How God Uses Failure

How God Uses Failure (Exodus 2:11-25)

“HOW TO LEARN FROM FAILURE

Some Powerful Steps How to Overcome Failure in Life and Bounce Back

Life of Moses/Peter Luke 22:54-61 john 21:3

• Shame over past failures and sins can haunt and inhibit us in many ways.

• And Satan seeks to steal and destroy our faith by shoving our failures in our face. But Jesus intends to redeem us completely

• There are many people in Scripture who have failed miserably and been restored and re-commissioned by God.

Such people were assigned important tasks in the kingdom of God and achieved great things for God by His grace.

God is in the business of using people who have failed.

• Noah got drunk and exposed himself.

• Abraham lied twice about his wife being his sister.

• Isaac did the same.

• Jacob deceived his father and cheated his brother out of the birthright.

• David sinned with Bathsheba and had her husband murdered.

• The disciples all abandoned Jesus at His crucifixion and then doubted the resurrection.

• Peter denied Jesus and later waffled on the gospel out of fear of the Judaizers.

• Mark bailed out on the first missionary journey.

God is the God of second chances!

Scripture is full of examples of failures and the church is not a club for perfect people.

We are human and will make mistakes;

• we all have weaknesses. Therefore, we must learn to live with our failures.

• Strong character is developed in accordance with how you deal with your mistakes and move on from them.

• Remember that failure is actually important for your development.

Mistakes can teach us vital lessons about what to do differently in the future, which helps us avoid repeating them! It is within your weakness that He is best able to teach and strengthen you: “Realize that God’s work is not limited by our failures.

He does not reject us in our weakness but rather embraces us so that we can receive strength to be all He intended us to be.”*

• The more successful you are, the more failures you will go through. We have all heard about this

• The key is that we must learn how to overcome failure, in life and at work.

• The fear of failure can make force you into making decisions not to try again or move forward.

Moses was one of the greatest men in the Bible.

- He was used of God to free Gods’ people.

- He was used by God to deliver the 10 Commandments.

- He was used of God to build the Tabernacle so that God could dwell with His people.

- Yet Moses didn’t start out that way. He was raised to believe God, but he chose to take matters in his own hand and he failed.

And in our text, Moses murders an Egyptian, is rejected by his countrymen, flees for his life, and lives in the desert for the next forty years.

This story gives us hope that God can use us even after we’ve failed.

• D. L. Moody said, “Moses spent his first forty years thinking he was somebody.

• He spent his second forty years learning he was a nobody.

• He spent his third forty years discovering what God can do with a nobody.”

Moses he went out to visit his brethren and killed the Egyptian taskmaster

Why would Moses side with the Hebrew slaves and risk his place in the Egyptian court by killing this taskmaster?

This action caused Pharaoh now to see Moses as a traitor who needed to be killed.

Hebrews 11:24-26 tells us why Moses did this: “By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward.”

So Moses’ intentions were right when he went out to help his suffering Hebrew people.

• He had given up position, pleasure, and prosperity to take his stand with God’s people

• But he went about his mission in the wrong way, resulting in a forty year detour.

• From a prince in the palace of Egypt, Moses became a shepherd in the barren wilderness of Midian.

• From being in the limelight of Pharaoh’s government, Moses went into isolation and obscurity.

• From being a “somebody,” he instantly became a “nobody.”

• The forty years in the desert was God’s school to prepare Moses for his later more difficult assignment. This story teaches us that …

Our text breaks into three main sections:

1. God uses imperfect instruments who fail in their attempts to serve Him (Exodus 2:11-15a).