The Prevention Paradox // The Upside of Down // Read
Polls have shown time and time again that the fear of failure is one of the most common and crippling threats we face. And we do face it...all of us. We’ve all encountered failure before, whether personally or professionally. Ways that we’ve not quite lived up to our expectations. Ways that we we’ve let ourselves down...or let God down. Failure is an awful feeling—but it doesn’t have to be. God wants us to see the truth, that there is an upside to every down. For every cross, there’s an empty grave! We don’t have to fear failure. We can embrace it. So the question is: “Will we choose to see that truth and allow it to reinvent the way we see failure?”
Did you know the likelihood of a severe injury is higher in football than in rugby? Even though football players wear padding and helmets and rugby players don’t? That is what we call The Prevention Paradox. The more we do to prevent injury and failure, the more susceptible we become. In fact, many safety measures we use often make failure more likely. That’s because failure has never been something we were supposed to avoid. And when we try to do so, we find out it just makes our life and problems worse.
If you are new here, this is an exciting time to get in at Cornerstone, isn't it? We're living in exciting times here as a church. And in fact, today's an exciting day because you are here for part two of the feel-good series of 2021, where we're talking about failure, in that just a no better topic to just cheer you up on a Sunday, and get you ready for the week ahead than failure. But we are in the middle of this series, The upside of down, and what we're talking about is we're talking about failure. And the reason we're talking about it, this is what we strive to do here at Cornerstone, we strive to talk about the kinds of things that you think about outside of here or the things that you're worried about outside of here. And polls show surveys show time and time and time again, that failure is one of the greatest, most crippling fears that we all have, all of us are afraid of failure, afraid of what it means for us afraid if it's going to mark us for life, it's a real fear. It's a terrible fear. It's something that can cripple us and cause us to stagnate in our life. It's a serious issue, and we need to talk about it. And what we need to talk about specifically, is how our fear of failure doesn't need to exist. We don't, we don't need to fear failure, we only need to be afraid of failing in our lives. We can become friends with our failures. If you're with us. Last week, we were talking about fail ossipee one on one, right? The basic premise of failure. And it's the idea. And we've got to know this, if we don't believe this, we will not see failure for what it is. And the basic building block we talked about last week is the idea that failure can either be fleeting or final, but it's our choice. Right? It can either be fleeting, it can be momentary, you can have a failure, but you get up, you dust yourself off and you continue forward. Or it can be the final nail in the coffin for you. But that is up to you. Don't you dare put that on God? Don't you dare say, Well, God closed that door whenever you don't know that God closed that door, right? Because we're terrible storytellers, me included. We're terrible storytellers. And so we are constantly putting conclusions where God is building a climax, right? God's trying to do something, God's trying to build a climax. And we just stopped short and say, Well, this must be it. Nothing further for me to do here. And God says that I'm building, building up to something. I mean, thank God, Moses didn't walk and see the red seemed like, well, this, this was the end of this freedom looks really good. But we just go back to Egypt, right? He didn't put a conclusion there. He knew God was building up to something that that was simply a climax. And we need to know the same thing in our life that failure is never final with God. Failure is never final with God. So today, we're going to push this series forward. If last week was philosophy 101 This is like honors philosophy. This is like the smart kids class. All right. We're going into advanced failure today. And the sermon title, if you're taking notes, is the prevention paradox. The prevention paradox, everybody. If you don't know what a paradox is, let me explain it real quick for you. Um, a paradox is basically it's a statement that on the surface level, seems to be false. Seems to me there's no way this is right. But as you investigate, as you look into it, you go, Oh, okay. It's actually, it's actually true. Seems like it's false, but it's actually true. Paradoxes they shouldn't be, you know, anything unfamiliar to Christians because our entire faith is built on the premise of a paradox. Like our entire faith is built on something that is just there's no way it can be true, but it is the kingdom of God. Let me just, you know, throw some of these out. If you want to become first you must be.
If you want to become the greatest, you must become. Right, you must become the least you must become the last. If you want to become a master, you must become the servant of all, Jesus's entire ministry was about taking what the world considered to be power, considered to be right, and turning it on its head. Think about the fact that Jesus's greatest victory, he defeated death by dying. Think about that for a moment. He had to go through death to defeat death. These are paradoxes. These are things that on the surface level are like, Man, how can that be true, but the more you look into it, you go wow, that's true. That's true. And we're talking today, the prevention parent Doxon I want to start us off by reading from the book of Romans is from Romans chapter five, we're going to be looking at the first five verses, as I'm reading these, keep your ears attuned, listen for the paradox that you're going to hear here. So here we go. Romans five, starting in verse one, Paul writes, therefore since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also take glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. Now, did you hear the paradox there? Do you hear something? What does it sound like? How can that how could that be true? We take glory in our suffering. Wait, what? Is that, uh, the Bible has a typo. Like, how do we take the glory? How do we take joy in the middle of suffering in trial and tribulation? There's no way that that can be accurate, but it's there. It's there. And we're going to discover today how that is true. So first off, what I want us to do, I want us to kind of define our terms from the offset, I want us to make sure we're all talking about the same thing. So last week, when we talked about failure, we were talking about the failure that we bring upon ourselves, right? Whenever we sin, it's the most typical kind of failure we experience in our life is the failure that we bring upon ourselves. Whenever we sin, and we fall short, we missed the mark of God's will for our life, we missed the mark of God's standard. And we have that kind of failure. This week, we're not talking about sin failure, we're talking about just naturally occurring failure, the failure that just happens in life, not because you were sinning, not because you did anything wrong. But because you're human. And things don't always work out in the rain falls on the wicked and the righteous alike, that kind of failing, where things just go wrong. Sometimes. I experienced that this week, I failed this week. And I didn't mean to it was unintentional. And I failed. nonetheless. My wife, Jessica, had been looking around on target and saw that they had a deal coming up, she loves deals, the girl loves these. She likes the deal more than what she purchased, like the fact that you have to hear the deal that I got on these things. And so she found a deal. It was like if you spend 40 bucks, they knock 20 offs. It's only $20. And it's like a really good deal, right? So she knew I was going to be in Canton meeting my cousin Caleb for coffee, said, Hey, while you're down there, the green target doesn't have this toy. Can you check and see if the North Canton one does, it's the thing that the girls want. It's like um, it's like a miniature claw game. Like those the arcade games, you know, the claw that gets the toys, which I don't understand why they would want that that game is annoying and frustrating. I don't know why you'd want to take that home-like frustration the game like, let's get that sounds like a good time. But they want it. They think it's really cool. So I looked and they didn't have it there. But she was like, hey, if they don't have that get an elf on the shelf because I know the girls want an elf on the shelf. But it's not $40. So you need to get that and a few other things to push us up over 40 to save right? Because it's like $32 or something like that. Oh my god. Okay. So I grabbed a few other things. Other things. I know, we need to push ourselves above that. And I can already hear from the laughter some of you know where this is. The men in the room know where this is going like, oh, yeah, I know where it's gone. So I get home and I set the bags down and she's like, Oh, great. I pulled out. I'm all shown. I'm like, Look, it's a little girl elf on the shelf. And I know that's awesome. And she's excited about everything. She goes. So did you use the coupon? Instantly? I'm like the word now. If ever there was a moment, I wish I could teleport. That was the moment I see.
Like, the coupon? No, I forgot about the coupon. She's like, Oh, my goodness. That's I mean, that's okay. But how much did you spend on like, like, 50 something? It's like, oh, no, it's like, I went $30 over what we needed to spend. And it wasn't intentional. Like I wasn't, I wasn't actively sending like, Oh, this is gonna be so fun to go home and just mess with it. Like, I didn't do it. I didn't do it on purpose. It was a complete and utter accident yet I failed, nonetheless. And you have all been there. Maybe it's not in that kind of a boneheaded way. But we have all failed when we're not sinning. When we're not intentionally trying to do something against God's will but just life happens man. Like you get preoccupied. Or you take a risk like you take a risk and it fails or you try something you step out on a limb and it just doesn't come through right We've all experienced that kind of failure, the naturally occurring failure in our life. And what I'm going to posit today is the prevention paradox, which is this idea. And I want to just kind of couch it to say, this isn't always true. But in my life, I've experienced this to be true more often than not, and that's this, the prevention paradox is, the more that I try to prevent failure in my life, the more I tried to prevent pain, the more I tried to prevent suffering, the worse and more likely the failure, the pain, the suffering becomes. Have you noticed that anybody online Have you noticed that I have noticed this in my own life and not just in my own life? I've noticed this, like the larger world at play, the more we try to prevent pain, the more we try to prevent suffering, it actually leads us to pain and suffering and failure. Look, look no further than what's going to be happening today at one o'clock, four o'clock, and 830 When we got football games kicking off today, you're going to see a lot of examples of us trying to prevent failure, but actually causing failure causing pain-causing suffering. Did you know Did you know? This is a crazy stat. The statistics for long-term severe injuries are significantly higher for football than they are for rugby. kind of surprising. Considering the fact that football players let's go through what they wear, they wear helmets. And these aren't just any helmets. These are helmets that are designed and tested and constantly tinkered with to add more padding and more nuance and holes that allow air pressure to come out. I mean, they're, they're constantly working on these things. They have helmets, they have chin straps, they have mouth guards, they have shoulder pads, they have protectors for rib cages and for your back, and they've got pads for your, for your legs, they've got, you know, a knee brace, and they get all taped up. I mean, all this stuff, to protect them to prevent failure to prevent a knee giving out to prevent a concussion, all these things to prevent pain and suffering. You know what rugby players were mouth guards. That's it literally just a mouthpiece. And that's all that is the only protection that they have. But the game is played the same way. Hit the other person as hard as you can run towards them and tackle them like it's the same general idea. So why in the world, are we seeing way more by a factor of two to one more severe long-term injuries happening in American football compared to rugby. As they did studies on this and kind of looked into it and did interviews with former players of both sports. What they determined is those rugby players, the biggest difference is that rugby players felt the hits. They felt it
when that opposing guy laid me out. There was nothing to like buffer the pain. There was nothing to make it kind of like oh, it kind of hurt. But you know, my shoulder pads took a good chunk of that. And oh yeah, I hit my head a little bit. But you know what the helmet I kind of just didn't even notice it. None of that. No, you felt every single hit. And that was the main difference between the injuries. You see, the more that we try to avoid pain, the more problems we tend to create. It just happens. And the NFL, they're trying as hard as they can to protect people. They're instituting all these new rules about what you can and can't do. And a lot of people are going man, it's making the game worse. Like it's harder to call, there are more penalty flags and there's ever been it's just, it's hard. Because we're trying to prevent problems trying to prevent pain. And in the process, we're making more the more pain I try to avoid more problems. I tend to create the 2008 financial bailouts. Whenever the whole world was in crisis over all these big companies that had mismanaged their books mismanaged their money, and they were about to fail. But guess what? Governments all around the world stepped in, said, You're too big to fail. Here's money. We're bailing you out. Here's money because you're too big to fail. And guess what's happened. Significant numbers of those exact same businesses are doing those exact same practices today, the same ones that got them into financial turmoil back in 2018. They're doing the same stuff today. Because they weren't allowed to feel the hit. They weren't allowed to feel the pain. We tried to prevent failure and in the process, we've made the problem worse. Prohibition back in the 1920s. Man, the country was like we're gonna solve societal problems by outlawing alcohol. That'll do it. That'll fix everything. All it did was make the country a veritable cesspool for an entire decade. Right, Mafia started to control everything. illegal sales of alcohol, the country went into a terrible place for 10 years, trying to prevent a problem trying to prevent failure and in the process making it worse. The last example I'll give you, you know, we have a higher fatality rate on our American highway system that's very regulated, a lot of speed limit signs, right, a lot of cops all over enforcing it and make sure no one's going over the speed limit. We got cameras all over the place, we have more accidents at a higher rate of severe accidents than the German autobahn. Which if you know anything about the autobahn, it's a highway system. In Germany, where long stretches of it, there is no, I'll repeat this again, no speed limit, none. As fast as your heart and your car desire, you can go and they have fewer accidents than are heavily regulated and monitored and prevention-based highway system, what in the world is going on? It's the prevention paradox. The more that we try to prevent failure, the more we try to prevent pain, suffering the worst, more likely it inevitably becomes we make things worse, can I just say sometimes we're supposed to feel the hit.
We're just supposed to feel it. We work so hard to not feel it. And sometimes God is saying, I know you need to, like the rugby player. I want you to feel the hit. I need you to feel the hit. Sometimes. Trying to prevent things trying to avoid failure your whole life trying to avoid suffering your whole life, will not get you anywhere where you want to be. I mean, I just think about our own example from our own church history. Mati referenced it earlier during worship when we lost our building in 578. Killian's road map just imagines with me for a moment, if we can take an alternate history, what if we would have tried to prevent that from happening, I don't have time to go into the whole story of what went down. But we ended up knowing we needed to leave our denomination for a lot of financial and governance reasons, the way that they were handling things we just knew man, we cannot continue ministry, the way that we do here, Cornerstone under this denomination anymore, we just can't. And the building that we built. And whenever I say we built I literally mean people in the church built it like saints from Cornerstone with their own bare hands and their own tools built that church building this building we had built that we put money in an investment. And all of these years, our denomination staked claim to that building said fine, well, if you leave, you can leave your building as well. You leave it here. And even though we knew from advice from lawyers and previous precedent in Summit County, that we could take them to court if they wanted to go to court, we would go to court with them. And we would win that building. Even though we knew that to be the case, Pastor Brenda and the Board of Directors determine you know what, we're not going to do it. If you are willing to take this to court, just so you know, we're not willing to go there. We're not willing to have another Christian brother or sister in court against us. We're not going to do it. But what if we would have what if we, what if we would have been so afraid at failure at perceived failure at feeling like we lost our building? Oh, my goodness, we lost a billion. We can't let that happen. We can't let that find you want to go to court? We'll go to court with you. Think about that. What of what that would have done to us? Would we even be out of court yet? Some of these things go on for years that started in 2017, we could still be facing legal battles and still not be in there. Think about what that would have done to our reputation in the community. Yep, there you go. Bunch of more money-grubbing Christians fighting each other over buildings. Yep. But they believe that there's a God and you know that he's watching all this stuff. And even though the Bible says don't take another brother or sister to court, like they're doing it so yeah. Hypocrites.
Think of all the compromises we would have had to make to fight that thing to try to prevent failure. Sometimes the failure is inevitable. And sometimes you need to feel the hit. You just need to feel it, you need to go through it. Can you just real quick tell the persons with you that prevention is problematic. Just tell the person actually prevention is problematic. Put it in the chat online. And the reason I want you to do that is that sometimes it helps us to just name it and claim it right? Because the fact of the matter is we can hear this stuff, but we don't really believe it. We hear this stuff on Sunday. But then once we get back into the world on Monday, we're trying as hard as we can to prevent failure. We're trying as hard as we can to prevent looking like things aren't working out well for us. But the fact is when we try to prevent failure, not a failure from our own sin, but just natural failure in life whenever we try to avoid it. At all costs, we try to avoid suffering at all costs, it leads to problems. It leads to problems, oftentimes more problems than just the failure on its own to begin with. And not only is it problematic, but it's also pointless. It's pointless to try to avoid some failure in your life. Because the fact is that failure can be fruitful. It can be fruitful. If you trust God through the process, you can see fruit come into your life because of failure. This is a concept that we're going to talk more about next week. But I want to just kind of introduce it today, this idea that God builds me the best when I've been broken the most. Like the times in my life, I know I can speak and I can testify from my own experience, the times that God does the biggest work in me, the best work in me is when I have been laid low when I have been broken down to the studs, that's when God does his best work. And so the failure if I'm constantly trying to keep it at arm's length, and avoid ever suffering, ever going through pain, ever taking a risk, because God forbid I fail, I miss God's best work in my life. I just completely and utterly miss it. Again, look at what Roman says Romans five, verses three, four and five, or three and four, not only so we also take glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope. That's how we get it. That's how we get hope. That's how we get perseverance. That's how we get a character, all of these things that every single person in this room, every single one of you watching online, you want those things to be hallmarks of your life. Like if you get to the end of your life, you want people to be able to say that are someone who persevered. That's someone who had character, that's someone whose life was hallmarked by hope. Those are things we want to say about ourselves. And look at what Paul says they are produced by suffering, not Paul doesn't say and as we know, suffering is one of the things that produces perseverance and character and hope. Paul says no, it is what produces perseverance, character, and hope. You do not get those things without suffering, you do not get those things without failure without going through without being torn down a time or two, don't try to prevent what you need. You and I need a dose of failure in our lives. From time to time we need to feel the hit, we need to take the loss we need to get torn down my daughters last Christmas, wanted a frozen Lego jewelry box, frozen Lego jewelry box. And so we got it for them. And they wanted to put together and when I'm looking at this bad boy, I'm like, What's the age limit on this thing? I don't know if I'm gonna be able to put it together, let alone them, right. But they want to try to put it together so we pull it out. And I'm watching them and making sure they don't lose any pieces. Because I know, I know. Eventually, they're going to ask me for help. Because they're seven and five. Like they're not going to be able to construct this thing on their own. So I'm just sitting back there watching and they're doing their best and it's looking nothing like a jewelry box more like an oddly shaped tower of some sort. Right? And I'm just sitting there watching and sure enough, eventually they Dad, can you help? Can you help? I'm like, Yeah, I'll help so but my coffee down, I go over and we start working on it. They're like, what are you doing? Like why? I'm tearing it apart? What? Why are you doing that? Like, well, how do I tell my kids their tower stinks? Without telling them their towers? Things? I gotta How do I tell them that they've like completely botched it and they should not be engineers or anything like that. But I'm looking at it. I'm like, Well, of course, I can't. I can't just jump in on what you've already built. Like it's not gonna work. If you want that if you just want me to kind of build on to this, I'm not gonna do it cuz it's gonna be a waste of both of our time. But if you actually want us to be what it's supposed to be, I'm going to need to tear this thing down. We need to start from scratch and there are so many of us in our lives. We do not want to get torn down. We don't want that relationship torn down. We don't want that career torn down we don't want that dream torn down we want that dream plus God we want that relationship plus God we want control of all of our finances plus God and God said that and I'm not like a little add on at the end of what you've been building. I need to tear this thing down to the studs. And yet it's probably going to be frustrating and yeah, it's probably gonna look like failure to you and yeah, it's gonna be a hard season but if you want this thing to look like how it's supposed to look you're gonna have to go through some failure you're gonna have to go through some pain it's gonna have to happen I think about um, Steph Curry he's probably the pains me to say this because he's like an arch-nemesis for all Cleveland Cavalier fans but Steph Curry is probably the greatest shooter in NBA history. The guy is just his lights out. He's lights out especially from three-point the guy. I mean, he's, he's breaking all the records gonna go down as the greatest three-point shooter in history. And most people I don't know this, he had to completely and utterly rebuild his shot whenever he was in high school. He was if I remember, right, he was a junior going into his senior year. And he started to realize he's thinking more about the future is like, man if I want to play in college, and actually be good in college, and then maybe, maybe have a chance at the pros, someday, I know I'm gonna have to change my shot. Because his dad, Dell Curry, who played in the NBA, and his coaches, were telling him, Steph, you're a fantastic player. But man, you're, you're short, you're short, and your release on your shot is very short. And we're telling you right now, if you try to go to college, with that short release, you release the ball way too low, man, people are going to be blocking and contesting your jump shot all day long. We have got to fix that you've got to release a lot higher so you can get up and over defenders and their hands in the air. And so what they did that entire summer, they didn't tweak his shot. They didn't tell them we'll just change this one little thing. It'll be better. They completely tore it down to the studs, they completely remade. Steffes jump shot. And Steph was talking about it. He did an interview talking about this. He said how that was the most frustrating summer he had ever experienced because it was just constant every single day getting up, you know, 1000s of jump shots. And every single time his form started to slip back into old habits instantly his dad or his coach or staff. Nope, that shot doesn't count your forum, it's back. It's back to the old way you got you got to fix it again. Huh, start releasing it and he'd be good again for a little while and then stop because he messed up again. And he said how much it just felt like a failure. Like every day. He's like, Man, I'm making fewer baskets than I did the old way. Like this is this feels so counterintuitive, feels like a paradox. To fix my shout, I got to tear it down. That's exactly what happened. They put in the work they put in the time. And sure enough, his shot got to the place where he ended up going to college being a star in college getting drafted in the top 10 in the NBA Draft. And then now is a multi multiple-time champion, an MVP, and probably the greatest three-point shooter to ever play in the NBA. And it's all because he experienced failure. It's all because he experienced pain. And just the frustration. He went through it. He went through it and came out on the other side. And what's so cool about him. And what's so cool about my kids he didn't Evelyn is did you notice the failure that they were experiencing? What did it do? It caused them to rely more on me? Steph the pain and the frustration he was experiencing. It caused him to rely more on his dad and on his coach to help get them through. It's a beautiful thing about failure that we so often forget failure drives us to God. So often failure is the very thing that causes our relationship with God to grow in new ways that it's never been before. We lean into him in new ways. And some of us need to fail. Because we need that down a peg or two. We can get pretty hottie we can think a lot of ourselves. I saw a pastor post on Instagram this week, and I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's me. He was joking about how the man he'll just start to do a spiritual discipline. Or he'll just start to kick a sinful habit. And he'll be like a week in of changing just one weekend. And he'll see other people doing the same thing and be like, are you ever gonna change? Are you ever gonna learn it's like, I've only been doing this a week like what in the world is like I need that I need those moments to kind of knock me back down and remind me, man, I'm so reliant on God like I'm just I'm, I'm sinful, and I need to rely on him to change me to change my heart? And failure does a similar thing. It reminds us that we need Jireh, Jehovah Jireh God the provider to provide for us. It reminds us that we can't do this all on our own. So we need failure to help us lean into God. Did you know the exact opposite happens whenever we try to avoid failure?
The more that we try to avoid failure in our lives, the more we try to avoid pain, the more we try to avoid suffering, the more we just keep it all at arm's length, and avoid any situations that would ever put us into pain or suffering or failure. We actually distance ourselves from God. Because that's where God is. God is in the midst of failure. He's in the midst of suffering, he's in the midst of it. So the more we try to avoid and keep it at arm's length, we are simultaneously keeping God at arm's length. We are distancing ourselves from him. I told you we're going to be looking at two scripture verses today we read from Romans I want us to read just one versus one verse from the book of Daniel. This is from Daniel chapter 10 verse six. Let me just give you a quick recap on Daniel is an incredible man he lived before Jesus's life here on Earth. Daniel lived a year ago. He's a Jewish man who was taken into captivity under these pagan kingdoms. After they ran roughshod and destroyed the Jewish kingdom, that is the Israelite kingdom, Daniel was taken. He was a very intelligent, very smart man. And so these kingdoms wanted him for themselves. So they took him in. And he worked his way up the ranks in the Persian first the Babylonian and then the Persian Empire to the place where he was one of the top-ranking officials in the Persian Empire under King Darius, one of the top lieutenants one of his most trusted advisors. And he did that because of his faithfulness because the king knew he could trust him. And so you've got Daniel, this just incredible man, who the king looks to the king loves the king admires. And you know how it goes, if there's someone like that at your job, who the boss loves their go-to person, they love them, there's a whole lot of other people around the office who can't stand that person, right. Just like, if we just knock him down a peg or two, if we just bring him back down to our level of just something could go wrong to make it seem like the sun does rise and set on him. And that's exactly what happened to Daniel. The other officials in the kingdom were like, This dude's got too much influence, he's got too much power, we got to get rid of him or take him down a notch. So they tried to find stuff about him that would do just that, that would diminish him in the eyes of the king. The problem is they couldn't find anything. Daniel lived his life. So above reproach, they could get this. They couldn't find anything to charge him with except how closely and how diligently he followed God. That's it. That like so if maybe if we make his religion illegal, that's how we can get him. So let's try to see if we can sweet talk the king to do that. That's exactly what they did. They went before Darrius They sweet talk to me, like, Hey, you should pass this proclamation. If anyone praises or worships anyone but you, they're executed. Because you are so worthy of it, King Darius. So he passes this decree and that's where we pick up and Daniel chapter six, verse 10. Listen to what it says. Now, when Daniel learned that this decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room, where the windows open towards Jerusalem. Just a few verses earlier, we see this is where Daniel would pray to God, every single day, did the same thing. The Spirit discipline every single day, to show to keep his his his love for God to keep His connection with God that relationship is strong. Daniel would go into his upstairs room, he'd open the windows facing towards Jerusalem, and he would pray three times a day to God. Now let's think about this that that prayer that Daniel always did had just become outlawed. Right? Just become outlawed. Now, at this moment, Daniels got he's got to face an important crossroads, right? He either can choose to continue being faithful to God, or he can choose to try to prevent failure, try to prevent pain, try to prevent suffering in his life. Daniel could have walked up there and said, you know, what? Do I really need to pray with the windows open? I mean, it doesn't really change anything. Let me just close these real quick draws the shades, no one out there needs to know. In fact, I usually pray out loud, I'll just pray in my head. God knows what I'm saying. Anyways, I don't need to pray vocally or anything. And I know I normally like to kneel down. I don't need to kneel today. Like I'll just you see just all these little compromises to kind of make it okay because I don't want to, I don't want to lose faith with the king. I don't want to make anybody mad. I don't want to lose not just my job, not just my authority, not just my position my life, I'm gonna lose any of that. If preventing failure, preventing the pain of preventing suffering was Daniel's main thing. That's how that would have played out. But faithfulness was Daniel's main goal. So listen to what Scripture tells us. So he went upstairs, his upstairs room where the windows open towards Jerusalem, and three times a day, he got down on his knees and he prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before. He changed nothing.
In the face of fear in the face of the failure of losing everything that he had gained throughout his life. In the face of losing his life, in the midst of all that Daniel changed nothing he remained faithful to God had called him to be You see, when we attempt to avoid failure, we will compromise our calling. Would we attempt to avoid failure, we will compromise our calling. That's why you tell those little lies that get you out of something. They're not big, they're just small. It's just a little one, just a little one. But if I told the truth here, they'd get mad at me. I might lose my job. I might get you to know, something bad would happen. My wife would get upset with me, my husband gets upset with me. So I'm just going to tell them just this, just this little one, and every time you attempt to avoid pain or suffering or conflict or failure, you compromise your calling who God made you and intended you to be every single time. Back in June, there was a whole thing that happened with Gamestop Gamestop stock does anyone remember this? Some people do it was a whole I'm, I am not like Mr. Stocks up here anything like that I will. I'm about to give you the most layman's explanation of what happened. So bear with me. But back in June, there's a group on the internet, they had a discussion forum, and they're like, you know, what, we're gonna throw the stock market for a loop here. Alright, we're gonna, it's gonna, we're gonna throw all these big banks and all these big companies, we're gonna throw them for a loop. And so they get this discussion going, they're telling everyone that like, hey, spread the word, buy as much Gamestop stock as you possibly can just buy it, just keep buying it. No one sells just hold on to it. Everybody buys it. Now, whenever I'm talking about GameStop, yes, I'm talking about the place. It's like up here on Arlington Ridge marketplace that sells used video games, right. So people all across the country are buying Gamestop stock at such an incredible rate for about a two-week period. Gamestop was one of the highest-performing stocks on the stock market. Google, Apple, Verizon, at&t, and GameStop. Crazy, they just shot through the roof. And one of the biggest places that people were buying these stocks from was an app and investment app called Robin Hood. Right? I mean, the whole name, the whole reason They even named their app, Robin Hood, it's supposed to be an app that is made for just your common person, just your average person doesn't know stocks isn't all this different stuff. And they wanted to the whole point of being like whenever you listen to their founder, talking about why they started as a company was, we want to make investing open to the common man, like we are so not with these big investment banks and all these corporations, we forget them, we care about you, we care about you just the average person, we want you to be able to invest in you to be able to save for your kids future and also and stuff. So that's how they promoted themselves. That's their calling. That was for the average man. Whatever all this started going down, and the vast majority of people were buying their Gamestop stock through Robin Hood. The stock you know, power players in the stock game started pushing on Robin Hood telling them, you need to like shut it down. Don't let people purchase that stock anymore. Like, don't let them do it. It's driving it up. It's manipulating the market. Don't let them do it anymore, even though what they were doing was completely legal. So guess what Gamestop did? Or guess what Robin Hood did? Did they cave? They cave to the powerful interest because they were afraid of what would happen if they didn't they were afraid of failure, afraid of the pain, afraid of the frustration and suffering. So they caved and they issued a halt. You could buy no more Gamestop stock through their app, and people freaked out. People lost it. Like what in the world. The whole point is that you're supposed to be, hey, we're helping you stick it to the man like we're on your side. But you're not. Because you saw failure coming and you compromised who you said you were going to be and get this in the immediate aftermath, over 66% of people who were Robin Hood account holders said they're going to close their account and leave 66% Two thirds. People have just been fleeing Robin Hood ever since June and going to other apps going to other investment firms. And you know why?
Because they compromise their calling. They compromised who they claim to be at a core level. They probably never thought that day was coming. Right? Oh no, we're always going to be here for the common person to be able to invest until failure was staring them in the eye. And suddenly they gave everything up. Because they were afraid of failure. They did whatever they could to prevent it. And then the process last then sells if you fear failure, and you give into it I'm telling you right now it's going to cost you attempting to avoid failure will have you compromise your calling. You see the truth is avoiding failure. That is not the goal of life. We act like it is a lot, don't we? Like we'll go into marriage with all these high hopes we have the best marriage on anyone we know. And then a year down the road. We're like, you know what, we just don't want to end up in a divorce. We instantly start to change the goal, it starts to settle a little bit, right. Same thing with work like I'm gonna be the best employee I'm gonna just skyrocket through this company and then you're there for a few months. Like yeah, I just, I'm just gonna stay here for a while. Keep a low profile. Just try to bring in a paycheck come in every week and just put in my time. And that's it. I just don't want to fail because I want to get fired. Right? And what a terrible way to live through. What a terrible way to live and, and trying to live a life where the ultimate goal is just not failing. That is the wrong prize, can I just tell you that that's the wrong prize. And if you have the wrong prize out ahead of you, you're going to play the wrong games, you're going to live life to just not fail. So don't take too many risks. Don't be bold, don't trust God too much. Play everything close and tight to the best. Because if you step out too far, you could fail. And we all know the point of life is don't fail. Don't be known as a failure, as we talked about last week failure, that'll become your fingerprint, become what people know you for. Don't, don't, don't risk too much. Don't trust too much. Don't have too much faith. Because you could get burned and no one wants to be a failure. But avoiding failure is not it has never been the goal of life. Faithfulness is. Faithfulness is the point of life. Faithfulness is the goal that we should all be striving towards being a faithful person and a holistic way. I don't just mean faithful to God, faithful in your relationships, faithful to your word, faithful and every area imaginable. That's the goal of life to be a faithful person. And if that's the prize at the end, you play all the right games throughout life. If faithfulness is the prize that you are shooting for, that's exactly who Daniel was. That's why Daniel chose what he did. That's why Daniel continues to pray. He didn't compromise his calling, because he's like, You know what, life isn't about me just trying to avoid failure. It's about me being faithful. And some being faithful brings on, suppose its failure, then bring it on. Because I'm going to be faithful to what I know I'm supposed to do and what God is calling me to do. I think about me and Jessica, whenever we got married, we had the traditional vows, any other married couples in here? Anybody, anybody in here, marry anybody online, married if you were like us, and you had the traditional vows, traditional wedding vows, they sound something like this, I Jacob will take you, Jessica to be my lawfully wedded wife to have and to hold, to love and to cherish in good times and in bad in sickness and in health, in riches and for poor, even unto death. And even then, I pledge to you, my faith.
Do you know what that entire vow is about? Faithfulness. It's just about faithfulness. There is not one word in there about and we will avoid failure together in life. We'll make sure everything's always bright and sunny and cheerful and always up and to the right. And everything's great. That's nowhere in there. In fact, the opposite is in there. Now there's going to be bad times, there's going to be sickness, there's going to be poor. There's going to be hard times there's going to be a failure, there's going to be suffering, there's going to be a pain. But guess what, avoiding that isn't the point. Faithfulness is being a faithful person is the point of life, being faithful. And when that is the thing that you are shooting for everything about your life changes, you won't compromise anymore, right? Because you're not afraid of failing, you're not afraid of pain, or suffering. You're not afraid of it. So you'll take those risks, you'll take those chances, you'll be bold in your relationships, you'll trust God with your money. You'll trust God with your relationships, you'll trust God to help you tackle bad habits. I want to tell you to stop trying to prevent failure in your life. We as a church, don't make decisions based on of well, will this lead to failure? Will people view this as a failure if this happens, that that mindset is so long gone, it's crazy? That started whenever we left our old building, it's continued to this day, we are not just moving forward, we are sprinting forward saying you know what, we do not care if it looks like failure may be coming in an area because if we are obeying God, if it's if that failure isn't because we have sinned in some way, but that failure is a naturally occurring thing because we're taking risks, then you know, what, not only are we not afraid of it coming to our door, we will meet at the door and we will let it in. Because we know God is in the midst of that failure. He's in the midst of it. And we know suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance produces character and character produces hope. So we will take glory in our sufferings and we won't try to prevent the failures in life, we will welcome them we will meet them at the door and we will trust with God that that failure is not really a failure, that there is something on the other side that there is an upside to every single down that comes our way and we don't just believe that as a church. I want you to believe and to know that individual as a person because if you do, it will change Your life. I want to pray for you. All right, let's bow our heads. And let's pray together Heavenly Father, Heavenly Father, man, help us to internalize this truth. Man oh man, I just think about my own life and how often the more that I try to avoid pain the more I try to avoid suffering, the more I try to avoid even the look of failure in my life, it seems like the more I run away from you, what a paradigm shift to realize you are in the midst of failure, you are in the midst of suffering. That's why Scripture tells us you are near to the brokenhearted because you're right there. You're right there in the midst of it. And so the more I tried to keep it at arm's length, I am keeping you at arm's length. So God helps, not just me but everybody in this room, everybody watching online to the failures that are coming our way in life, the ones that aren't induced by our sin, the ones that aren't induced because we've done something wrong or stupid. God, just the naturally occurring failures that come in life from taking risks from having faith and being bold, God help us to welcome those. Help us to welcome those to meet those at the door and let them in because we know that as they are walking in, you are walking in, you are in the midst of every failure. And whenever we trust it to you, you are Jehovah Jireh you are God the provider and you will provide blessings upon blessings, even in the midst of failure, there is nothing that you can't do. And so the failures that we are so afraid of God, we can hand them to you and we can trust you with them. And we don't have to be afraid of them. We don't have to try to avoid them anymore. We can walk confidently into the midst of them knowing that you go before us and you go with us. Thank you for that truth. God. Help us to live it out this week, and we'll give you all the honor all the glory, and all the praise. It's in your name that we pray.
