Success does not belong to any one group of people–you can be successful in what you do. Success is not measured in wealth. It is measured in God’s presence in your life and in your relationship with Him. How are you to rebuild from your mistakes and build your way back towards success?
1. A renewed prayer life. A regular conversation with God dealing with everything in our life. Note that when your life is in disarray, you are not talking with God–you are not in fellowship with Him.
2. Restore God’s Word in your life. Along with prayer, there needs to be an engaging with God through His Word that shapes your life. You are to develop your prayer life with a regular reading and studying in order to know how to pray and receive direction on how to live.
3. Reestablish your fellowship with God and with other believers. Sin breaks your relationship with God, and you are to bring yourself back to God and renew the relationship with Him through prayer and obedience to His Word. You also need to join up with believers you know to receive encouragement and valuable fellowship. To forsake them is to leave yourself open for the world’s temptations which may have caused you to sever your relationship with God before.
Galatians 6:7-8
7 Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows he will also reap, 8 because the one who sows to his flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit.
Your obedience to God’s Word requires compliance with His Word. He takes His Word very seriously.
God already knows that we are going to falter in our life. He has given us the Holy Spirit to teach us in order for us to learn from our mistakes. We are challenged to lessen our number of falls and grow as we learn.
Proverbs 24:16
Though a righteous man falls seven times,
he will get up,
but the wicked will stumble into ruin.
God is ready to do a new thing for you.
Isaiah 43:19
Look, I am about to do something new;
even now it is coming. Do you not see it?
Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert.
Matthew 18:21-22
21 Then Peter came to Him and said, “Lord, how many times could my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?”
22 “I tell you, not as many as seven,” Jesus said to him, “but 70 times seven.”
1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1 Thessalonians 5:17
Pray constantly.
Look at what happens when we fail to talk with God:
2 Samuel 11:2-27
1 In the spring when kings march out to war, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah, but David remained in Jerusalem.
2 One evening David got up from his bed and strolled around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing—a very beautiful woman. 3 So David sent someone to inquire about her, and he reported, “This is Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam and wife of Uriah the Hittite.”
4 David sent messengers to get her, and when she came to him, he slept with her. Now she had just been purifying herself from her uncleanness. Afterward, she returned home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to inform David: “I am pregnant.”
6 David sent orders to Joab: “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” So Joab sent Uriah to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the troops were doing and how the war was going. 8 Then he said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king followed him. 9 But Uriah slept at the door of the palace with all his master’s servants; he did not go down to his house.
10 When it was reported to David, “Uriah didn’t go home,” David questioned Uriah, “Haven’t you just come from a journey? Why didn’t you go home?”
11 Uriah answered David, “The ark, Israel, and Judah are dwelling in tents, and my master Joab and his soldiers are camping in the open field. How can I enter my house to eat and drink and sleep with my wife? As surely as you live and by your life, I will not do this!”
12 “Stay here today also,” David said to Uriah, “and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day and the next. 13 Then David invited Uriah to eat and drink with him, and David got him drunk. He went out in the evening to lie down on his cot with his master’s servants, but he did not go home.
14 The next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. 15 In the letter he wrote:
Put Uriah at the front of the fiercest fighting, then withdraw from him so that he is struck down and dies.
16 When Joab was besieging the city, he put Uriah in the place where he knew the best enemy soldiers were. 17 Then the men of the city came out and attacked Joab, and some of the men from David’s soldiers fell in battle; Uriah the Hittite also died.
18 Joab sent someone to report to David all the details of the battle. 19 He commanded the messenger, “When you’ve finished telling the king all the details of the battle— 20 if the king’s anger gets stirred up and he asks you, ‘Why did you get so close to the city to fight? Didn’t you realize they would shoot from the top of the wall? 21 At Thebez, who struck Abimelech son of Jerubbesheth? Didn’t a woman drop an upper millstone on him from the top of the wall so that he died? Why did you get so close to the wall?’—then say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.’” 22 Then the messenger left.
When he arrived, he reported to David all that Joab had sent him to tell. 23 The messenger reported to David, “The men gained the advantage over us and came out against us in the field, but we counterattacked right up to the entrance of the gate. 24 However, the archers shot down on your soldiers from the top of the wall, and some of the king’s soldiers died. Your servant Uriah the Hittite is also dead.”
25 David told the messenger, “Say this to Joab: ‘Don’t let this matter upset you because the sword devours all alike. Intensify your fight against the city and demolish it.’ Encourage him.”
26 When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband Uriah had died, she mourned for him. 27 When the time of mourning ended, David had her brought to his house. She became his wife and bore him a son. However, the LORD considered what David had done to be evil.
Was David really praying or actually responding to his own fleshly desires? Sin was lingering from the beginning when he decided to stay home while his soldiers went into battle. He turned away from those who were loyal to him and betrayed the trust of his soldiers–some of them even lost their lives because of his actions. All of these actions were displeasing to God.
2 Samuel 12:1-13
1 So the LORD sent Nathan to David. When he arrived, he said to him:
There were two men in a certain city, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one small ewe lamb that he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up, living with him and his children. It shared his meager food and drank from his cup; it slept in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. 4 Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man could not bring himself to take one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for his guest.
5 David was infuriated with the man and said to Nathan: “As the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! 6 Because he has done this thing and shown no pity, he must pay four lambs for that lamb.”
7 Nathan replied to David, “You are the man! This is what the LORD God of Israel says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. 8 I gave your master’s house to you and your master’s wives into your arms, and I gave you the house of Israel and Judah, and if that was not enough, I would have given you even more. 9 Why then have you despised the command of the LORD by doing what I consider evil? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife as your own wife—you murdered him with the Ammonite’s sword. 10 Now therefore, the sword will never leave your house because you despised Me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own wife.’
11 “This is what the LORD says, ‘I am going to bring disaster on you from your own family: I will take your wives and give them to another before your very eyes, and he will sleep with them publicly. 12 You acted in secret, but I will do this before all Israel and in broad daylight.’”
13 David responded to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.”
Then Nathan replied to David, “The LORD has taken away your sin; you will not die.
Nathan is sent by God to David to make David aware of his sin, because he was not conscious of it. It became a public sin before everyone after Nathan made the declaration. It took all of this to Bring David to repentance and to seek God once more with a new prayer life.
The consequences of the sins, however, were far reaching. He lost four of his sons because of what had happened. While David’s life was a great life of service to the Lord, he also had to deal with the consequences of being in sin and out of fellowship with God.
What did David learn?
Psalm 101:3
I will not set anything worthless before my eyes.
I hate the practice of transgression;
it will not cling to me.
Psalm 31:1-5
1 LORD, I seek refuge in You;
let me never be disgraced.
Save me by Your righteousness.
2 Listen closely to me; rescue me quickly.
Be a rock of refuge for me,
a mountain fortress to save me.
3 For You are my rock and my fortress;
You lead and guide me
because of Your name.
4 You will free me from the net
that is secretly set for me,
for You are my refuge.
5 Into Your hand I entrust my spirit;
You redeem me, LORD, God of truth.
Psalm 51:11-12
11 Do not banish me from Your presence
or take Your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore the joy of Your salvation to me,
and give me a willing spirit.
Psalm 103:2-3, 10
2 My soul, praise the LORD,
and do not forget all His benefits.
3 He forgives all your sin;
He heals all your diseases.
10 He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve
or repaid us according to our offenses.
Start talking with God about your life, what is on your heart, and about your problems. Tell Him about your spiritual needs, your battles with sin, and your fear of failure and falling out of fellowship with Him.
God will graciously remove the sin and transgression in your life, and He also provides healing, as well. In turn, you must have the desire to seek Him in the aftermath or there won’t be much growth in your relationship.
God values your relationship with Him and your communication with Him. When you are in fellowship with God, you are best able to recover from your falls and grow in your spiritual life with Him.
Akron Alliance Fellowship 