I don't want you to go. I always you know you hear sermons like that and you're like man that's harsh. But look people come and people go because when people fail they can't get back up. That's why I'm preaching a sermon like this because I don't want you to go. I want you to stay in the Christian life because the Christian life is only going to be helpful to you and those around you it's completely a function of the time you spend in it. You're saved, you're saved. But the people that you will profit on this earth is a function of how much time you can spend in this Christian life. If I can get you to spend three years in this Christian life it'd be better than if you spent two months. If I could get you to spend ten years in this Christian life it'd be better than if you just only spent three years. So I get up here and I scream the Bible at you and tell you that you are going to fall down in the Christian life but you should get back up again because guess what? How long do you have your kids with you? Are your kids with you for one year? Are your kids with you for 10 years? Are your kids with you for 12 years? No. You need to be in order to be profitable to your children and not make the Christian life a joke to them. You need to be in this thing for the long haul which means you need to be able to get knocked down and get back up. You need to be able to fail as a parent one day and be able to say, I failed. Maybe you say to your kids, hey I'm sorry that I was doing that for the last two months or I'm sorry that we've been going to this place but the Bible says this and we have to make a change now. Maybe you need to just learn to fail as a parent and learn to keep getting up as a parent and get up better and better and better. But it's those that just I can't do this anymore that just stop. It happens all the time. It's one of the worst things to see as a pastor of a church is people stopping the Christian life for one reason or another, especially for sin, especially to be like I just want to do this sin and I just don't want to give up on that and they throw everybody under the bus so they can continue in sin. Sin is a failure of the Christian life and you're going to fail at that every day and if you just let it get you know that's why you'll find people in a church like this and many people will say well what if somebody keeps coming to church and they just you know they're not going to get right but look people will hit a wall. People will hit a wall where they're like you know what I'm just not going to do that one thing. They're going to hit a wall and as I keep preaching the entire Bible this is why pastors stop preaching certain things. This is why a pastor will stop preaching on fornication and that's why that pastor will have a church full of people that are in fornication but people will stop hearing things and then that sin will creep in and creep in and the Bible says it'll leaven the whole church but they'll hit a wall in a church like this they'll be growing and growing and growing and everything's preached and they'll hit a wall and they're just like I'm not going to do that and then they'll get bitter and they'll get out. That's not what I want that's not what God wants. God wants you to accept the fact you can fail in your life that you can fall down you can get back up confess things get things better and move on. I mean you aren't good enough neither am I. You aren't good enough you're never going to be good enough but you can't failure is coming for everybody the difference is how we handle it. That's the difference between someone who's able to just live the Christian life just stick with it for their entire life you know what that person will be a failure for their whole life. They'll fall down their whole life and they'll just keep getting up, they'll just keep getting up and they'll be a profit to everyone around them because they get up not because they didn't fail. Go back to Psalm 73. Actually go to Philippians chapter 4. Go to Philippians chapter 4. The thing you have to realize is that the best promise that God gives you in this Christian life is that if you can just do what I'm telling you this morning and I'm not making this up it's just coming straight from the Word of God. If you can do what I'm telling you this morning and expect to fail not be afraid of failing at least just fear the Lord more than you feel fear failing and you can plan for failure and you can just you can mitigate it and you can get yourself to the point where you are going to get up and keep going no matter how many times you fail the Bible says you know the Bible says your flesh and heart is going to fail in Psalm 73 but God gives you this great promise that if you were saved you can keep going. You can do it in verse 13 if the Bible says I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me. So you just keep trying and trying again and again and again and if you're in Christ if you're walking the way Christ wants you to walk you can do it your flesh will fail you but Christ never will and that's the key. What's power heads and have a word of it.