I want to tell you something that you might not need right now but I believe the day could come where God will use it to keep you going. There might even be someone in your life who will need to know this sooner than you. Here it is: I believe that your finest hour could come after your biggest failure.

One of the most remarkable things to me about God is His ability to forget. Over and over again we are told in the Bible that God not only forgives our sins but He forgets them as well. He hides them behind His back. He remembers them no more. However that works, somehow He chooses to not call them to mind as He looks and thinks about us. Amazing.

We don’t have that ability unlocked yet. It seems that we will in heaven because we are told that we will know even as we are known. Until then we are left dwelling on our mistakes, and focusing on our failures. It can be debilitating. Nothing will rob you of your courage and zeal as the reminder of all the stupid things you have done. The devil loves to keep our blooper reels on repeat in our minds and he turns the volume up anytime we start taking steps to activate our calling. I can’t tell you how many times I have been trying to take a big step of faith and woken up in the night haunted by sins that I committed in the past.

These are times where we have to take hold of the truth that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, and even though our own heart is condemning us, He is greater than our heart. In these moments you have to remind yourself that not only are you forgiven, but God doesn’t even remember what you can’t forget. You can’t let yesterday’s failure keep you from today’s victory.

As I look around scripture I see example of example of people who didn’t let their mistakes keep them from getting up and going big.

Joshua prayed for the sun to stand still after he failed at Ai and prayer-lessly made a truce with the Gibeonites.
Samson killed the most Philistines of his lifetime after giving up the secret to his strength lead to his humiliation and his eyes being poked out.
Jonah participated in the revival at Nineveh after he ran from God and pouted for three days inside a fish.
Peter preached and saw thousands saved after denying Christ three times.

And I believe with all my heart that even if you have made a massive mistake, your greatest day could be waiting just around the corner. Get back up. Walk in forgiveness. Don’t let the devil keep you dwelling on what God has already forgotten. It’s a new day. Because God is awesome, your finest hour could come after biggest failure.

I heard of someone who used a piece of electrical tape to cover over the check engine light that had come on in his car and was bothering him to look at. Problem solved. Rather, problem ignored. Eventually he had a much bigger problem that he had no choice but to deal with.

Ignoring problems doesn’t make them go away. Pretending they aren’t there doesn’t make them go away. But in different ways we all do this. Why? It’s easier to just buy bigger, baggier clothes than it is to eat healthier and start working out. It’s less work to just give a child throwing a tantrum what they want than it is to discipline and work on the behavior. Watching tv is less work than having a conversation.

I have even seen churches do this. A certain ministry or programming element that hasn’t been effective for years (if ever) is just kind of ignored, and half-heartedly announced from time to time as it limps on, instead of being eliminated like it needs to be. That, by the way, is a very difficult trigger to pull in the church world, because the inevitable response is, “but we’ve always done it that way…” Or, “but people will freak out if we…” In reality, there are probably a few loud people are going to complain when you pull that band-aid off and deal with that ineffective area of your ministry. Everyone else will probably be invigorated by the change.

If there is something in your life, family or area of responsibility that needs tweaking, fixing, or deleting; don’t ignore it. Do something about it.

Darkness is dangerous. Anything in your life that you are trying to keep a secret, hidden in the dark, is holding you back and will harm you eventually. Think about it. Nothing healthy grows in the dark. Flowers, trees, fruits, and vegetables–the kind of things that you want to grow–they all require sunshine. Mold spores, fungi, moss, these are the kinds of things that thrive in dark environments. The kind of growth you don’t want is what you will find in secret, shady places.

John 3:19 And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil.

If there is any part of your day, any activity, habits, media you consume, websites you visit, or relationships you foster that you wouldn’t want your wife, your kids or your parents to know about; it’s a fungus. It might be small and containable now, but it won’t stay that way, it will eventually spread and grow more and more toxic until it poisons you and harms people you love. Plus you need to remember these two things: 1. it’s not going to stay a secret forever–your sin will find you out. and 2. It’s not a secret now. God knows. He sees what happens in every shady place.

The only thing to do is to kill it with bleach and expose it to the light of day. Forgiveness comes from confessing our sins to God, healing comes from confessing our sins to other believers who will hold us accountable. And from now on, no more secrets. Walk in the light, that’s where the fruit is.

Romans 13:12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.

Do you realize how fortunate you are? I’m serious. Do you have any idea what a massive gift you have been given? There are so many people who are way cooler than you are who would have been willing to punch a great white shark in the nose to get to stand where you are standing right now. Don’t you dare take it for granted.

That is basically what Jesus told His disciples one day. Here it is as it actually appears in the Bible: “But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear; for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” Matthew 13:16–17

Jesus was reminding them that they were getting to experience something that all of the saints in the Old Testament only dreamed about. What was that? Him. They were getting to walk around with Immanuel–God with us. Hebrews 11 says that the OT saints all died longing for and looking to the coming of Christ in faith. And while there is no mention of shark violence, we do read about them being willing to suffer all sorts of things for their hope that they held onto.

The disciples needed to realize that since better men than them lived and died wishing they could experience what they were experiencing, they better not take it for granted. They should be thanking God everyday and not wasting one ounce of the opportunity they had been given. Otherwise, Abraham, Isaiah and Zephaniah are going to be waiting to pummel ‘em in heaven. You think I’m exaggerating? When cities didn’t honor Him and failed to realize what they had been given, Jesus said that in eternity Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba would be waiting to rise up in judgment against them because they responded to far inferior preaching. The disciples got with the program. They took what they had been given, gripped it and ripped it–turning the known world upside down in their lifetime.

This should cause us to give a second thought about how we are using the tremendous resources at our disposal. Unlike all the Old Testament saints we have been given full access to the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead, that He sent after He ascended. We have the promise that Christ will build His church through us and that not even the gates of Hell can’t stop that from happening. And unlike any other Christian generation, through the profusion of technology and the ease of modern travel, there is nothing stopping us from fulfilling the great commission and preaching the gospel to every creature. In other words, we have no excuse. We can’t afford to not podcast and do multi-site and harness the technology that God has put in our laps.

Don’t you think John Wesley, who travelled on horseback and preached two or three times each day in up to 30 cities a month as he gave something like 40,000 messages in his lifetime, would have walked over a bed of coals to have access to an airplane or use a webcast to preach the gospel? What about George Whitfield? He preached to crowds of up to 30,000 people without a microhone! What kind of damage do you think he could have done with some speakers? The reality is that we have been given much, far more than better men and women who have gone before us. Don’t you dare take it for granted. Not unless you want John Wycliffe and Martin Luther to give you a fat lip when you meet them in heaven.

Warriors are made in the oven, not the microwave. You don’t become an oak tree over night. Not even if you add Miracle-Gro. It’s slow, hard, and hot work to turn into a mighty man or woman of God.

I think that sometimes when we read the story of Bible character’s we forget that we are basically listening to their greatest hits. It’s not exhaustive. We aren’t given every single detail of how they spent their days and years. We are often just given the major moments. Decades are sometimes compressed into into a single sentence. Enormous periods are skipped entirely.

This is vital to keep in mind because failing to do so could create unrealistic expectations as we look at our own lives. If you look at a person like Saul, who was converted on the Damascus road one moment and then blazing trails around the Roman empire planting churches the next, without remembering there was a gap in between where he spent a good chunk of time learning to walk with Christ in Arabia (Galatians 1:17); it could cause you to become discouraged.

Or we could point to Daniel. He risked his life so many times, standing up for God when it could have cost him everything. But his bravery in the king’s throne room and in the lion’s den didn’t just happen, it was forged in the fires of following God over a lifetime. You see this clearly in Daniel 6 when the king had just signed the order making prayer to anyone but him a crime. The Bible says that Daniel went home and got on his knees anyway “…as was his custom since early days.” (Daniel 6:10)

We all would like to think that we would fearlessly face a martyr’s death. That if it came right down to it we would be willing to die before we would deny our Lord. That like Daniel we would defy the king’s order and get down to pray even if it meant that we would be killed. But the big issue isn’t would you pray if it could cost you everything? but do you pray now while it doesn’t cost you anything? Daniel didn’t wait until camera’s were rolling and everyone was watching to get down on his knees. He was a senior citizen currently and had been doing the hard slow work of turning into a spiritual warrior since he was a kid.

It’s very impressive to think about being willing to die for God. But first things first. Start by living for Him. Victory in public is always the result of hard work done in private. Olympic athletes are impressive to watch perform, but remember, you are watching the result of thousands and thousands of hours of blood sweat and tears in action. Salvation is an event but sanctification is a process. You become a Christian in a moment, but becoming like Christ takes a lifetime.