Fail with Form with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

It's so good to be back with you guys.

Uh I missed you.

I do want to say a really heartfelt thank you to Pastor Witty and to Pastor Tony last week.

Would you guys help me show them some love for leading us so well?

It is great to be back.

If you are new with us, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

And today I have kind of an interesting message where we're gonna go.

I want to address something that most all of us try to avoid, like at all cost.

Today I want to talk about failure.

The fear of failure is real and it's very visceral.

It is something that we feel and that holds many people back from the life of purpose and power and impact that you were in fact created to live.

If you don't know this, at MetaCurch, we start with the belief that you were created on purpose and you were created with purpose.

You were created on purpose, that means that it's no accident that you're here on earth, and you were created with purpose, which means that God has placed something inside of you with your unique combination of background and gifting and personality and dreams that God is wanting to use in the world.

And that is actually how you live the most satisfying, fulfilling life possible.

Fear of failure traces all the way back to when we're like elementary kids, just desperate not to strike out and kickball, all the way to middle schoolers who are just trying to hide ourselves away, so desperate to fit in, all the way to when we start dating and we have the fear of rejection, just so hoping that we don't get made a fool of.

Fear of the unknown, of putting yourself out there, of being rejected, of the relationship not working, the investment going south, the weight loss not sticking.

All of that is a form of the fear of failure, and it comes from experience.

We all know what it feels like to fail.

And most of us probably know what it is like to fail somewhat publicly, where other people are aware of your failure.

And maybe you have even lived through a long enough string of failures that you began to feel like you are a failure yourself.

And then there's this whole other category of moral failures that are always looming out there when you're unfaithful or caught in a web of lies, when you let other people down, when you betray the people that you love, when you use your words to cut someone down.

There are so many ways to fail, which means there are so many things to be afraid of.

And yet we know intuitively, we know through experience that nothing really significant happens without the willingness to risk, without putting ourselves out there and putting ourselves in a position where we might actually fail.

True love is on the other side of the fear of rejection.

True impact is on the other side of sharing a part of yourself or doing a selfless act.

True success, not success by the world standards, but true success is on the other side of that bold personal move or that bold career decision.

And here's where it gets really crazy, and maybe it starts to feel a little bit unfair, because let's say, like, if you were able to wall yourself off from all potential risk, if you could mitigate every source of potential failure in your life and just cushion yourself off in this always safe environment, if you could actually pull that off, you would have created such an insignificant existence for yourself that if you pulled that off one day, when you realize that the lack of courage to try new things, to be bold and audacious, might have actually been the greatest failure of all.

In other words, a failure to try, a failure to be bold, a failure to try and take hold of the life that you've been given.

A failure to try is a failure itself and might just be the greatest failure of all.

And so what am I saying?

I'm saying it isn't if you fail.

We will all fail one way or another.

It isn't if you fail, it is only how you fail that is in question.

Either you're going to be bold and audacious and live a life of impact and purpose, risking public humiliation, risking very real failure, or you're going to spend your life trying to escape failure and live a life that didn't really matter at the end.

It isn't if you fail, it is only how you fail that is in question.

And luckily for us, we have a great example in the Christian scriptures of what it looks like to fail over and over and over and over again and still be used by God to absolutely change the world.

My message today and my encouragement, my charge for all of us today is to fail with form.

Fail with form.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we are here, we're seeking you.

As many people as there are here, and as many people as there are streaming with us online, those represent unique lives.

Every one of us coming in with a unique perspective, some of us with heavy, burdened hearts, some of us encouraged and ready for the next season of life.

And I ask, Holy Spirit, you would do exactly what you do, that you would meet us right where we are in life.

I thank you for a place like Metachurch where people from any different part of their faith journey can come.

And I ask that we would be humble enough to give you this time, that you would give us ease of mind and unburdened hearts.

That you would speak to us and we would be ready to listen.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

And if you're ready to fail with form, say amen.

Amen.

You know, one of the things I find so striking about the Bible is that like almost all of the main characters other than like God and Jesus, like everyone messes up, and not just little things, like massive failures along the way.

It truly is an entire narrative about jacked-up people just like you and just like me, who God uses for these extraordinary things.

The big names like Adam, Noah, Moses, Elijah, Saul, David, Solomon, all these people who God uses to push the narrative forward.

And yet the Bible doesn't hide the fact that these guys and these women, they failed, and sometimes they failed spectacularly.

And I think maybe the best example of someone who consistently failed and was still used by God is one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, a guy named Peter.

And Peter is very unique.

Before he was a disciple, he was a professional fisherman.

And to be a fisherman 2,000 years ago, it was a very difficult job.

You had to be fearless out on the seas as these massive storms would come.

You had to be strong and gritty.

This attracted very rough and tumble, like foul-mouthed men to come and be a part of this.

And as kind of the famous story goes, Jesus meets Peter, invites him to come and follow after him.

And Peter drops his fishing nets and does that very thing.

Follows after this new rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth.

We have four historical accounts of the life of Jesus.

We call these the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

And they paint this amazing picture of the life of Jesus, and we get deep insight into Peter, we see some of his accomplishments, but more than anything in the Gospels, we see Peter's failures.

Like again and again and again.

If I went verse by verse through every time Peter screwed up, or put his foot in his mouth, or stepped out of line, or had to get corrected by Jesus, we would be here all day.

And so I'm gonna take a small sampling of some of Peter's greatest hits, the times where he really, really messed up in spectacular fashion, so we can begin to get a picture of who Peter was and what it was like for him to follow Jesus.

Shortly after watching Jesus miraculously feed 20,000 people, you might know that story.

They were on a hillside, and you know, Jesus was a little bit long-winded.

They got there in the morning, he was still preaching, like well after lunchtime.

Y'all get a little antsy when I go over 40 minutes.

I'm just saying Jesus preached some long sermons, okay?

And they'd been there all day, and the people were getting hungry, and the disciples were like, Send them home, man.

We've got like a couple loaves of bread, a couple of fish, and Jesus took the food and blessed it and divided it miraculously.

Everybody was fed.

And you know, the power of Jesus once again was revealed.

And that evening, Jesus said, I'm gonna stay here and pray.

And he sent his disciples out to cross the sea.

And as they were crossing the sea in that that evening, all of a sudden they saw Jesus coming at them, walking on the water.

In Matthew 14, Peter said, Lord, if it's you, command me to come to you on the water.

And Jesus said, Come.

And climbing out of the boat, Peter started walking on the water, and he came towards Jesus.

But when he saw the strength of the wind, he was afraid.

And beginning to sink, he cried out, Lord, save me.

And immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught hold of him.

And he said to Peter, You of little faith, why did you doubt?

Peter getting corrected, it just became like a normal part of Peter's life.

Like Jesus was always having to straighten this guy out.

And this is just typical Peter, you know?

Like act first, think later.

His life strategy was like ready, fire aim, you know.

This is just how he lived.

And it's only Peter who could go from 100% confidence enough to jump out of the boat in the middle of a storm, to like negative 100% confidence pretty much instantly.

It reminds me of uh right when we adopted our daughter Kimberly, she turned five right after we got her, and we would take the kids to SeaWorld, you know, to keep them busy.

And she was this little bitty thing, and we would walk by the steel eel, which if you don't know is a giant roller coaster.

She was just devastated that she wasn't tall enough to ride the steel eel.

And every summer we would come back and she still wouldn't be tall enough, and she'd be so torn up about it.

I wanna ride the steel eel, I wanna ride.

Finally, one summer we showed up, she stood up to the measuring block, and she was tall enough by like an eighth of an inch.

And somehow it felt to me to have to get on the giant coaster with her, so I was like, okay, I'm gonna call this bluff.

Because once we get up to that seat, she's gonna see what's up.

Over a hundred foot drop, full grown adults freaking out about getting on this ride.

She's gonna chicken out, it'll be fine, we'll go back to the park.

She jumped in that roller coaster seat like Peter jumped out the boat, 100% confidence, strapped herself in, ready to go, smile on her face, until about a quarter of the way up the hill, right?

And I think how they get you is the noise.

She lost all confidence, like this was a mistake.

Does this thing go in reverse?

Do you think they'll let us out?

I don't want to do this anymore.

This is Peter's life, full of confidence, not thinking about his actions, and then the ramifications of his actions falling on him all at once and realizing what he had done.

And this same approach to life, every once in a while, worked out for Peter.

Like one time, Jesus took his disciples aside, and it was getting nearer his time to go to the cross, and he began to cast this vision for them about a movement he was gonna start, and that these disciples would actually be the ones to take this movement and to grow it and to spread it around the world.

And as he's having this conversation, Jesus asks these 12 men who are his closest allies, he says, Who do people say that I am?

And they start throwing out all these things they've heard, kind of the rumor on the street about who Jesus might be.

And then he asks a very pointed question, and who do you guys say that I am?

And of course, Peter is the first one to speak up, and to his credit, he absolutely nails it.

He says, You are the Messiah, which is a massive claim in the Jewish culture.

And he keeps going.

And you are the son of the living God.

That is a belief that nobody held.

That is a claim nobody would make.

As a matter of fact, it was so flooring to hear this said so clearly that Jesus said, Peter, this was not told to you by flesh and blood.

In other words, this didn't come out of your intuition, you didn't figure this out with your intelligence or with your logic.

Jesus said, This was revealed to you by my Father in heaven.

It's one of Peter's greatest moments in the gospels.

He absolutely nails it.

And Jesus goes on to say, You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, I will start my movement, I will call people out to follow me, and nothing, not even the forces of hell itself, will be able to stop it.

I'm sure Peter felt very, very good about getting something right, you know?

Peter's like, Yeah, boys, who's drowning now?

You know, like nailed that one, me and Jesus, did you hear what I said?

I was like, You're the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, and he was like, That's right.

Did you hear it?

Like, as soon as that happens, Peter's going to immediately get the harshest criticism in all of Scripture.

You see, now that they've established who Jesus is, Jesus begins to very directly reveal the plan.

In the very next verses, Jesus says that it was necessary, Matthew 16, 21, he began to point out it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, to suffer many things, to be killed, and then to be raised on the third day.

Peter had a plan for Jesus' life, and it wasn't the plan that Jesus had for Jesus' life.

See, for Peter, Jesus was all powerful.

I mean, he had seen the works that he could do and the miracles he could perform, and Jesus was gonna be the king of Israel.

And you know, it didn't hurt that Peter would probably be his right-hand man in the kingdom, and Jesus had all the power.

He might be king of the world.

And you know, Rome had occupied Israel, and they didn't like that, and so Jesus was gonna force Rome out, and it was gonna be all good.

They were going to build their kingdom.

Peter didn't like this plan of going to Jerusalem so that somebody could kill his leader, his rabbi, his friend, his savior.

And he's a fisherman who speaks his mind.

He's rough and tumble.

And so, of course, Peter speaks up.

In the next verse, Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him.

Oh no, Lord, this will never happen to you.

To rebuke is to firmly reprimand somebody.

This is like what you do with your kids when your kids are out of line.

Also, this is not what you do to the God of the universe and human flesh.

This is a bad idea.

But Peter has his plan, and this is not a part of it.

And can you imagine it from Jesus' perspective?

He said, This is necessary for me to go, necessary for me to be killed.

This is the official plan.

Like Jesus stepped out of the perfection of heaven down into our broken and jacked-up world.

He put on human flesh, he started and lived out this ministry for this moment, all of it culminating in him suffering and dying for the sins of the world.

And now Peter is tempting him to depart from the plan.

And Jesus responds, and most likely his harshest moment ever recorded for us in Scripture.

In the next verse, Jesus turned and told Peter, get behind me Satan.

Yikes.

Not what you want to hear.

Get behind me, Satan.

You are a hindrance to me because you're not thinking about God's concerns, but human concerns.

What we have to understand about this encounter is that Peter is echoing the exact temptation that Satan tempted Jesus with at the very beginning of his ministry.

If you don't know the story, right before Jesus started his public ministry, he went into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights.

And at the end of that time, Satan himself appeared to Jesus and tempted him three times.

And the temptations were basically this Jesus, give up on this whole mission.

You don't want to do this.

You know what this is gonna entail?

You know the suffering, you know what it's gonna cost you.

Give all of that up.

You can be king of everything.

You can have it all, you can rule it all, you can reign.

Nobody can stop you.

Satan tried to throw off Jesus' mission to suffer and die.

And now Peter is doing the same.

Don't go through all that when we can build our kingdom right here and right now.

And Peter recovers from this moment.

As a matter of fact, the very prophecy Jesus gave about Peter being one of the people who starts and pushes the church forward, he never wavered on that.

But this moment is instructive that the temptation to avoid suffering for Jesus in order to build our own kingdoms is a temptation sourced in Satan himself.

Now that's a different sermon for a different time, but let's just suffice it to say Peter again and again and again continued to step out of line.

There are so many other times, like the time that Peter already liked committed Jesus to paying the Roman tax before he had ever checked with Jesus of whether or not he wanted to do that, or the time that Peter got to see the transfiguration of Jesus, the full glory of Jesus revealed, and all of a sudden Elijah and Moses are up there with him on the mountain.

And nobody asked for Peter's opinion, but he starts throwing out these hare-brained ideas anyway, or the time that Jesus was gonna honor all of his disciples by washing all of their feet, and Peter completely ruined the vibe by just refusing to let Jesus do it, or the time that Jesus was getting arrested, and Peter chopped off homeboy's ear, and Jesus had to attach it back to his head and correct Peter again, over and over and over, failure after failure after failure, and all of them public and all of them embarrassing.

And none of them compare to his greatest failure.

The night before Jesus died, Jesus was once again walking through the plan of what would happen, and this time he added that all of his disciples would desert him.

In his time of greatest need, they would run away.

And in Matthew 26, Peter told Jesus, even if everyone falls away because of you, I will never fall away.

And Jesus said to him, Truly I tell you, tonight, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.

Peter's not having it.

He says, Even if I have to die with you, I will never deny you.

Once Peter had spoken up, all the disciples said the same.

And that night Jesus was arrested, and upon his arrest, everyone ran away.

Everyone fled.

He was put on trial after trial.

He was eventually sentenced to a beating to within an inch of his life, and then ultimately to be executed through crucifixion.

Everyone ran.

And Jesus' prophecy about Peter came true.

We read a little bit later in Matthew 26.

That Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard, and a servant girl approached him and said, You were with Jesus, the Galilean.

But he denied it in front of everyone.

I don't know what you're talking about.

And when he had gone out to the gateway, another woman saw him and told those who were there, This man was with Jesus, the Nazarene.

And again, he denied it, this time with an oath.

Guys, I swear, I don't know the guy.

And after a while, those standing there approached and said to Peter, You really are one of them.

Even your accent gives it away.

And then he started to curse and swear with an oath.

I don't know the man.

And immediately before the rooster crowed.

And Peter remembered the words Jesus had spoken.

Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.

And Peter went outside and he wept bitterly.

And we know the story, Jesus comes back to life.

But even when Jesus was resurrected, Peter was not yet restored.

As a matter of fact, we don't find Peter after the resurrection in the streets preaching the death and resurrection of the Savior.

We find him fishing.

Right back to where Jesus had originally found him.

His failures are too significant to feel like he still had a purpose in his plan.

I think we can all agree it's uh it's a little bit exciting that there's no one following us around, documenting all of our faults and failures for like billions of people to read across the centuries, like Peter, who's now known as the hard-headed, foot in his mouth, honri disciple.

Peter's betrayal of Jesus is heartbreaking.

The one guy who swore up and down he would go to the wall for Jesus is now the one guy who is swearing up and down that he doesn't know Jesus.

But this isn't the end of Peter's story.

Thank God, because I don't know about you, but I have plenty of failures on my resume.

And the idea that God can still use Peter gives me a lot of hope that God can still use me.

And you probably have some failures on your resume that you're not too proud of.

And you can look at the life of someone like Peter and feel confident that God still has a plan for you.

And things get really interesting after Jesus rises again and ascends back to heaven because as the story continues in the book of Acts in the scriptures and beyond, we get this version of Peter that's basically unrecognizable.

He's bold, he is competent, he's eloquent, he's mature, he's the leader of the disciples, he's audacious, he becomes a leader of the church.

And what we can gather from this is that possibly all of Peter's massive failures, instead of derailing him, actually prepared him for the destiny that Jesus had ahead of him.

I've learned some interesting lessons this year.

I I've always worked out, it's been a part of my life, basically my entire life.

This year in particular, I started weightlifting, like actually weightlifting for the first time.

And uh I've learned a lot about failure.

And a lot of people think exercise is kind of simple, and it is, you know, you go in and you move a lot, and then you move some weights around, and you know, maybe you'll see some results.

However, a lot of people get really, really discouraged quickly when they don't see results.

And a lot of times it comes down to two broad categories.

Either they aren't giving themselves enough challenge in the gym, or they have really, really terrible form in the gym, or most likely some version of both of those things.

Uh, I've been going to like a big gym, you know, like Gold's Gym.

And Gold's Gym is very interesting.

The one that I like to go to, the average age is at least 117 years old, okay?

I love it.

I love this gym.

I love that everyone there was like alive in World War II.

I love it.

A lot of naked old men, and that besides that, I love it.

What's really interesting is you can go less than a mile down the road to another Gold's gym, and it's nothing but like 20-something wannabe fitness influencers, okay?

There's selfie sticks and tripods everywhere.

In both of these gyms, though, I see people who aren't challenging themselves all that well.

In the influencer gym, I see people doing what I call three ten reps.

Three ten reps.

It looks like this: one, two, three, and then ten selfies, right?

That's how it goes.

The most shameless people I've ever met in my life, they will be in your mirror that you're lifting on like this.

They're there an hour and a half, they never sweat.

You're not gonna see results because you're not challenging yourself.

At the same time, you have to have form.

You've probably all seen the YouTube compilation videos of people completely misusing and abusing all of the workout machines, definitely not using them the way the manufacturer wanted you to use them, often hurting themselves.

I've been following a program this year, and people have different ideas of whether this is a good way to train or not, but every exercise in this program is built on the idea of training to failure.

And the idea behind it is you know that you are going to get a challenging workout.

You're going to go until you can't go no mo, right?

It is going to be a challenge, you're gonna go until you fail.

And the guy who runs the program says before you sign up, if you have too big of an ego, don't do this.

Halfway through the workout, you will find me with the small pink two and a half pound dumbbells, because that's all I got left, right?

But what he also emphasizes is it's not just that you lift, it is how you lift.

And it's not just that you fail, it is how you fail.

And what ends up happening because even in the gym, we have this innate fear of failure, that when we start exhausting our arms and know that we're close to failure, almost subconsciously, we'll call in reinforcements from our shoulders just so we can get a few more reps in.

And so you're cheating your arms that you're actually trying to exercise, but you know, you'll shoulder it up so you still look good in the mirror.

You'll shoulder it up so people don't have to see you crying your way through your last set.

And when your shoulders exhaust, you know, just use a little hip, right?

And if you can't get your hips in, well, just use the back.

And then we wonder, with our form falling apart, why we don't get the results we want and why we end up getting injured.

It's because we're not willing to fail and not just fail, but to fail with form.

And the same is true in our life.

If we want to see growth and impact and maturity, we have to be willing to fail, but in the right ways.

Fail towards something, to fail with form.

It's really interesting how Peter's story continues because Jesus resurrects and then he finds Peter to restore Peter.

And Peter's out fishing, you know, he's kind of given up on this whole thing.

And Jesus stays on shore and he cooks him breakfast, and they have this conversation.

Jesus asks the same question three times, and then he gives Peter the same instructions three times.

I want us to kind of sneak in to the very end of their conversation in John 21.

Jesus asked Peter the third time, Simon, son of John, Do you love me?

Over and over he asked, Do you love me?

Do you love me?

Do you love me?

And Peter was grieved that he had asked the third time, Do you love me?

Lord, you know everything.

You know that I love you.

You know how I feel, you know how bad I want this.

And Jesus said, Then feed my sheep.

Do you love me?

Then feed my sheep.

Do you love me?

Then feed my sheep.

Do you love me?

Then spread the gospel.

Do you love me?

Then build my church.

Do you love me?

Then live a life of boldness and audacity, doing whatever it takes to push my movement forward.

I want to try to reframe Peter's failures today.

I think it's it's easy for us to look and to point at people's failures because it gives us a little bit of comfort about our own areas of shortcoming.

Yes, Peter took his eyes off Jesus and began to drown.

But Peter was the only one of the disciples with enough audacity to get out of the boat and go meet Jesus.

Yes, Peter rebuked Jesus and foolishly blasted his plan of redemption.

But moments earlier, that same welling up inside of him was the thing that made him the only one bold enough to proclaim who Jesus actually was.

And yes, Peter heartbreakingly denied his friend three times the night of his arrest.

But something is interesting if you pay attention.

Peter was in the courtyard outside of where the trial was happening.

Presumably, do you know where the other disciples were?

Nowhere to be found.

Peter was the only disciple who had stayed close enough to Jesus to even be picked out of the crowd and accused.

Peter failed, but I believe that he failed with form.

His intention behind his failures was almost always aimed in the right direction.

Peter was a guy who was not afraid to get in the arena.

He was not afraid to make something happen.

And perhaps Peter's actual superpower in life is he was not afraid to fail, to fail spectacularly, and even to fail publicly if he was failing, trying to follow after Jesus.

He dropped the nets and followed him.

He jumped out of boats.

He cut people's ears off.

He would do anything necessary.

Peter just went for it.

He went for it.

And his story reminds us that God can use people in unbelievable ways who are willing to fail with form.

I think that God is grieved by the culture of perfection and judgmentalism that we find in the Western church today.

A culture that has followers of Jesus so on edge, so scared to be seen as a failure, so scared to be seen as not measuring up or falling short, that instead the church at large sits on its hands as we lose all of our influence and all of our relevance in the culture.

Here's what scripture says for God has not given us a spirit of fear.

Those fears that are gripping your life and keeping you from taking the next steps that God is calling you to, that fear is not from God, for God has not given us a spirit of fear.

Instead, he's given us a spirit of power, of love, and of sound judgment.

You know what that means?

It means that the power that your life was created for could be stifled and even nullified by your fear.

The love that you are meant to give to the people around you, appropriately loving your spouse, appropriately loving your kids, your friends, that your fear of failure will stifle, minimize, and maybe even nullify your ability to properly love.

Sound judgment, how to make the right decisions to move your life forward on the path of purpose that God has for you.

It will be destroyed and derailed by fear.

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, and yet I see in Western Christianity a spirit of fear.

I see timid Christians settling into their routines, trading the relationship between us and the all-powerful God who's called us, not just to come and sit in seats one day a week, but to move in our life, every day of our life, and we settle for the status quo of checking off some religious boxes because we all got into a room together.

That's not church.

You are the church, you are the ecclesia that Jesus said nothing, not even the power of hell itself, can stand against.

The church is called to do something bold, which means you're not going to be able to do that.

Thank you so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and trying to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast and even hands of God.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit the video.

And you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

And I think that God was like targeting spiritual muscles in Peter's life.

And we see evidence of that.

Right after Jesus leaves earth, Peter can't stop preaching about Jesus.

You cannot shut him up.

And they tried.

They drug him into court and threatened his life.

And you know what Peter said?

I'm not taking my eyes off Jesus.

I already learned that lesson.

The moment I take my eyes off Jesus, I will start to drown.

He learned that lesson by failing in the storm all of those years earlier.

He learned that the temptation to avoid suffering to build your own kingdom is a temptation that comes straight from Satan himself.

And Peter spent the rest of his life not building his own kingdom, but building the kingdom of God.

And Peter learned that to deny Jesus was to deny his own life and his own purpose.

And if you want to see how extreme this went in his life, church history tells us that Peter died by crucifixion, unwilling to deny Jesus.

Not only that, but Peter was crucified upside down by his own request.

He did not find himself worthy to die in the same way as his Savior.

Fail with form.

Fail forward, not backwards.

Fail in a way that will build your spiritual muscles, your spiritual resolve.

We can no longer be a movement of Jesus that fails because we sit back and shrink back and scroll TikTok and disengage with the work of God in your life and in the world around you.

Don't fail because you check out from your parenting.

You check out and give the minimal effort possible towards your marriage.

You give the minimal possible outpouring towards the work of God in your life.

Fail audaciously and boldly and moving forward.

Fail in a way that builds skill sets and moves you closer to your purpose.

Fail in a way that God can even show himself to the world through your failures themselves.

Fail with form.

Failure is like daily sometimes.

I have leadership failures all the time.

Welcome to the MetaCurch podcast.

My name's Clayton.

My hope is that today's podcast finds you right as a perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Some of you were here, you were in the bar.

You remember for years we pointed to a Kmart, raised money for a Kmart, cast vision for a Kmart.

I don't know if you know this.

We didn't get a Kmart.

I had to get back on a stage, back in front of everybody, and let you know that it fell apart in spectacular fashion.

But here's what I believe we failed with form.

We were not content to limit our impact.

We believed God had something great for us.

We organized ourselves towards a vision, we organized ourselves financially, and as soon as that one fell apart, this building opened up.

We failed with form, and God used it to build us and strengthen us and prepare us to walk into the space we were supposed to have.

You have no idea what could be on the other side of some of your failures.

The lessons you could learn, the skill sets you could grow, the strength that you could add to your life.

MetaCurch, if we want to change the world, and do not sell yourself short, the call to follow Jesus is that exactly.

It is a call to change the world.

We will have to be a bold, audacious movement who is willing to fail.

Willing to fail with form.

Would you pray with me?

As we close out, I want to give you a moment to reflect.

Bow your head, close your eyes.

There's something magic about that.

Just create some space for you and for the people around you.

And I wonder if you were really honest, and that is what we come here to do on Sundays, to be really honest.

I wonder if you can pinpoint some of the areas in your life where the fear of failure is holding you back.

Causing you to shrink away.

Maybe for you it's causing you to self-sabotage.

Sometimes we're so afraid of failure that we get in good seasons.

And we subconsciously choose to ruin them ourselves so that if it fails, it at least fails in our control, not out of our control.

Where is the fear of failure holding you back?

What are the dreams that God has put in your life?

That you've come to the point where you convinced yourself that you had to take those dreams out of your head and out of your heart.

You had to put them in a small box labeled too risky and shelf them.

God-sized dreams.

Dreams to live a life of impact.

For some of you, Jesus has transformed your life and you haven't told anybody yet.

You're afraid of being rejected by your community.

You're afraid of being rejected by your circle of influence.

If someone could guarantee you a 100% chance of success, 100% chance of success, what would you try?

What dream would you go after?

What would you commit to?

I believe God is ready for a movement of people who audaciously pursue the dreams and purpose that He has placed on their life.

Do not fail because you sit back and shrink back and let life pass you by.

Be like Peter.

Get out of the boats.

If you start to drown, Jesus will grab you.

Be like Peter.

Boldly proclaim what you believe.

If you're wrong, Jesus will lovingly correct you.

Be like Peter.

Fail.

Learn from them and grow into a version of your life that you can hardly imagine.

Let me pray for you.

Jesus, we are here because we want to follow you.

We want to give our lives to you.

We want to set you at the center of everything that we're doing.

I do not believe that you have created us to live status quo lives, created us to simply go along to get along.

I believe you have created us to do something significant.

We reject fear today.

It is not from you, and perfect love casts out fear.

And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom, and I pray that we would walk in that freedom and live in that freedom and make decisions out of that freedom and love out of that freedom, that you would cast fear out of our lives.

That we would embrace failure, knowing that in your hands, failure is forming us into our future self that you created us to be.

We love you.

We thank you for your word.

And I pray that we would embrace it today.

We pray it all in Jesus' name.

Amen.