{"id":44473,"date":"2010-09-20T14:40:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T14:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/gods-patience-with-our-failures\/"},"modified":"2010-09-20T14:40:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-20T14:40:00","slug":"gods-patience-with-our-failures","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/gods-patience-with-our-failures\/","title":{"rendered":"God&#8217;s Patience with Our Failures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>R. O. Blechman is one of the most famous illustrators in the world. In his recent book, <em class=\"citation\">Dear James: Letters to a Young Illustrator<\/em>, he shares a series of letters that he wrote to a younger fellow-illustrator. In one of the most poignant letters, Blechman addresses the reality of failure:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Preliminary drawings and sketches often are discouraging things, pale shadows of one&#39;s bold intentions. Seemingly nonsense, they&#39;re especially dispiriting for beginners &hellip; &#39;Is that what I did,&#39; the novice might ask, &#39;and I consider myself an <em>artist?<\/em>! &hellip; Speaking for myself (but also for other illustrators, I&#39;m sure), my trash basket is full of false starts and failed drawings &hellip; There should be a Museum of Failed Art. It would exhibit all the terrible art that would have ended up in trash bins and garbage cans, lost and unknown to the public life.<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Surprisingly, the Bible contains a &quot;Museum of Failed Discipleship.&quot; Over and over again, the Gospels record the &quot;false starts&quot; and spiritual failures of the disciples. Thankfully, they also record Christ&#39;s willingness to encourage and challenge his flawed disciples. We tend to cover up our heroes&#39; faults; and we&#39;re even more likely to gloss over our colossal flops. Instead, the Gospels allow us to see the disciples&#39; failures&mdash;and most of those stories came from the disciples themselves. This honesty provides encouragement to us when we feel like saying, &quot;Is that what I did, and I consider myself a <em>Christian?<\/em>&quot; Our security is in Christ who continues to love us even when we stumble and fail.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[409],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3368,3726,3774,3973,4010,4227,4311,4399,4482,4611,4788,4910,5044],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-44473","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-acceptance","tax_ctp_tags-culture","tax_ctp_tags-development-of-faith","tax_ctp_tags-faults","tax_ctp_tags-forgiveness","tax_ctp_tags-imperfection","tax_ctp_tags-judging-others","tax_ctp_tags-love-of-christ","tax_ctp_tags-mistakes","tax_ctp_tags-patience","tax_ctp_tags-regret","tax_ctp_tags-self-condemnation","tax_ctp_tags-spiritual-failure"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>God&#039;s Patience with Our Failures - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/gods-patience-with-our-failures\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"God&#039;s Patience with Our Failures - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"R. O. Blechman is one of the most famous illustrators in the world. In his recent book, Dear James: Letters to a Young Illustrator, he shares a series of letters that he wrote to a younger fellow-illustrator. 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