Written by Pastor Jack Wellman– Duane Chapman
You Don’t Forget
I don’t know about you, but I’ve blown it big time in my life. Do you remember learning something the hard way? Doesn’t it make you remember what happened “last time,” whatever that was? The Apostle Paul wrote, “I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead” (Phil 3:13), but instead, “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:14). We should stop tripping over what’s behind us…we need to keep pressing ahead and learn from our mistakes.
It Reminds You
When I was about to make the same mistake twice, I thought, “Hey, I’ve been in this situation before…and I know what happened last time.” I think the reason that history repeats itself is because we don’t learn from it. I know that’s true in my own life. What about you? Do you find yourself repeating (or almost repeating) the same mistakes twice? I know that experience is a good teacher; maybe the best, so may we all learn from our own history so we don’t repeat it.
It Helps Others
Our mistakes can actually help others, besides ourselves. I have a mentor and he tells me some of the mistakes he made in his ministry as a pastor in the hopes that I won’t do the same thing. In my mentoring of a young man, I try to share my own mistakes and faults so that he won’t do the same thing that I did. Perhaps he can learn from my mistakes just as I have learned from my own mentor’s mistakes.
Conclusion
How about you? Do you usually get taught lessons the hard way, because God wants you to remember? It’s better to learn from mistakes than keep repeating them. In this way, we’re not going to keep repeating history, over and over again.
