S – Stop making excuses.
If a person wants to start winning, the first step is to stop making excuses. Stop making excuses for failures, past experiences, and even past hurts. The Bible says that the starting point is to just be honest and accept responsibility for your part in the problem.
13 A man who refuses to admit his mistakes can never be successful. But if he confesses and forsakes them, he gets another chance. Proverbs 28:13 (TLB)
The truth of the matter is many people do not like to admit, “I made a mistake”, or “that loss was my fault”. We’d rather find someone or something to pin the blame on, however, God says, if we admit the mistake, if we admit our failures, and if we admit our sin, then we get another chance in life.
Can I help you? Often times many people will continue to make excuses because they are more concerned about being perceived as a failure than what they actually failed at. However, failing is not failure. If at first you don’t succeed, welcome to the human race. If at first you don’t succeed, you’re normal. The Bible says we need to stop making excuses, admit when it’s our fault and get on with life.
T – Take An Inventory Of My Life
To take inventory of my life, means I need to evaluate all my experiences. I need to look at what I have left after the failure. I need to take an inventory of my life’s experiences and learn from them.
2-4 Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certainly will be if you keep this up! Galatians 3:2-4
The Living Bible says, “You have suffered so much for the gospel. Now are you going to throw it all over board.” I can hardly believe it.” Learn from your mistakes. Failure can be your friend or your foe. You determine if failure will be your friend or foe by the way you react to it. You can choose to learn from it or choose to repeat it. If you learn from it then it can be your friend. However, if you don’t learn from it is your foe.
As you take inventory of your life in starting over, you need to ask yourself three questions.
- What have I learned?
I know people 40, 50 years old but they don’t have 40 or 50 years of experience. They’ve had the same year of experience over and over. They’ve never learned anything. What have you learned from past experiences? If you don’t sit down and think it through, you’ll end up repeating the same mistake over and over again because you didn’t learn from it the first time.
- What are my assets?
What have I got going for me? Have I got my health? Have I got my freedom? Am I still mentally sound? Have I got some friends? Have I got the Lord? What do I have that I can win with?
- Who can help me?
When we need a fresh start, we need somebody by our side – a friend, an accountability partner, a support person, or a support group. Find someone that can help you. You need other people because you don’t start over by yourself after a major setback or crisis. You need somebody else to walk along with you. There is one that we can count on to be there to help us to get a fresh start in life. The Lord Jesus will be there, He will help us to pull your lives back together and make sure that we get started on the right foot.
A – Act in faith
You must launch out into new territory. The Bible says that the key to changing anything is faith. If you want to change your circumstance, it takes faith. If you want to change your personality, it takes faith. If you want to change anything in your life, it takes faith. If you want to win, it takes faith. Matthew recorded an example of faith in action in his Gospel, when Jesus spoke to a group of blind men. The blind men were healed according to their faith. 29 Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you Matthew 9:29 “According to your faith it will be done to you.” thisis a very simple statement but it’s very powerful. This means we tend to get out of life what we expect. I love the message bible’s translation of this verse 29 He touched their eyes and said, “Become what you believe.” It happened. They saw. Matthew 9:29-30 The Message
What are you believing? Are things going to be better or worse? Are they going to be the same? If you act in faith then you will do something positive to ensure that you don’t repeat the same mistakes over. The faith that I am talking about is not a dead hope, it is an affirmative faith that takes positive action coupled with the help of God to change your life.
Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour. 2And a certain man lame from his mother’s womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple; 3Who seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple asked an alms. 4And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him with John, said, Look on us. 5And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive something of them. Acts 3:1-5
The point that I want to make is this lame man acted in faith and was greatly rewarded. This man asked for something and expected to get it, but in reality he got more than he expected. Many times we ask for something and expect to get nothing and we get exactly what we expected, nothing.
In order to start acting in faith that means you’ve got to stop having a pity party. You’ve got to stop feeling sorry for yourself. “Poor me! I’m such a victim. Life is unfair.” Of course life is unfair! Whoever said it was fair? God never said that. This is a world filled with sin and because of that, life is unfair. But you have to go on with life anyway. You stop having a pity party and stop rehearsing the past, regretting the past, and you get on with the present and the future.
The more time we spend regretting our past, the more of our future is wasted. The more time you spend thinking, “I wish that hadn’t happened! I wish I could change that. If only I could go back, reverse the clock and redo history,” and you’re rehearsing and regretting, you’ll not only make yourself miserable right now, you’re setting yourself up for more of the same thing in the future.
The way you set yourself up for more failure is by focusing on past failures.
Whatever you focus on you tend to reproduce in your life. “According to your faith it will be done unto you.” How do you get rid of fear of failure? Faith. That’s why the third step to winning is Act in faith. Faith is not so much the absence of fear, as it is moving ahead in spite of your fear. Sometimes faith is doing the thing you fear the most.
R – Refocus
I need to refocus my thoughts if I want to start winning. If I want to get going again, if I want a fresh start, I need to rethink the way that I think. I need to change my mind about a number of issues. “Be careful how you think. Your life is shaped by your thoughts.” Proverbs 4:23 The way you think, determines the way you feel and the way you feel determines the way you act. If you want to change your actions, just change the way you think, and it will inevitably change the way you act. If you are depressed, discouraged and distressed it may be because you’re thinking depressed, discouraged and distressing thoughts. That’s your choice. You don’t have to think those thoughts. If you’re acting in fearful, worried ways it’s because you’re thinking fearful, worried thoughts, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. ” Romans 12:2
If I must refocus my thoughts to start, that means I have to stop thinking some old patterns. Which memories are you still rehearsing that keep you from starting? The Bible says let go. 18 Do not remember the former things; neither consider the things of old. 19 Behold, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs forth; do you not perceive and know it and will you not give heed to it? I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43:18-19 The more you hold on to that memory, the more you rehearse it, it continues to hurt you today. It cannot hurt you without your permission. You must change your mind and let go and get rid of those painful, hurtful memories of shame and guilt and other things.
How do you do that Pastor? How do I forget? How do I get rid of a painful memory?” Do the opposite of what you’ve been doing. Instead of rehearsing the memory, replace it. Not just saying, “I’m not going to think about it! I’m not going to think about it!”, because unintentionally what are you doing the whole time? Thinking about it. Stop focusing on what you don’t want and start focusing on what you do want. Get your attention onto something else.
Refocus.
Replace those memories by, every time they come up, start thinking about something else. Focus on something else. What’s the best thing to focus on? God’s word.
1 Oh, the joys of those who do not follow evil men’s advice, who do not hang around with sinners, scoffing at the things of God. 2 But they delight in doing everything God wants them to, and day and night are always meditating on his laws and thinking about ways to follow him more closely. 3 They are like trees along a riverbank bearing luscious fruit each season without fail. Their leaves shall never wither, and all they do shall prosper. Psalm 1:1-3 TLB
Those are the two things that everybody wants in life. We all want to be happy and we all want to succeed. The antidote, the answer, the way we get those is the phrase right in the middle “meditating on God’s word. ” That’s the answer to the other two. The more you meditate on God’s word, the happier and more successful you’ll be in Your life. It’s a promise from God.
T – Trust God
If you want favor with both God and man, and a reputation for good judgment and common sense, then trust the Lord completely; don’t ever trust yourself. 6 In everything you do, put God first, and he will direct you and crown your efforts with success. Proverbs 3:4-6
There were several reasons why Solomon was considered to be the wisest man to ever walk the face of the earth, and the above scriptures are a few of those reasons. I believe it’s a fair assumption to say we all want favor from God and man, common sense and good judgment, and while it seems that these things may never come, Solomon gives us two instructions to making this a reality:
1) Don’t ever depend on yourself.
2) Trust God and put Him first in everything we do!
Why is it so important that we trust God and not ourselves, chances are, we’ve already proven that we can’t do it on our own; that could be the sole reason why we’ve failed. It’s amazing that some people after reading this still won’t get it, but I pray you do. They stumble and fall and then they get up and say, “I’ll just try harder!” It’s like you go up to a wall and bang your head against it and the wall doesn’t fall down. You try it again and Bang! Again. You keep doing it thinking, “Maybe it will fall over this time.” That’s not determination that’s insanity – doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results. If we keep doing the same thing then we will keep getting the same result. We can’t change who we are, only God can do that. I am not speaking about the outward man but the inner man. The real person is the hidden person of the heart. Success in life is not trying harder, but living smarter and that’s achieved by giving God control of my life. “ You will not succeed by your own strength or power but by My Spirit, says the Lord. ” Zechariah 4:6 So let me give you that chance right now to move you out of the way and let God in…