Am I Defeated?

Full question: Am I defeated in any part of my life?

Read John 16:29-33.

I was never one who watched sports on television, though I played baseball and went to some baseball games and, being from Indiana, lots of basketball games. But when I was growing up, on Saturdays after the cartoons were over, ABC aired a program called "The Wide World of Sports." That was a banner that allowed them to cover all sorts of sports, and while I usually didn't watch the actual events, I did watch the introduction. Every week, the announcer would come on and say, "Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport! The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat!" That "agony of defeat" part stuck in my memory, because at the moment those words were spoken, a skier was shown coming down the hill and wiping out. For some reason, I still remember that image, forty years later. Take a look:

A skier wiping out is the image that always comes to mind when I hear about someone being "defeated." It's the image that came to mind (obviously) when I read today's question. When we think of defeat, we think of utter destruction, the end, no hope in sight. Most people believed Jesus' crucifixion was defeat. He was dead. What hope could there be?

What they failed to realize is that our God is the God of the second chance, the God of resurrection. The worst thing is never the last thing. There is always hope, even in defeat. We often miss that, too.

Defeat only happens when we fail and don't learn from it. Now, I will admit that I am a first-class wallower. I can wallow in failure with the best of them, beat myself up, take the blame, and feel bad about a failure for longer than I should. (My wife is most likely silently nodding her head and saying, "Amen" about now.) But when I come to my senses, I look around and try to determine what I need to learn from the failure. That's not an easy transition to make, but it's necessary. The only way we can free failure from defeat is by learning something from the failure.

Thomas Edison is reported to have attempted a lot of different ways to make a light bulbs. The number varies depending on what source you read, but when someone accused him of failure, Edison is said to have responded, "I didn't fail. I learned this many ways not to make a light bulb. I only needed to find one way to make it work." Whether that story is true or not, I know the feeling. Several years ago, in the church I was serving, we started an off-site and off-Sunday worship service as an outreach. About a year later, we shut it down and some said we had failed. (Some said LOUDLY we had failed.) I could have wallowed in that failure, but instead (in, for me, a rare moment of insight) I realized we had learned several things not to do in such a situation. Should the opportunity present itself again, I'll at least know not to do these things.

Am I defeated in any part of my life right now? Right now, I have challenges. I have areas of my life that I am struggling with. In particular, there are several health challenges that I am still working to adapt my life to. And sometimes those challenges seem so big that I can begin to feel I'll never conquer them. But thanks to the grace of God and my encouraging wife, I am learning to face those challenges head on, to do what I can about them (and there are many things I can do), and to learn from each one of them. Today, this moment, I'm not feeling defeated, and for that I give thanks.