From Falling in Failure to Standing in Faith

I'll bump that air up for y'all. I'll preach till I start seeing people starting to fan

and then I'll know it's time to stop. I see a taker over here. Alright. Let us close with

a word of prayer. No, y'all aren't that lucky. Alright. Psalm 37. Psalm 37. Verses 23 and

24. Psalm 37. Verses 23 and 24. This is a Psalm of David. We're not going to look at

the whole Psalm. Just one part of the Psalm. Psalm 37. Verses 23 and 24. We'll read through

these couple of verses. Then we'll pray and get started. Psalm 37. Verse 23. A man's steps

are established by the Lord and he takes pleasure in his way. Though he falls, he will not be

overwhelmed because the Lord holds his hand. Let's pray. Father God, we come to you today

and we thank you that we have the freedom and the privilege to come into your house

this morning. I pray that your Holy Spirit would be among us. I pray that you'd speak

to us today. I pray that you would help our minds to be focused on you, dear Lord. I pray

that you would help us to be free of worries and free of distractions and free of the things

of this world. I pray, God, that you would just help us to listen to you today, that

you meet us where we are, dear Lord. We are those today, dear Lord, who are fallen, as

your word says, dear Lord. We fall, we fail in so many ways, God. And so I pray, dear

Lord, that you would help us. Maybe today if we are struggling with our failures, that

we would not be overwhelmed, but that we would find strength in you this morning. I pray,

dear Lord, that you would hide me behind the cross, that you would take away any pride

or any nerves that I have, that every word that is said will come from you and that it

will be for your glory. And I ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. There's one word there

that jumped out to me in this verse, verse 24, overwhelmed. Though we fall, we will not

be overwhelmed if we trust in the Lord because He will hold on to us. I don't know about

you guys, but there are certainly days in my life that I feel overwhelmed. There's so

much stuff that life throws at us, that it is just one thing after another. And it seems

as though things are getting faster and busier. Now part of that just may be because I'm an

adult now. Maybe it was always this busy for adults. Maybe I'm just starting to really

experience it. Or maybe things really are getting faster and more hectic. I don't know.

But we see all the stuff that goes on in our life, and there are days that we fall, there

are days that we fail, and our failures often can be overwhelming to us. Now I don't know

about you guys, but I hate to fail. I hate to fail. It doesn't matter if it's something

simple, if it's something that's trivial. Maybe it's just failing a test in school.

We don't like to fail. Maybe it's failing to win a race at Mario Kart. Something just

that trivial. In the small things we don't like to fail, and in the more serious things

we don't like to fail. We don't like to fail our spouses. We don't like to fail at our

jobs. We don't like to fail the Lord. But that's really what sin is. Sin is a failure.

Sin comes when we fall. We don't like it when we fail. Our failures kind of pile up on us.

They eat away at us. Sometimes they make us sick to our stomach as we think about the

great failures that we've experienced in our life. And failures can be quite overwhelming

for us if we allow them to. Our failures can overcome us. Our failures can make us want

to give up. Our failures can make us feel as though we are worthless. Our failures can

make us feel like our families don't care about us. It makes us feel like God. We could

be of no use to God anymore. Our failures are just ever before us. Sometimes we just

can't get them off of our minds. Some of us may do better than others. But some of us,

our failures probably come back to us and they just eat away at us. Those things that

we did in our past, those things that we did last week, those things that we did yesterday.

We get in the silence and those things come to our mind. And we recognize that we have

fallen. We recognize we're a fallen people. We recognize that our failures are great.

And sometimes we may be tempted to look at those around us and look at the crowd before

us today and we say, man, I wish I was like him. I wish I was like her. They've got it

all together. How come they don't ever have the problems I have? How come they don't have

the financial troubles I have? How come they don't deal with the temptations that I do?

How come their life is so good and they don't have any problems? Sometimes perhaps we are

tempted to think in that way. That we failed and everyone else is succeeding. But maybe

it would surprise you to know or maybe not that people are probably looking at you saying

the same thing. Saying, boy, I wish I could be more like him or I wish I could be more

like her. And the truth of the matter is, is that we all fail far more than we would

ever like to admit. You don't believe there's a lot of failures out there. If you want to

feel better about yourself, just get online. You can find post after post of people talking

about their failures. In some ways, that's, I guess, maybe somewhat reassuring to know

that we are not alone. We're not the only ones who have failed. I was reading lots of

stories of failures this week. I read about one guy. He had this excellent recipe that

he was trying to give to restaurants. A thousand and nine times he gave it to restaurants and

failed every time. Every one of them turned him down. And I read about another guy. He

was the editor of a newspaper and got fired from his job. I was told that he didn't have

any imagination, that he wasn't creative enough. So he left the newspaper and things went from

bad to worse. He started some jobs. Those all failed and ended up filing bankruptcy.

I read about another young boy. Real slow learner. Wasn't able to speak even until he

was four years old. Couldn't read until he was seven. He got expelled from school. His

teacher said he was mentally handicapped. Tried to go to another school. Was not accepted

at that school. Read about another guy that was in the military. Went into military. As

a captain, came out of the military as a private. That's the wrong way if you didn't know. Going

down. Tried to start some businesses. Failed. Tried to get in politics and failed. So we

see lots of these stories of failure. I read about an athlete. A story of success, if you

can call it that. This guy was cut from his high school basketball team. But he kept working

hard and eventually he made it to the NBA only to miss 9,000 shots. 26 of which would

have won the game and lost over 300 games in his career. So failure is ever before us.

And those are just some stories. You could write a book of your own failures. If I stood

up here today and told you all the failures I had, we would be here for months. But that's

life. We have failures in our life and those failures can be overwhelming if we don't trust

in God. But I want to tell you today that there is hope for us in the midst of our failures.

That God loves us. That God is gracious to us. And I want to tell you that God is an

expert at using failures today. Now you might have failed in some great ways. I don't doubt

that you have. I have. But I want you to know that you have not failed so much that God

does not love you and that God cannot use you. As a matter of fact, if you believe that

today, if you believe that lie of the enemy today, then I want to encourage you to read

the Bible. Because the Bible is full of failures. Everybody that God ever used is a failure.

Sometimes you read about people in the Bible and you say, why didn't God use any better

people than that? Because there ain't no better people than that. There wasn't any better

people than that in the scriptural days. There aren't any better people than that today because

there's one thing that all of the people in the Bible have in common with us and that

is they were sinners like you and I. And so even the names that may come to our mind from

heroes in scripture, people that we think of and look up to that were great men and

women of God, you just flip a few pages in scripture and you're going to find pretty

quickly that every one of them have some pretty serious failures and some of them repeated

failures. Go back to the beginning of your Bible. Take Abraham and Sarah, for example.

Oh, we remember Abraham. He's father of our faith, right? He's a man he believed and it

was credited to him for right as righteousness. But yet when God made the promise to Abraham

that he was going to have a son, what did Abraham do? Abraham and Sarah decided they

were going to do things their own way. They decided to fulfill God's plan, doing things

their way. Well, that was a failure. And oftentimes what we see of our own failures and what we

see of the failures of people in scripture is that our failures come with consequences.

That's going to happen. That is inevitable. Our failures are going to come with consequences

and they certainly did for Abraham and for Sarah. But even though they failed God in

that way and there are some other ways in which Abraham failed too, nonetheless, we

look at Abraham and we think of him as a godly man. You flip the pages in your scripture

a little further, you get to the story of Moses. Well, his story started out pretty

good. A story of faith, a story of his mother coming up with a great idea that was going

to spare his life and sure enough, his life was spared and he grew up in the palace of

Pharaoh and then he killed a man and then he fled. He left. So here's Moses, a great

man that we think about in scripture and yet he's a murderer. And even further on through

the pages of scripture, we see that Moses as he's beginning to lead the people through

the wilderness before they get into the promised land, he's disobedient to God and his disobedience,

the consequences of that he doesn't even get to enter into the promised land. You fast

forward a few more pages in scripture, they finally get to the promised land and there

we're introduced to a character by the name of Rahab. And what was Rahab? She was a prostitute.

But as we flip through the pages of scripture, we see Rahab's name again and do you know

where you see Rahab's name? You see it in the very genealogy of Jesus Christ that even

God could use a prostitute to bring about his will. You flip a few pages over, you get

into the story of the judges. Perhaps you've heard of a story of a judge by the name of

Samson. Samson was the man who had a foolish temper and always was getting himself in trouble.

He loved women way more than he should and that got him into trouble. Eventually his

eyes were gouged out and God used him still, even in his failure, even in his sin. God

still used Samson at the end of his life. You flip through, you see the prophets. Elijah,

a mighty prophet of God, one that God had used to do great things and even still, when

Elijah faced adversity, he sat under a tree and he said, God take my life, I'm ready to

die. And all of these people that I just mentioned to you, they're all found in Hebrews chapter

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

11 and they're called heroes of faith. They're called men and women of faith. These are the

best examples that we can go to and even though these are examples that maybe we've heard

of, that these are examples that God used in a mighty way, we have to also recognize

that they failed in many ways. But praise the Lord that God can use failures. Even some

of our greatest failures God can use. He can use us to build his kingdom if we would trust

in him, if we would hold on to him, if we would know that God established our ways and

that we need to walk in the ways that God has established for us. That then when we

fall that our failures will not overcome us. There may be some of us today that we feel

overcome by our failures, that we have fallen today. That we have fallen and we wonder if

God still loves us, if God can still use us. And the good news is the hope for us today

that is if we would trust in God, that God can use us in spite of our failures. And we

see that example time and time again in scripture. Some of the greatest names you know in scripture,

some of the names that we celebrate are people that God used that were not good people, but

yet they were people that God called upon. You flip to the New Testament, you look at

Jesus as he picks his disciples. These guys weren't all saints, but these guys were guys

who trusted the Lord. These guys had failures. Peter denied Jesus three times before Jesus

went to the cross. The disciples fled from Jesus. These guys doubted Jesus. These guys

had failure after failure, but yet they were hand-picked and they were chosen by Jesus

Christ to be his servants, to build his kingdom. And the good news for us today is that we're

a bunch of men and women who have failed a lot and maybe in some really serious ways

today. But I still believe that Jesus wants to use us today, that he calls us today through

his word, that Jesus picks you and I and he says, I want you to come into my kingdom.

I want you to be my servant. I want you to follow me. And in the midst of your failures,

I want to transform you into something new. I want you to take a hold of my hand. I want

you not to be overwhelmed. I want you not to give up today. What a beautiful message

of hope that is for us. That as we come into this room today, and maybe some of you are

really struggling, maybe some of you really feel the weight of the failures that you have

on you this morning. And I want to tell you that Jesus can take that weight. I want to

tell you that Jesus can still use you today. He doesn't want us to continue on our failures.

The greatest failure we have is that we sin over and over and that we sin against God

and his word. But if we would just call out to Jesus today, if we would just repent of

our sinfulness, if we would turn from our ways and say, God, I'm not going to keep living

in my failures. I'm not going to let my failures dictate me. I'm not going to give in when

I fall in failure, but I'm going to stand in success through Jesus Christ. That's the

only way we can stand today. And yes, there's always going to be failures, even for those

who are in Jesus Christ. For those of you who are Christians today, wouldn't it be great

if we could say we came to Jesus and we never failed, that we've never fallen since we've

put our trust in him. It'd be great if we could say that, but it's not true. So even

for God's people today, there are some of us who have failed and maybe there are some

here today that are still living in the failure of that sin and they've never trusted Jesus

Christ. They've never felt peace. They've never felt joy. They've never known that there's

deliverance. But I want to tell you today, there's deliverance. That Jesus died on the

cross so that you could be forgiven, so that your failures could be forgiven, so that Jesus

would help you to be an overcomer today, so that you would not be overcome by your sin.

There's hope for us in our failures. And no matter how many failures we have, we may be

surprised at how God can work in our life. Those people that I told you about a while

ago that failed, you've heard of them. You may not realize you've heard of them, but

you have. The guy that had the recipe that he went to a thousand and nine people to try

to get him to make his recipe. Well, good news. He tried one more time and on one thousand

and ten, he finally got somebody to take his recipe. His name is Harlan David Sanders.

You may better know him as Colonel Sanders, KFC. The guy I told you about who didn't have

enough imagination, who wasn't created enough to work for the newspaper. Well, you've heard

of him too. His name is Walt Disney. Made some of the most imaginative movies you've

ever seen. The young boy who couldn't speak till he was four, couldn't read till he was

seven and no school wanted to take him. His name was Albert Einstein. Regarded by many

as one of the smartest men to ever walk this earth. That guy who went backwards in his

career. Some of us probably can relate to that. Went into the military as a captain

and came out as a private. Well, eventually he did find his footing in politics and became

the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. The man who was the basketball player

that got cut from his high school team, went on to miss 9,000 shots, lose 300 games, and

missed 26 game winning shots. His name was Michael Jordan, who later went on to be the

best basketball player to ever walk the planet. And so you see all of these people were not

remembered by their failures. If I would have asked you after church who these people were,

not a single one of you would have been able to tell me who they were. But if I'd ask you

who the best basketball player was, you'd have told me that it was Michael Jordan. And

so it is for these heroes we see in scripture. They were not defined by their failures. They

were defined by their faith. And so it is for you and I. If we trust in Jesus Christ,

we may have a lot of failures in our life, but it's not our failures that's going to

define us. It's not our failures that are going to define who we are for all of eternity.

It's our faith in Jesus Christ. So let us not be overcome and overwhelmed by our failures

today, but let us be those who walk in the ways that have been established by God, that

we walk in the ways of Jesus Christ and that we trust him as our Lord and Savior. Let's

pray. Father God, we come to you today and I pray that you'd help us. Dear Lord, maybe

there are some today that really are struggling with their failures of their past. God, maybe

there are some today that are just struggling with something that's going on in the last

few months and maybe it's just nagging at them. And maybe they did fail and fail greatly

and maybe it's something trivial, dear Lord, or maybe it's something pretty major. Maybe

it's a serious sin that they failed in. Wherever we are today, dear Lord, I pray that in our

failures that we would just humble ourselves before you, that we would come to you and

just acknowledge that we are a mess this morning, dear Lord. But I pray that we would not leave

here a mess, God. I pray that we would not leave here overcome and overwhelmed with the

burden and the stress of our failures at school, or at work, or at church, or with our families.

God, we don't want to keep failing. We don't want to keep living in failure. We want to

do better. I pray that you help us to strive to do better in the things that we can control

and some of them we can. But dear Lord, I pray that we don't try to earn your favor

today by anything that we do, but that we just come before you as the failures we are.

And we just ask this morning, dear Lord, that you would forgive us, that we would trust

in you, dear Lord, that we wouldn't live by our own ways, but that we would live by your

ways, dear Lord, that we wouldn't try to establish our own paths, that we wouldn't be like Abraham

and Sarah, and God try to accomplish your work according to our ways, but God, we would

seek your ways. God, maybe there are some of us today that we don't feel smart enough.

Maybe there are some of us today we've lost our job. Maybe there are some of us today

that are going backwards in our career. Maybe there are some of us today that even when

we do good, it seems like it's not long after that that failure comes again, dear Lord.

This is our cycle in life, and we need you to walk with us through this cycle. So I pray,

dear Lord, today that we would put our faith and our trust in Jesus Christ. God, that today

that we would find joy, that we would know that our faith is what determines who we are,

and God, our faith overcomes our failure. So I pray that we would repent of our sins

today, that we would trust in you, that we would not allow the devil to get us down and

get us depressed and cause us to want to give up, but today that we would know that you

hold on to us, dear Lord. So I pray that you would help us to hold on to you, that you

lift us up, that you dust us off, that you not let us groan and grumble in our failures,

but that we go about our way, dear Lord. And I ask these things in Jesus' name, Amen.