You can do HARD THINGS because God responds to your faith and not just your failure. You are more than your last failure! You are far more than the last time you didn’t believe, the last time you did what you shouldn’t have, or the time you didn’t step out. God sees you as a whole person. He sees your life from the end and He is trying to shepherd you from where you are now to the end of your story. He’s not afraid of your failure, or that your last failure will affect His ultimate plan.

How we handle our failures in this life are the biggest “make or break” moments we will ever have. We will all experience failure, whether we’re a ‘big shot’ or a ‘little shot,’ it’s coming our way! In that very moment, we can take ground or lose ground. It’s as simple as that.

Two types of failures come into play. It’s important to identify both.

The first area we experience failure is Unforeseen Failure. It’s failure that happens when we least expect it. It knocks the wind out of us and knocks us off our feet. It is always very painful! We didn’t expect the marriage to fail, the business to fold, the best friend to walk away, the loved one to die. Pain seems even more excruciating when we see the failure right before our eyes and yet we can do very little or nothing to change it. Overwhelmed with grief, this type of failure often begins with the phrase, “I never saw it coming!”

At this very moment, you can choose to exercise a new kind of faith. Faith that’s more powerful than your failure. Faith that’s stronger than your wounds. Faith that looks life in the eye and says, “My God is working it out, even if I can’t see it or don’t feel it. God is redefining my failure and turning it into faith!”

The second kind of failure is even harder to overcome because within it lies true motivation. The second type of failure is called Premeditated Failure. It’s the kind of failure that will discount us from ever feeling like we can look at God in the face and expect anything more from Him than just surviving.

And who could forget the most predominant, premeditated failure in the entire Bible, King David. A man sitting on the roof, watching another man’s wife bathe as he lusted after her, longing to have her in his arms. Sadly, he was so powerful, he could make that desire happen. He called for her to come and he slept with her. He even tried to cover up his own sin by having her husband murdered on a battlefield. Talk about premeditated sin! Think about the devastation of a man who wanted something so badly he was willing to put his entire morality at stake, to watch his reputation crumble right in front of him. Did King David know better? Did he understand what was at stake? Absolutely!!! David was totally aware of what he was about to do and did it anyway. I love how someone put it, “You can always pick your sin, but you never get to pick your consequence.”

Even if we have lives filled with consequences of premeditated sin, God is still big enough to help us overcome these obstacles. If we continue to define ourselves by our personal consequences, we will never be able to walk in confidence. God sees our lives as more than a payout of wrongful actions.