I don’t think anyone wakes up with the intentions of ruining his or her life through moral failure. Nobody intentionally says, “I want to ruin my life today, where can I start?”.

I think on the front end, there are a lot of things we can do to prevent things like this from happening. I believe that with almost anything in life that failure to prepare, is preparing to fail. When I hear stories about people that have messed up morally, you always hear things like this:

• “I’ve felt like this for a while, but I just never shared it with anyone”
• “It all started with little thoughts that grew”
• “I was with these friends…”

As I’ve been working in ministry, I’ve noticed that it is hard to find a “true friend” that you can totally share 100% of your heart with. Either out of pride or fear we hold the little suttle things we’re going through in, thinking nothing will ever happen to me, they wouldn’t understand, if they knew that, I would lose my job, etc.. On the front end I think these are a few critical things we need to do to avoid moral failure:

• Have a strong foundation of God’s Word
• Have one or two people who you can be totally transparent with
• Share your “other 10 percent” (everybody has 10% of their life that no one knows about), we need to be willing to share that with people
• Realizing that having the thought about something isn’t sin, it’s acting on the thought

Finally, if you’ve messed up in an area…. I would encourage you to admit it, repent, and do everything you can to get restored. Remember that though you’re forgiven, that doesn’t mean you should be able to keep your position, you’ll have to earn it back over time. And always remember:

“Although you cannot go back and have a brand new start my friend, you can start now, and have a brand new end.”
-John Maxwell

I’ve just recently been learning about moral failures and how to deal with them from both ends of the spectrum. Today I want to focus on what to do when someone you know goes through moral failure and tomorrow I will cover what to do if you’re the person who failed.

If someone under you has committed moral failure (obviously what to do could be different based on how serious the issue is). These approaches can be used with your staff and even your family!

• Try to find out if the failure was a result of ignorance or rebellion

• Ignorance- they didn’t know any better

• Rebellion – they knew better and did it anyway

• If it’s ignorance they need some teaching

• If it’s rebellion they need correction and discipline

• Depending on the situation they most likely need to be pulled from their leadership position

• You need to forgive them, but remember just because you forgave them does not mean they should keep their position. They need to get help for a season and prove themselves again over time. You either have to demote them or let them go.

Have you ever tried to discipline someone who did something out of ignorance? Or teach someone who was in rebellion? We need to differentiate the two and treat them appropriately.