Cycles

You've heard it said that when you make a mistake or bad decision, you should've learned a lesson afterwards. Yet there is a question that needs to be asked in relevance to the situation. How will the lesson learned be practically applied? There is a difference between a lesson learned and a lesson applied. Often times we continue to make the same mistakes in life because we choose not to apply what we've learned. 

Take a math lesson for example. You go to the class, listen to the professor, and learn all of the formulas. Math is full of formulas that if executed correctly, present the same answer. Then the test comes, and you have to apply the formula you've learned the day before. The only problem is that you have forgotten the formula. Or let's just say you remember the formula, but when the math problem presented itself, you did not feel like applying it. You ultimately fail the test by a few points. Had you'd applied the formula when the problem presented itself, the failure could've been avoided. 

When we say "lesson learned" we are not wrong in our word choice. What we should also be saying now is: "lesson applied". It is one thing to say that you've learned a lesson. It is another thing to say that you've applied a lesson and passed the test. 

Gospel singer and songwriter Jonathan McReynolds has a song entitled Cycles. There is a verse in the song that says; the devil learns from your mistakes even if you don't, that's how he keeps you in cycles. We often times get caught up in the cycles of our shortcomings because we do not apply the lessons learned from the previous downfall. As children, we may have encountered situations where we touched a hot stove, eaten something from off of the floor, or got a little too close to an ant pile and ended up being dowsed with Neosporin. Nine times out of 10, we avoided repeating those acts because of the bad feeling we got from the doing the act. 

This should also apply to our lives. We should recognize the temptation for what it is when it comes so that we do not fulfill the act of sin in hopes that we overcome the obstacle, thus passing the test. The devil presents temptations to us everyday and we have the option to either apply the lesson learned from the failures of our shortcomings or fulfill the desires of the flesh by giving in to those temptations. Which one will it be? Hopefully the answer is applying the lesson. God has given us the power to past the test. All we have to do now.....is apply.