Joshua

-the Gibeonites, a group of people living there, hear all about what God’s doing to everyone else and they decide to fake out Joshua. They pretend to be travelers from a long way away and ask for a peace treaty. What did Joshua do?

**Josh. 9:14-15 -> 14The men of Israel looked them over and accepted the evidence. But they didn’t ask God about it. 15So Joshua made peace with them and formalized it with a covenant to guarantee their lives. The leaders of the congregation swore to it. (MSG)

-he messed up. The high and mighty man of God (which he was) still wasn’t perfect and made a mistake.

-mistakes are not the end of the world.

-what that Pastor Rick Warren said:

-Because we value success so much, we tend to exaggerate the effects of failure. But failure isn’t the end of the world. You won’t die from it. With failure -– you fail, you pick yourself up and you go on.

-One of the best ways to bounce back from failure is to redefine it.

-Failure is not failing to reach your dreams. Failure is not having a dream.

-Failure is not setting a goal and missing it. Failure is not having a goal.

-Failure is not falling down. Failure is refusing to get back up.

-If at first you don’t succeed, big deal! It’s usually the second, third or fourth time you actually get it right. You are never a failure until you give up. Remember, everybody fails.

-Failure has benefit.

-Did you know that one of God’s primary tools in making you the kind of person he wants you to be is failure? He uses it in your life to mold you, shape you and develop your character. While we rarely learn from our successes (because we typically attribute it to our sheer natural talent!), we can learn from our failures.

-We usually think of failure as being a negative experience, but wise people learn from failure and use it to their advantage. They learn from it and grow from it. They use it as a stepping stone.

-one of the biggest lessons I learned about failure was actually from that great theological cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Shredder was wanting some machine or something (like every show) and he was telling off one of the scientists. The scientist was saying how they failed, but they’ll get better and Shredder said, “Failure is not an option.” The guy replied, “Then you wouldn’t make a very good scientist.”

-Thomas Edison made more than one thousand experiments on filaments when he made the light bulb. When asked how he could keep going after failing a thousand times, he said, “I didn’t fail a thousand times; I learned a thousand ways that didn’t work.”

-God uses people, just like you and me, that are not perfect. Just like Joshua.