My Musings – This was a familiar pattern in the Old Testament. God delivers the promised land into the hands of the Israelites. They get complacent and fall into sin. God brings judgment through their enemies. The Israelites call out to the Lord. He provides a deliverer (called a Judge). And the cycle starts all over again, and again and again. They seem to never have learned from their failings.
Are we any different? Are there cycles of failure that we repeat time and again, never seeming to learn from prior experiences? Of course it is better to not fall into sin in the first place. But when we do, once we are delivered and restored (following confession and repentance), we should learn from the past failure and be on guard lest we repeat it in the future.
Of course, not all failures are the result of sin. “Failure in and of itself is not a bad thing. But failing to learn from it is inexcusable.” (Alison Levine, On the Edge: The Art of High-Impact Leadership). In our journey of discipleship, God will take us through failures (not sin) so that we will learn from them. For it is on the journey that we learn the most and see our character develop the most. “The journey is where we find perspective.” (Alison Levine, On the Edge: The Art of High-Impact Leadership).
My Advice – What are we learning? It would be a pity to go through the struggle and not reap the benefit of learning from it. So pay attention.
