Are You Building Monuments to Failure?

Perhaps it's time for a gut check...

Last weekend, I came across some 18-year-old sermon notes of mine.

Yeah, OK... I'm a bit of a packrat!

There was one particular teaching on Joshua 4:1-7 that reminded me that sometimes the teacher can learn as much or more than their students. Preparing that teaching was a life-altering experience… and giving it was an even more serious gut check for me!

As it turned out, I’d had a certain way of looking back over my life. Over the years, I would mentally note events that I considered turning points. Each of them was a decision I’d made or an action that I took that had life-changing consequences.

Included were not finishing graduate school and a college-age marriage that ended in a difficult divorce just four years later. Also on my list was a business decision I’d made, some missed opportunities, and other personal failings.

In other words, I’d set out as markers in my life only those things that had caused me emotional pain and negative consequences. As years went by, I’d remember the anniversaries of those dates and remember them as times when I’d royally messed up.

Then came the day I met with my fellow elders for our regular weekly bible study. When we came to Joshua 4:1-7, I was asked to read it aloud…

When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, 2 “Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, 3 and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, from right where the priests are standing, and carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight.” 4 So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, 5 and said to them, “Go over before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ 7 Tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.

Once I finished reading, the text slammed me with the fact that I too was building monuments. But, I wasn’t building them to times of Godly provision like Joshua and Israelites had experienced, or to my own salvation, or to times when God had protected me. I was building them to the junk in my life… all the failures and bad decisions.

I was stunned…

After I shared my epiphany with those pastors and elders, they insisted that I had to teach on that the very next Sunday morning…

After my sermon, several church members came to me and shared that they too had not realized they had been doing the same thing… building monuments to their failures rather than recalling the blessings they’d received throughout life.

I had no idea others felt the same way...

Since then, I have chosen to think differently about my past… to instead recall with joy those times when God has been faithful in His provision… and how blessed I am to have been offered and accepted His free gift of grace and forgiveness of my sins. I came to realize my focus must not be on the junk in my life, but on the fact that Christ’s sacrifice has covered all of my sins… without which I would be lost.

How about you?

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