Decisions and Mistakes
- Larry Kutzler
- Dec 31, 2025
- 3 min read
One of the lessons I learned quite late in life is the lesson that I am responsible for my decisions. For years, I blamed my poor performance in life on my home life, my lack of opportunity … it was always something other than my fault. The realization that it was my decisions that make all the mistakes in my life, and no one else was to blame except me.
I heard of a man who made a list of the all the mistakes he had made in his life. At first, I thought this would be a depressing exercise. Then, as I thought about all my mistakes, I realized how God helped me to turn those mistakes around to bring about good in teaching me great lessons. Another old carpenter once told me that mistakes are those things that teach us what doesn’t work. I suppose, in that way mistakes, can be valuable. One of my mistakes made me realize how depleted my life was and I needed help. It was then I looked to God for that help. It was my mistakes that made me search for meaning, and I found it in Christ. Mistakes can have a happy ending. ~Larry Kutzler, Facebook Post
Proverbs 16:9 The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.
This makes me think about the many decisions I have made which brought about the mistakes in my life. Yet, as those decisions were made, they became the plans I would follow, but ultimately it was God who brought the direction. This is true for those who searched for God and found Him to be a reality. Finding God is finding an interaction with the eternal that makes us more aware of what we do in this life.
Mistakes can also have great regrets; the things we have done can often be reminders of our failures. This is where people can get stuck and develop an attitude of being a failure. All of us could feel that way if we let ourselves see failures as the end game. One of the things the Bible teaches us is that we all have sinned and made a ton of mistakes. God forgives our sins and mistakes so we can start a different course for our lives. To be forgiven doesn’t mean we forget. The forgiveness is the removal of the condemnation of mistakes, but the secondary benefit are the lessons learned from those mistakes.
My reflection back on my life brought me the realization how life for me was so mistake prone. The many paths I took to make my life more productive and satisfying, was often just one big nightmare. Yet, in each one of my so-called big mistakes, the result brought me the wisdom I needed to make better decisions and learn what not to do. Getting perspective on mistakes is one of the most valuable understandings in life, and with God’s help, they become the life lessons that ultimately guide our path forward. The Proverb writer said it well, “We plan, God makes right.”
Challenging the Culture with Truth … Larry Kutzler