God on Film – Edge of Tomorrow
Learning from Past Mistakes
Sycamore Creek Church
June 8/9, 2014
Tom Arthur

 

Peace friends!

When have you not learned from your past mistakes? I don’t know how many times I’ve done this but almost every time I get in the hall closet to pull out a coat, I try to pull the coat out of the closet without first removing the vacuum cleaner.  I grab the coat and pull and the vacuum cleaner topples over and crashes to the ground.  Every time!  Why do I keep doing it this way?

Then there’s the whole wireless mouse issue I’ve got.  I’m currently on my third wireless mouse because I keep forgetting to remove the little wireless thing you plug into the side of your laptop, and I end up smashing it into something and breaking it.  I’ve got two useless mice keeping me company at my desk.

Ramping up the stakes a little higher, Sarah and I have been married for seventeen years.  There are certain arguments we’ve been having for seventeen years.  These arguments are very predictable.  We even have a script.  I say A.  She says B.  I say C.  She says D.  It’s as if I think that if I trot out the same arguments I’ve been using for seventeen years that she will finally this time see the perfect wisdom that I have to share and will bow down at my feet in humble submission and acknowledge my patience for persevering with these arguments for seventeen years.  But that hasn’t happened yet.  Rather it’s.  Argue.  Fight.  Repeat.

There are some mistakes you make just once and some mistakes you make over and over again.  The wisdom of the Bible has something to say about these kinds of mistakes we repeat over and over again:

As a dog returns to its vomit,
so a fool repeats his foolishness.
~Proverbs 26:11 NLT

Today we’re continuing in our summer series, God on Film.  Each week we’re looking at a different summer blockbuster.  Each of these movies picks up a theme and explores it from Hollywood’s perspective.  We’re exploring that same theme from the Bible’s perspective.  Today we’re looking at the new Tom Cruise movie, Edge of Tomorrow. 

Edge of Tomorrow is kind of like Enders Game meets Saving Private Ryan meets Groundhog Day.  Tom Cruise’s character gets stuck repeating the same battle with aliens over and over again.  The tag line for this movie is Live – Die – Repeat.  He fights.  Dies.  And then repeats the whole thing again.  Every time he gets a little further in the battle.  The theme I want to explore today is learning from your past mistakes, and I want to look at three things the Bible teaches about learning from your past mistakes.

1. Get Up Again
Edge of Tomorrow works a bit like a video game.  When you die, you hit the reset button and play it again.  Every time you die in the video game, you learn a little bit from your mistake and you make it a little further the next time around.

When I was in college one of my roommates had a Nintendo (yes, the original one).  For Christmas he was given Mike Tyson’s Punchout.  It became a contest in our house for who could get to Mike Tyson first and beat him.  I was determined to get those bragging rights so I spent countless hours playing that video game.  Eventually I won.  I TKO’d Mike Tyson before anyone else in my house.  How did I do it?  Simple.  When I got TKO’d myself, I’d get back up again and try again.

The godly may trip seven times, but they will get up again
But one disaster is enough to overthrow the wicked.
~Proverbs 24:16 NLT

Sarah and I were on a date one night up in Boyne City at Lester’s BBQ.  As we sat having some great BBQ ribs, I looked out the window and saw several young men across the street. One of them was on a skate board trying to pull off a complicated move.  The other had a video camera and was trying to get the perfect video.  For the entire time that Sarah and I sat there and ate dinner, these two were doing this one move over and over again.  I don’t know whether they ever got what they were shooting for because when we left the restaurant, they were still trying to nail it.  I was thoroughly impressed with their perseverance.  He would fall down and get back up.  Fall down.  Get back up.  Fall down.  Get back up.

So how do you learn from your past mistakes?  You get up and try again.  You fall down.  You get up.   You fall down.  You get up.  Fall down.  Get up.

2. Surround Yourself with Others
Did you catch in the opening trailer how Emily Blunt’s character, Rita Vrataski, tells Tom Cruise’s character, Major William Cage to “come find me when you wake up.”  She helps train him so that he can get a little further each time in the battle.

 

I’m reminded that we don’t learn from our past mistakes unless we have people who surround us to help us get a little further before we fall than we did last time.  The author of Hebrew says:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.
~Hebrews 12:1 NLT

You don’t do this whole faith thing alone.  You don’t have to throw off the weight of past mistakes alone.  That’s what a church is for.  It’s a community of friends that helps us get back up again and learn form our past mistakes.

This past week I had someone send me a text saying, “I’m really struggling with some bad news in my life right now and feeling like looking at porn and masturbating to numb myself from the pain.  I’m letting you know because the first line of defense is to tell someone.”  In the past he would have just fallen into the temptation.  This time he was able to resist and get a little further.

Recently I spoke with someone else who is in a recovery program for addictions.  They have a sponsor with this program.  They were feeling particularly tempted one night and picked up the phone to call their sponsor.  The temptation went away.  They got a little further.

Some time ago I talked to another person struggling with money decisions.  They wanted to spend their money in an unhealthy way.  They chose instead to meet with someone in the church, set a budget and stick with it.  They got a little further.

One of the key ways we meet new friends that will help us learn from our past mistakes is in small groups.  This summer we have 22 summer groups that you can sign up for.  You can signup for one or more of these groups online here.

Don’t do life alone.  Surround yourself with others so you can learn from your past mistakes.

3. Look Forward with God
The last way you learn from your past mistakes is you quit looking back and instead you look forward with God.  Paul, the first missionary of the church and author of many of the books of the Bible said,

I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.
~Philippians 3:12-14 NLT

Forget the past.  Look forward.  Press on.  I’ve recently come across a concept called C.A.N.E.P.  It means Constant And Never Ending Perfection.  The basic idea is that you don’t have to get 100% better next week.  But can you learn from your past mistakes, look forward, and press on so that you get 1% better by next week?  If you get 1% better each week, by the end of the year you’ll be over 50% better.  By the end of a life time you’ll have grown significantly.

There is a temptation in this idea itself.  We can never attain a certain kind of perfection.  Paul says that he has not already reach perfection.  We will never have perfect knowledge, perfect health, freedom from mistakes, freedom from temptation or reach a state of perfection from which we can never fall.  And yet Paul does say, “I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.”  So there is at the least a kind of perfection that we strive for.  Christians disagree on whether we can fully attain it or not, but this is the kind of perfection we are striving for: perfect love.  Perfect love is a love for God that so fills the heart that when you know what God desires of you, you are fully committed, willing, and submitted to doing it.  We become possessed by this kind of love because Jesus possessed us with this kind of love.

Speaking of being possessed by the love of God in Jesus, today is the two year anniversary of my ordination to become a pastor and this week is my eleven year anniversary of my call to become a pastor.  Eleven years ago while sitting in a workshop on spiritual intelligence, God called me to be his pastor.  I was full of all kinds of fear by this call.  I wrote this in my journal:

6-11-03: Wednesday
“We exaggerate all our suffering by our cowardice.  They are great, it is true, but they are magnified by fear.  The way to lessen them is to abandon ourselves courageously into the hands of God.”
~François Fénelon, 17^th Century French Archbishop

Lord, my fears about future sufferings are great.  Help me to abandon myself totally into your hands and trust in your goodness and faithfulness to forming me into who you want me to be.  Lord, yesterday I experienced your call as clear as I have ever experienced.  I went to listen to John Savage speak at Bay View.  He was speaking on spiritual intelligence.  This particular day seemed to focus on listening to god and hearing god’s voice.  He told us to take one of the parts of our life and ask god a question about it.  Then to write from our gut the answer we heard.  And in this way to have a conversation with God.  He encouraged us not to let our mind get too wrapped up in the process.  My part was “profession.” My dialogue was as follows:

Lord, what are you calling me to?
To be a pastor.

Why?
Because I want you.

How much?
All of you.

Lord, the conviction I felt in my gut after this dialogue was similar to other convictions I have felt throughout my life that when I followed them I found that your hand was truly in them and my life was better off after having followed them and that all the fears I had expected would manifest themselves in destruction of self were completely without base.  And so I am led to believe that you did call me yesterday as clear as you have ever called me before.  It was not a voice but a conviction in my gut. 

What have been the parts of my calling thus far:
[I wrote down twenty-four different reasons/experiences/confirmations]

Lord, here are the fears I have about this call:
[I wrote down eleven fears including…]

• I fear ending up in a very traditional church where I struggle every Sunday in that setting
• I fear being the pastor and being bored with worship as I often am now.
• I fear not having the financial resources to make all this happen.

Lord, these are my fears amidst the sense of call you have put on me.  Help me to abandon myself to you in all of them.  Use me today according to your will and your plan.  In Jesus’ name, may it be so.

Friends, I don’t know where you keep falling down.  What I do know is that when the love of Jesus possesses you fully and completely, you get back up, you surround yourselves with others, you look forward, and you get ready for the greatest adventure you’ll ever have in your life.  Have you been possessed by the love of Jesus?  You don’t have to do anything to prepare yourself.  You simply pray, “Lord Jesus, I am yours and you are mine.  Take my life.  Forgive me for the ways I have made the same mistakes over and over again.  Let me get back up again.  Give me good healthy friends to surround myself.  And let me look forward to your future adventure for my life.  Amen.”

If you prayed that prayer, I’d suggest you look a little further into what it means to follow Jesus.  You can find some help here.  Or pick up a Bible at the info table and begin reading it.  Get in a small group.  Talk to God daily.  You’re in for an adventure!

Bring a friend and first time guests get free movie tickets to Celebration Cinema.  Next week we continue this series with the movie: How to Train Your Dragon 2.