Bouncing Back From FailureSample

Come Back With A New Pattern.

Bouncing back doesn’t mean going back to the same place you came from. Maybe a better way to say it would be to bounce forward. When we’re taking steps to come back from failure, we have to make sure they’re steps in a new direction. We have to be intentional to create new patterns so we don’t fall back into old habits. God forgives us, but we have to do our part to agree and move forward in a new way.

It can sometimes feel hard to move forward when you still remember the past, but scripture tells us that God removes our sin from us “as far as the east is from the west.” He doesn’t see us and our past the way we do, and if we don’t get on board with what He is saying about us, we’re going to end up pouring our new wine – who He has transformed us to be – into old wineskins, and both will be ruined. When you’re bouncing back from failure, bounce back with new patterns. Pour your new wine into new wineskins, and like scripture says, both will be preserved.

Zacchaeus illustrates this so beautifully. In Luke 19, we read how Zacchaeus, a tax collector, climbed a tree to get a glimpse of Jesus. Jesus meets him where he is and invites Himself to Zacchaeus’ home, he immediately agrees. Not only that, but he lays out a new plan for how he will move forward. “Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount” (Luke 19:8). Jesus didn’t ask him to do that, He simply came to him. But because Zacchaeus was transformed by that experience, he knew he had to do something different. He knew he needed a new pattern in order to move forward. The same is true for us today. When we have a transformative experience with Christ, the only way we can keep going is to move along a new path.

What is something tangible you can do today that puts a new pattern into action? Now that you’ve received forgiveness, how can you continue to bounce forward in a new way?