Stop Measuring Your Life by Your Stumbles
Scripture: Proverbs 24:16 (NKJV)
“For a righteous man may fall seven times And rise again, But the wicked shall fall by calamity.”
I have a brother in Christ whom I love dearly. He’s been through his share of struggles, disappointments, and setbacks. But something I’ve noticed is that when he looks back over his life, he seems to see only the things that went wrong.
He talks about the jobs he’s lost, but he doesn’t recognize that every single time he lost a job, he got back up, went back to work, and found another one. He never quit.
He talks about how he wasn’t the father he should have been when his sons were growing up. But he struggles to recognize the man and father he has become today. A man who is growing in his faith, learning to walk with Christ, and making an effort to be present in his sons’ lives now.
He sees his failures, but he overlooks his growth.
He remembers every time he stumbled, but forgets every time God gave him the strength to get back up.
And as we were talking, I told him something that I believe applies to so many of us:
Until you change the way you look at what you’ve been through, you’re going to struggle to see how far God has brought you.
How many of us do the same thing?
We spend so much time looking at what we’ve lost that we fail to recognize what God has restored.
We focus on the mistakes we’ve made instead of the lessons we’ve learned.
We dwell on the person we used to be instead of recognizing the person God is shaping us into.
Think about Peter. He denied Jesus three times. Imagine the guilt, the shame, and the regret he must have carried. But Jesus didn’t leave Peter defined by his worst moment. He restored him and called him to feed His sheep (John 21:15–17).
What if Peter had spent the rest of his life believing he was nothing more than the man who denied Christ?
What if he had allowed his failure to become his identity?
That’s exactly what some of us are doing today.
We have allowed yesterday’s mistakes to overshadow today’s blessings.
But your failures are part of your story. They are not your identity.
Paul reminds us in Philippians 3:13–14 (NKJV):
“Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
Paul wasn’t saying that his past didn’t matter. He was saying that his past wasn’t going to keep him from moving forward in Christ.
And that’s something we all need to understand.
God doesn’t waste our struggles. He can use our failures to humble us, our hardships to strengthen us, and our experiences to prepare us to help someone else.
Sometimes we become so focused on where we fell that we fail to recognize how many times God has helped us stand back up.
Maybe you weren’t the father you should have been. But are you becoming the father God has called you to be today?
Maybe you lost a job, a relationship, or an opportunity. But did you get back up? Did you keep going? Did you learn something along the way?
Maybe you’ve made decisions you wish you could take back. We all have. But are you allowing those decisions to define you, or are you allowing God to transform you?
You cannot change yesterday, but through Christ, you can change how you live today.
I want to encourage you to do something.
Stop looking back over your life and counting only the times you fell.
Start recognizing the times you got back up.
Look at the obstacles you’ve overcome, the lessons you’ve learned, the people you’ve helped, and the ways God has worked in your life, even when you didn’t recognize Him at the time.
And remember, recognizing your growth doesn’t mean ignoring your mistakes. It means acknowledging that God’s grace is greater than your failures.
Your life isn’t measured by how many times you’ve stumbled. It’s revealed in how you respond, how you grow, and whether you continue walking with Christ.
So here’s my question for you today:
When you look back over your life, do you only see where you’ve fallen, or can you recognize how far God has brought you?
Because sometimes the greatest testimony isn’t that you never fell.
It’s that by the grace of God, you’re still standing.
— Rev. Carlos Figueroa
TheFreeBible.org
