"Ministers’ Minute"

Volume I  Number 7

DOWN BUT NOT OUT!

His personal life hasn't always been easy either. He grew up in a home where he experienced verbal abuse from his father and in which his mother had to endure physical abuse. In Joe's words, his father "often terrorized our home with his out-of-control rages. He wielded his anger as a terrible weapon." Maybe these same adversities help account for the fact that he is what sports writers call a "player's manager." While the term is sometimes negative and points to a soft manager who can't really command enough respect to lead his players, it connotes something quite different in his case. Essentially, it means that he has committed himself to respecting his players, never humiliating them before fans or one another, and refraining from clubhouse tantrums.

Yes, Joe Torre's Yankees won the 2000 World Series -- New York's first subway series since 1956. It's something of a miracle that he's still in baseball, much less completing his fourth title in five years as leader of the New York Yankees.

He admits to having a hard time with coaches or managers who use threats and screaming outbursts to intimidate players. All the yelling and threats in his early home life created an aversion to that sort of behavior. "I developed the strong moral sense that people should be civil to each other at home and in the workplace," he writes in the book Joe Torre's Ground Rules for Winners.

When things weren't going well for his team in 2000 -- like when they lost 13 of 16 games at the end of the season -- the Yankees were being written off by lots of people as league champs and World Series contenders. Torre didn't panic. He didn't attack his players for lackluster performances.  He said he trusted them to give their best and would deal with the outcome.

The childhood trauma in his family, being fired three times, having his competence challenged in the press, a battle with prostate cancer -- all these seem to have combined to teach one of baseball's most successful managers something you could wish everyone knew: Winning is important, but it is even more critical to preserve one's integrity by treating others with respect.

Everyone has "stuff" in his or her background.  It doesn't have to make us bitter and be our undoing.

HERE IS THE POINT:  We control our response to circumstances, even circumstances that are against us!  It is your Attitude, not your aptitude that determines your altitude! Your thinking, your faith, those are the factors that outweigh circumstances and adversity!

Judas’s Response To Failure

1. Remorse - Matthew 27:3a

2. Restitution - Matthew 27:3b,4

3. Suicide - Matthew 27:5; Acts 1:18

III.  Paul's Contrast of "Godly" and "Worldly" sorrow Illustrated By Peter and Judas

" For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death."  2 Corinthians 7:10

1. Sorrow is not repentance but CAN and SHOULD lead to it.

2. Remorse is good, but only fruitful if it leads to repentance.

3. Repentance is a change of mind that leads to a change of conduct

We will all have weak moments in our walk with Jesus. We will all fail Christ sometime in our lifetime. He will always attempt to call us back to Him. We can come back! God desires all to come to repentance. What can we do? Turn away from sin and back to God!

I Jn 1:8-9 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (NIV)

What does God do? Forgives and forgets - 1 John 1:9b.  When we feel that we have failed and we may think that we have gone beyond the point of no return, God calls us to confess our sins (acknowledge our sin and need for Him).  If we are born again, blood bought, baptized believers, He promises to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all our unrighteousness.  Key word: ALL. We are never failures because we have failed but are failures if we quit rather than face another failure. The crowing of the rooster lets us know that we have failed but does not indicate that we are failures. We are only failures when we fail to see our stumbling as a wake up call and do nothing about it or think that we are beyond hope.

CLOSE:  When he was 10 years old he was kicked in the head by a horse and experts now believe that the skull was severely fractured, leaving him with lifelong problems. He failed in business in 1831, was defeated for the legislature in 1832. The next year he suffered another business defeat and in 1836 had a nervous breakdown. He failed to be elected speaker in 1838, was defeated for elector in 1840, and for Congress in 1843, as well as in 1848. He failed to be elected to the Senate in 1855, and was defeated for the Vice Presidency in 1856 and for the Senate in 1858.  He was a man seemingly marked for failure, a man suffering from melancholy, who endured long periods of depression throughout his life. He could barely see out of one eye. He had frequent nervous attacks, severe headaches, indigestion and nausea. He had a couch placed near his desk in the White House so he could quickly lie down when one of his spells came over him.  When he came to deliver the now famous address at Gettysburg, he was coming down with smallpox.  However, being elected President in 1860, he could afford all those failures. Abraham Lincoln was truly a successful failure.

HOW ABOUT YOU?  READY TO GIVE UP?