PRINCIPLES OF FAILURE   Part 3

Folks, I'm trying to teach "Three Great Principles of Failure," but I can't get past the introduction. We have to obey Christ if we are going to serve Him. In John 14:21, Jesus said

<sup>He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.

Sometimes disobedient Christians try to serve God and have no idea what to do. They try to seize successful ministries, take credit for the successes of others, and publish false reports of their successes. Without Jesus as their Guide, they listen to the wrong people and make their efforts more harmful than beneficial.

Jesus promised "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men." If you want Jesus to teach you, train you, and guide you, you need to obey Him.</sup>

Principles of Failure Part 2

Luke 6: 46 

^{46 "But why do you call Me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do the things which I say?}

Before I get into the three great principles of failure, I want to talk about obedience again. When a Christian determines to serve God his own way, he sets down certain paths and goes through certain doors that are not available to obedient Christians. As the years and decades roll by, both sets of Christians develop their own strengths and methods. Disobedient Christians excel in taking credit, seizing ministries that God did not give them, and destroying opponents. Obedient Christians get things done for God.

Here in Mexico, I have observed three key failures in the lives of Christians, many of them missionaries, who accomplished little or nothing for the Lord. I'll be spending a few days on each one of these principles of failure.

PRINCIPLES OF FAILURE

In Matthew 7:26-27, Jesus said " But everyone who hears these sayings of mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall."

<sup>Here in Mexico, I have been astonished at the missionaries who have arrived, failed, and left. Meanwhile, other Christians are being blessed with successful ministries. The envy and bitterness towards Christians who are being blessed by God is something that I saw in the US when I taught Christian school.

Jesus promised, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men." Success in Christian service is GUARANTEED to anyone who will follow Jesus. When a Christian fails, therefor, it is going to come down to disobeying Him. I'll be posting a couple of times a week on three Principles of Failure, all of them involving disobedience to Jesus' words, that will explain why so many Christians fail in their service.</sup>

Part 14 Fired for WHAT?

As a thriving megachurch, Bensalem Baptist has helped found a successful independent Christian school that was supported by several other churches. The teachers could attend any fundamental church that they wished. Now that it was dying, Bensalem followed a new policy with the Christian school: teachers who did not attend Bensalem were fired at the end of the school year.

And so a Godly young couple, both of them successful teachers, were fired for "immaturity." They demanded a specific charge, but were only told "immaturity." But they were hired by a Christian school in the next county, and he became their Sunday School superintendent. Two years later, he became their assistant pastor. A few years later, he became the pastor. And a few years later, a Christian newspaper ran an article on his church, as "The Fastest-Growing Independent Baptist Church in Pennsylvania."

Did he go back to the people who had fired him wrongly and claim that they had sinned against him? No, he wasn't immature enough to care what they thought.

Part 13

Jesus commands us to go to a brother who has sinned against us and present his sin to him. But in Egypt, Joseph didn't do this, and yet he successfully resolved the conflict with his brothers. Just as you can choose to forgive another Christian, you can choose whether  or not he has sinned against you. Joseph chose that God had used his brothers' evil actions for a greater good, and therefor, they had not sinned against him.

I was teaching at a successful Christian school when they got a new principal. On the first day of school, the principal informed the students that the teachers had been mistreating them, but he would put a stop to it. He assured them that although the teachers were their enemies, he was their friend. He proceeded to devastate the school, fired me unjustly so he could give his incompetent son a job, destroyed the excellent teaching staff, and finally quit in failure. He went overseas to a Christian school and failed there.

After a rough couple of years, I got a high-paying job at a paper mill. Twelve years after being fired, I learned that the teachers' miserly salaries had been increased 4% since I had left. I would have had to quit anyway. Fifteen years after being fired, I retired to Mexico at the age of 52, and God has blessed my wife and I ever since.

I found several of my former students on Facebook, and they were glad to hear from me. They are doing well, and God has used the efforts of the Godly teaching staff in their lives. Do I need to accuse the principal of sinning against me?

I found him on Facebook, laughed, and went on my way.

Part 12 Pain and Confrontation

Matthew 18:15 tells us:  "Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother."


How do you go to a big-name preacher who got into a scandal, destroyed your church, or destroyed several families, and talk to him privately? Even the context deals with a local Christian who is in your same church as being the problem.





God's commands aren't burdensome, so here's the solution. Chose to forgive the person, and then choose to have a different attitude. I am on the pastors son's long list of victims. But while I worked for him, I was able to teach a large teen-age Sunday school class and teach Bible lessons in the church youth center.  I took the attitude that he had been working for me: he had organized a successful youth ministry, and that youth ministry had helped me succeed. He sinned against a lot of people, but he didn't sin against me.



Are you feeling pain because someone wronged you? Choose to forgive him, and then choose to have a different attitude. Remember that all things work together for good to them that love the Lord, look at the benefits you received, and move on.

Part 11 Dealing With Your Pain

Whether from a fallen preacher or some other source, many Christians suffer emotional pain over what happened. When they read self-help Christians books, they are usually told three things:

1) They need to forgive
2) Forgiveness is a choice. God's commands are not burdensome, Jesus' yoke is light, etc.
3) They are having pain because they have not truly forgiven the person. They keep trying, and they "forgive" over and over again, but the pain does not go away, so they are really refusing to forgive.

The second point is true: if you choose to forgive a person, you can. But the third point is false. If you chose to forgive the person, your pain is not due to unforgiveness. I am going to show from Scripture tomorrow that the third point is not correct.