How Can I Know How To Start Over When I’ve Blown It?

One of the questions I am asked by people is this: “Is it possible to start over after making a major mistake, or do I have to spend the rest of my life paying for my mistake?”

If the person asking the question is a Christian, he or she is not doubting God’s willingness to allow him into heaven when he dies but is wondering if he was sentenced to a lifetime of hell while he remains alive on earth. 

Maybe you are asking the same question as well. Divorce, termination, an unwise business decision, or a lapse in judgment has left you sitting on the ash heap of a ruined life, wondering, “Can I ever recover from this?”

If that is true of you—or someone you know—I have some bad and good news for you. The bad news is that history has no rewind button. You cannot erase the past. However, the good news is that your failure does not have to be the final chapter of your life story. 

Today, we will answer: “How Can I Know How To Start Over When I’ve Blown It?” You can recover from the inevitable and seemingly unforgivable mistakes in your life by following these four sequential principles.

1. Admitting Our Mistakes

• Barriers to Admitting Our Mistakes

1. Pride (Romans 3:23; 5:12)
2. Fear (Hebrews 4:13)

• Benefits of Admitting Our Mistakes

Solomon offered this blunt observation: “He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion” (Proverbs 28:13). Only when we admit our failure can we recover and even profit from our failure. 

Admitting our mistakes is essential for: 

• Receiving God’s forgiveness

As Augustine said, “God ·only gives to those whose hands are empty.” Only after we have emptied ourselves of our denials and rationalizations for our failures are we in a position to receive God’s forgiveness for our mistakes. 

• Renewing our physical and emotional vitality (Psalm 32:3-4; 5, 11)

Trying to conceal our failure can be taxing. Hiding bills from our mate, trying to remember what story we told to which person, and inventing new excuses to conceal our activities exact a heavy emotional and physical toll.

• Learning from our mistakes 

Failure always has a price tag attached to it. Our mistakes may cost us our jobs, our life savings, our most valued friendship, or even our marriage. It is terrible to have to pay for our mistakes. But what is even more tragic is having to pay for the same mistake again! 

The Bible uses the term “reproof” to describe the negative consequences that result from our mistakes: bankruptcy, termination from a job, or divorce. Think of a reproof as tuition you pay for taking a course in school. You can learn from the course and graduate, or you can fail the course and have to take it again (and have to pay the tuition again).

Similarly, after we have paid a hefty price for our failures, we can either learn from those failures or repeat them. Throughout the book of Proverbs, Solomon contrasts the wise person who learns from reproofs with the foolish man who ignores reproofs in Proverbs 10:17 and Proverbs 12:1. Admitting our failures paves the way for the second step toward a new beginning.

2. Experiencing God’s Forgiveness

• Judicial Forgiveness (Psalm 32:1-2)

I realize that two very different audiences share one common trait: the tendency to make mistakes. If you are not a Christian yet feel overwhelmed by your failure, your need is for God’s “judicial” forgiveness, or as it is sometimes called in the Bible, “justification.”

The word “justification” is a legal term describing God’s action of declaring a person “not guilty” on the basis of Christ’s death for his sins. The moment you trust in Jesus Christ alone for your forgiveness, God wraps the perfect righteousness of His Son around you and no longer holds you accountable for your failures.

The word translated “blessed” means “happy.” Three words in these two verses explain the results of God’s judicial forgiveness of our sins, which results in happiness for the recipient of that forgiveness.

1. Forgiven (Psalm 103:12)
2. Covered (Psalm 51:7)
3. Impute (Isaiah 64:6; 2 Corinthians 5:21)

• Parental Forgiveness (Isaiah 59:2; 1 John 1:8-10)

However, I also realize some of you are reading this blog and are already Christians. You may wonder, “If God has already completely and eternally forgiven me of my sins, why do I need to experience God’s forgiveness again after I have failed?” 

While God’s “judicial forgiveness” is a once-for-all action by which God declares us completely and eternally forgiven, we still need to regularly experience God’s “parental forgiveness” for our failures. Every parent (that’s many of us) and every child (that’s all of us) can understand this concept. When your child disobeys you, you probably don’t run to your attorney and immediately disinherit your offspring. Even if you did resort to that extreme action, your child would always be your child. 

Nevertheless, as long as your child persists in rebelling against you, there will be a relational barrier between you and him. The natural guilt he feels over his disobedience makes him reluctant to want to spend time with you. Likewise, as long as he disregards your wishes, you will be less inclined to answer his requests or surprise him with nice gifts.

How do we break down that barrier created by our disobedience and restore our relationship with God? In a word: confession.

• Why Do Forgiven People Still Hurt? 

I am often asked by people who have failed miserably and sought God’s forgiveness, “If God has truly forgiven me, why doesn’t He erase these painful consequences from my life?” 

God’s refusal to remove all of the hurtful effects of our failures even after we have sought and received His forgiveness is actually a sign of God’s love for us. Even after King David received God’s forgiveness for his sin with Bathsheba, he still suffered the aftershocks of a dead child, a disloyal son, and a divided kingdom until the day he died. Yet, David expressed gratitude for those difficult and continuing consequences because they motivated him to obey God: “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word” (Psalm 119:67).

3. Waiting for God’s Direction

• The Need for “Intermissions” (Acts 7:29-30)

In my book Second Change, Second Act, I discuss the concept of “intermissions” in life. An intermission is the time between your failure and your future.

When we fail, we wonder if the curtain has come down on our life story, never to rise again. But contrary to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observation that “There are no second acts in American lives,” God delights in creating second acts for His children. However, experiencing an enjoyable and rewarding second act in our life after a major failure usually requires enduring an intermission.

Most people hate the idea of waiting. Our natural tendency is to want to rush from our last job to our next job or from our last relationship to the next relationship. Yet, as you look through the Bible, God has always used intermission in the lives of His people to prepare them for a better future. 

• The Benefits of an “Intermission”

1. Replenish our emotional and physical energy (1 Kings 19:1-18).
2. Reflect on our failure and our future.

Reflective questions about your failure: 

• Have I really failed or just fallen short of an unrealistic goal?
• Is my failure the result of other people, adverse circumstances, or my own wrong choices?
• Whom do I know who has made the same mistake and recovered from it?
• What can I do differently in the future to prevent a similar failure?
• Is there anything in my life that is displeasing to God?

Reflective questions about your future:

• What three things would I like to accomplish before I die?
• Am I in the vocation I want to be in ten years from now?
• What do I feel most passionately about in life?
• What do other people think I’m gifted to do?
• What would be an ideal day for me? (Where would I be living, what job would I have, what people would be around me?)

4. Starting Over with a New Beginning

• Planning for Your New Beginning (Proverbs 16:3, 20:18, 21:5)

Obviously, any of our plans can be overridden by an all-powerful God. Nevertheless, the reality of God’s sovereignty does not negate the importance of developing plans. Take a few hours during your intermission, sit down with a legal pad and a cup of coffee, and prepare your second-act script using this four-part outline.

• Components of Your New Beginning Script

1. Clarification of the problem
2. Visualization of the goal
3. Identification of barriers
4. Specification of action steps

Once you have identified these major barriers, then you can develop specific action steps for removing the barriers. Your action steps will become your “to-do” list when you are ready to move beyond your intermission into the next phase of your life.

• Beginning Your New Beginning (Exodus 14:15)

1. Your attitude
2. Your emotions
3. Your circumstances

Are you ready to admit that your failure was primarily your fault and no one else’s? Have you acknowledged your mistake to God and received His unconditional forgiveness? Have you taken time to reflect on the cause of your failure as well as the future you would like to experience? If so, don’t be surprised if you begin experiencing some major changes in your life that are God’s way of telling you, “Go forward.” The same God who has brought you to this point will lead you safely to the other side. That’s something you can know for sure!