This was a message that I shared with our students last night at Crossroads.  It was the second message in a series we’re calling “It’s the End of the World As We Know It.”  It discusses what the Judgment Seat of Christ is about.

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Last night was the final night in our student ministry’s “Fear Factor” series.  It was a lot of fun.  I was beginning to think that I had some serious issues that needed dealing with from all the games that we made those students go through… but it’s okay.

The message that I gave last night was about facing the fear of failure.  For some reason, this message has stuck in my mind longer than usual.  I think that many people are paralyzed by this fear of letting someone down or not falling short of the intended mark on something.  I know that I have dealt with this on things before.  The feeling of letting someone down just isn’t the way that you to live your life.  But the truth is that if we get paralyzed by this fear of failure, then we are missing out on one of the greatest gifts God has given to us: life.

The fact is that because we all have this thing called sin in our lives by nature, we are going to miss the mark.  There will be times that we fall short and fail.  That doesn’t mean that we just give up and quit.  God didn’t give up on mankind when they ate the forbidden fruit… why are we so quick to throw in the towel?

I shared with our students that there’s actually a couple of benefits to failure:

1. It educates us. We can learn a lot from failure, especially information that will get us pointed in the right direction… just ask Thomas Edison.
2. It develops skills. How did you learn to ride a bike? Roller skate/blade?
3. It makes us less judgmental. When we fail, we seem to sympathize with others who fail a little bit better and are not as quick to jump on the “I’m better than you” train.

What are some lessons you have learned from failure?

I have just uploaded a message that I shared with my students at First Baptist Church of Birmingham, Alabama in the message section.  It uses the parable of the sower from Matthew’s gospel to show that people respond in different ways to the Word of God.  Be sure to check it out and pass it on to someone who might could use it.

I have added a section to the website here that contains various messages that I have given.  Just click on “Messages” at the top and you will be taken to a list of messages that I have delivered.  Feel free to download the mp3’s and share them with someone who might need them.  They are iPod compliant.