DON'T LET YESTERDAY'S MISTAKES RUIN TODAY Text: John 8:32; Ephesians 4:23; Philippians 2:5 Do you allow

mistakes of yesterday to ruin today and, beyond that, other days in a long succession? I sincerely hope not. But of many people this may sadly be said to be true. One of the most pesky and complicated factors of human nature with which we have to contend is the mistake tendency--the tendency to make one mistake and then a second mistake and then a third, until this becomes habitual. When Almighty God created us He put His truth into us. If from babyhood a person would hold God's truth through his whole developing life, the wonder and the glory of his life would be hard to describe. The mistake tendency isn't in us by nature, for God does all things well. When He created you He made no mistakes. But the mistake tendency is taken over from other people, by a process of osmosis resulting from a person's relationship with the world. And then the mistakes of one day influence adversely the experiences of another day. The great issue of life is whether we have within us a greater degree of truth than of error. If we have error in us and it becomes dominant, it works itself out in erroneous results. What we do can only be in accordance with what we are inwardly. If we are filled with error, it is bound to work itself out in the form of mistakes compounded and repeated. If, on the other hand, we are filled with truth, then error cannot dominate us. And what is the source of truth? Education, instruction, learning? Yes, but some of the most highly educated people who have ever lived have not had truth. They've had knowledge, but not truth. Truth is of God. It is the wisdom of God in the mind and in the soul of man. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Free of error and of mistakes. And the great way to know truth is to know Jesus, for He is the greatest personification of truth that ever appeared among us. The fact that so many people have so little grasp of truth that they are constantly plagued by mistakes becomes, therefore, a spiritual matter. I was led to a discussion of this subject by a gentleman who really was concerned about himself. He had a problem. He asked me a question--and I wish he hadn't asked me, because I'm not wise enough to give him the answer. What he asked me was why he made so many mistakes. As he put it, "Why am I so dumb? Why do I do so many stupid things?" It wasn't that he was lacking in education. He told me his IQ, which was very high. And he was a graduate of a celebrated university; as a matter of fact he had graduated with academic honors. It's a strange thing, but some people produce academically and then when they get into the world and have to face problems on their own, where they have to draw upon the wisdom they have studied, find they haven't got what it takes. This man said he had lost six jobs in ten years and in every instance it was because he did something stupid. "Now," he said, "I'd like to have you tell me what is wrong with me." Of course, I suggested that he get counseling. And I remarked, "At least you're on the way to changing, for you do admit your stupidity, if that is what you wish to call it. The man who is really in a bad way is the one who is dumb and doesn't know it. Anyway, you aren't really stupid." And I said, "Jim, if you will commit your life to Jesus Christ so that He takes over your thought processes, you will be guided and will not make all these mistakes." Then there was a man who came to me about a problem even more difficult. He said, "I've been married three years and I've just become aware that I made a mistake. I married the wrong girl." What would you do if a man came and told you he'd been married three years and he'd suddenly discovered that he'd married the wrong girl? Well, you'd do the same as I did. I said, "Let your wife come and talk with me. I want to see how she feels about it." Marriage is a two-way street. I've never seen all the rightness on one side. However, as I got into this couple's problem I began to think perhaps the poor fellow had made a mistake. But I said to him, "Since the mistake (if that's what you want to call it) is made, let us apply the good old creative power of the Gospel to the situation and get the two of you into the realm of truth and goodness and love." Then he asked, "Why didn't somebody tell me I was making a mistake?"

"Can you imagine," I countered, "anybody telling an infatuated person anything? Would he listen? Oh, no. That is one of the most difficult situations, and many go ahead and make mistakes, unless, by chance, they pray and get some guidance." But the person who makes too many mistakes is in a bad way. I sometimes read the obituary notices in the papers. The obituary notices do not have the romance they once had. If I ever got a job on a newspaper I'd like to be the writer of obituary notices, because they could really be dramatized. When I was a boy growing up in Ohio towns, the obituaries used to fill three or four columns. And they told most interesting things about people. From reading those obituary notices you could pick up some wisdom. Well, some years back the New York papers carried the obituary of Mrs. Knox of the Knox Gelatin Company. She evidently ran the business herself. She must have been a very dynamic and intelligent lady, but rather cryptic too and perhaps a bit difficult to work with, for she had a sign in her office warning people about making mistakes. And this is the way it read: "He who stumbles twice on the same stone deserves to break his own neck." Well, that is pretty hard-boiled. Let us everlastingly be thankful to the Good Lord that He has more patience than Mrs. Knox had, for he who stumbles a hundred times on the same stone can still save his neck and rebuild his life. The Bible, in Ephesians 4:23, tells us, "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind." This is an extraordinarily interesting injunction. What is meant by "the spirit of your mind"? There should be an upbeat to the mind, an uplift to it. It should have upthrust. This embraces attitudes, perceptions, ideas. Keep the spirit of your mind high. Raise it high-high up to Jesus Christ Himself. Then you will be renewed. Christianity works to help people learn the secret of overcoming the mistake tendency. We are told in another passage in the Bible: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." If you have the mind of Jesus in you, you will not be error prone. There is an old truism to the effect that we learn by our mistakes. And sometimes, and to some extent, this is the case. But there is danger: if you concentrate upon being educated by your mistakes you may get to dwelling on them too much and thereby keep yourself in the mistake groove. Whenever a mistake has been made, one should extract from it all the know-how it may offer and then put it immediately out of one's mind. A highly successful advertising man, Lynn Sumner, once remarked that many men seem to spend their lives perfecting their faults. By dwelling too much on your mistakes you can like a defective phonograph record play the same mistake over and over again, until you become, as it were, an expert in making that particular mistake. Now the antidote for this is to train your mind to learn from your successes. With this technique you can develop an actual tendency to succeed. If a person has a wonderful success he should immediately analyze it and then as soon as possible do the same thing again. I've spent quite a little money taking golf lessons. I go and take a lesson and then I don't play for six months. I take another lesson and then it's the same story. Consequently I am not a very good golfer. But I learned something useful from one golf pro. I paid him ten dollars, if you please, for what I am now about to pass on to you free of charge. This pro told me, "You've got to unlearn the way you hold the club. You've got to unlearn the way you stand. You've got to unlearn your approach to the ball. Golf," he said, "is one of the most unnatural games known to man, because you wouldn't naturally hold the club the way it should be held. So you have to learn the right hold. "And then," he said, "the best way to improve your game is to practice the same shot over and over until you hit a real good one, until you hear that clear click of the club's impact on the ball and the ball goes just where you want it to. Then stop right there and try to get the feel of how you made that shot. Do it again and again to get your muscles educated to that special feel." This same principle of learning from your successes applies to relationships with people. When you hit it off just right with somebody, ask yourself, "How did I do that?" Get the rightness of it. Make a mental note of what made for that good reaction. Then try the same approach in other personal situations. In this manner you can develop a success pattern in getting along with people.

When I first started preaching I used to be so nervous that if in the midst of my sermon I noticed a funny look on someone's face I would think it meant the person didn't like what I was saying--and this would upset me no end. Sometimes I would see someone with his head bowed resting on his hands, and I would think he was suffering awful pain from some blunder I had made. (Now maybe he just had a headache and I had nothing to do with the matter.) And if anybody got up and went out, why that just crushed me. Now I still don't like to see anybody bow his head in pain, and I still don't like to see anybody walk out-but if it happens it doesn't bother me as it once did. I have a better grasp now on the knowledge that my job is to do the best I can, and if I do not do it too well I will hope to do better next time. Back in those early days I knew an old preacher who helped me a lot. I used to walk down out of the pulpit after a sermon with my mind full of things I had said which I thought were terrible and I would think, "Why in the world did I say that? What's the matter with me?" And I was really in misery. Then this old preacher, wise and philosophical and relaxed and urbane, would ask me, "You did your best, didn't you, son?" "Well," I would say, "yes, but my best wasn't very good." And his rejoinder was: "Son, after you've done your best, walk down out of the pulpit and forget it. The congregation will forget it soon enough ! You might as well make it unanimous. Instead of thinking what you shouldn't have said, ask yourself what you did say that you feel reached the people." Think of the best thing you have done and do that again, and again and again, until you can do it any time. That way you will gradually increase your bests. In other words, you'll gradually increase the rightness rather than the error. Learn by your successes. "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind." Get yourself filled with truth. Build truth up inside you. The great way this is done is to live with Jesus Christ, for He is truth. The wisest people I've known have not been Ph.D.'s, but simple men who maybe hardly went through grammar school. They went to school to Jesus and gained insight and understanding. I remember an old fellow who ran a grocery store in an Ohio town. I worked for him for a while. He had not had much schooling, but when I think of the great intellectual men I've known across the years I think of him as one of them, because he had a penetrative understanding of human nature and of life. I'm in favor of education; but never get wisdom educated out of you. Jesus is the epitome of wisdom. With His help build up rightness and truth and spiritual knowledge in yourself. I will venture the assertion that anybody who will read the Bible for thirty minutes every day will not only become a more spiritual person, he will become a wiser person as well. This is the book of wisdom. Saturate your conscious mind with it until it sinks into your unconscious, and error will be displaced and truth will be developed. I would go so far as to say that if you will do this for fifteen minutes every day, or it may take a little longer, you will gradually become a person who is able to handle mistakes. The mistakes you make will grow fewer and fewer and ruination of your life by error will become less and less possible. Henry Drummond once said, "Make Christ your constant companion.... Ten minutes spent in His society every day, say, two minutes if it be face to face, and heart to heart, will make the whole day different." Read the Bible, make it part of you, and you will reduce error and develop truth. I think I have given a number of times the example of a friend of mine who is one of the big financial brains in the investment banking field, much of his work having to do with floating issues for big companies. However, it is a good example and I'll give it again. He is a man of wonderful character and personality--gracious, gentle, kindly. But he has a sharp, incisive mind--has to have, to be successful at his kind of work. I asked him one time how he had developed this sharpness of mind. "Oh," he said, "I sharpen my mind on the Bible." This seemed rather astonishing and I asked him to elaborate. "I get to my office each morning at seven-thirty," he said. "My work for the firm begins at eight but the best work I do all day is done between seven-thirty and eight. First I read the Bible for ten minutes in French. There are nuances in the French language that give me insights into what I read. Then for the next ten minutes I read the same passage in German, for there are also nuances in German that give me new insights. And then I read it in my native tongue--in English." Thirty minutes, three languages.

"When I really need mind-sharpening," he continued, "I read St. Paul, because St. Paul is the most acute mind who ever lived, other than Jesus Himself. What a mind! I bring my mind up against the mind of St. Paul, and I sharpen my mind on that of the great apostle. It's like a farmer bringing a scythe up against a grindstone. He holds the blade to the grindstone until it gets the finest possible edge. I do this with my Bible-reading. Then I am ready for the business of the day." "Be ye renewed in the spirit of your mind." Let there be in you that mind which was in Jesus Christ. That is how to be free of mistake tendencies. Truth will prevail over error within you, and no longer will yesterday's mistakes ruin today. PRAYER: Our Heavenly Father, we are grateful we may come to You, the Greatest Mind of all, and receive the glorious, bright, resplendent truth by which we can overcome error and live with joyous creativeness. Help us, we pray Thee, not to let yesterday's mistakes ruin today and tomorrow. This we ask in His Holy Name. Amen.