Remaining Confident When We Fail

There was an important business executive who boarded the New Orleans to Washington train. He had a very important business meeting and he needed to be awakened in order to get off the train in Atlanta about five o'clock in the morning. Since he was a heavy sleeper, he found a porter and told him, "I want you to wake me up so that I can get off the train at five o'clock in the morning. Now I'm a heavy sleeper," he said. "It doesn't matter how much I fret and fuss and fume or what I do to you -- I have to get off the train in Atlanta. If you have to remove me bodily, you get me off this train in Atlanta."

Well, the next morning he woke up about 9 o'clock, having slept all night and having missed Atlanta, and found that he was speeding toward Washington. He found the porter and really poured it on with all sorts of abusive language, almost attacking the poor guy bodily. After he left, someone said to the porter, "How could you stand there and take that kind of talk from that man?" The porter said, "That ain't nothin'! You should've heard that guy I put off in Atlanta!"

Too often we fail to get off at the right station and end up heading to where we don’t want to go.

We all fail at times. When we make mistakes, it’s so easy for us to beat ourselves up. Whether we say something we shouldn’t have said, or we drop the ball at work, or we run back to an old addiction, our sins and failures can completely crush our confidence. When that happens, how do we pull ourselves out of the dugout and get our heads back into the game of life? Today, we’re talking about still having confidence when we fail. Let’s take some advice from the life of Abram. Today, we will be using Genesis 16 & 17. PRAYER

If we were all honest, I think we would admit that waiting on the Lord isn't easy. Sarai was now 75 years old, and she was still barren. From a human perspective, there was no reason to think that she could have a child at her age. But she knew God's promises to Abram depended on the conception of a child in her womb, or did they? Maybe God could fulfill his promises to Abram some other way.

Genesis 16:1-5 – “Abram’s wife, Sarai, had not borne any children for him, but she owned an Egyptian slave named Hagar. 2 Sarai said to Abram, “Since the Lord has prevented me from bearing children, go to my slave; perhaps through her I can build a family.” And Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So Abram’s wife, Sarai, took Hagar, her Egyptian slave, and gave her to her husband, Abram, as a wife for him. This happened after Abram had lived in the land of Canaan ten years.

4 He slept with Hagar, and she became pregnant. When she saw that she was pregnant, her mistress became contemptible to her. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for my suffering! I put my slave in your arms, and when she saw that she was pregnant, I became contemptible to her. May the Lord judge between me and you.”

This account out of Abram's life is one about failure and of trying to get ahead of God. Abram’s failure in this particular account involved three separate individuals:

-Sarai. It had been 10 years since God had promised that Sarai would bear Abram a son. At this point, her patience had run out. God had said Abram would be the father of a great nation, but He hadn't yet specify who the mother would be. So, Sarai reasoned she would “step out of the way”, so the promise could be fulfilled. Besides, since Hagar was Sarai's servant, Hagar's children could be considered Sarai's children.

-Then there is Abram. Even if we think Sarai made a poor judgment call, let's don't put all the blame on her. After all, Abram went along with the plan. He could have said no, but Sarai's reason apparently made perfect sense to Abram.

-Hagar. Hagar was an Egyptian maid servant, likely acquired during Abram and Sarai's brief visit in Egypt. Because of her position as a servant, Hagar had no choice but to go along with the plan. As a result, she got pregnant.

As I said, waiting on the Lord is not easy. But we have to learn to trust God to accomplish his plans in His way. God had communicated his plan to Abram, but it still hadn't happened. So, Sarai & Abram created their own plan. At first, the plan seemed to be working, but then the situation got ugly.