Today, we want to consider a word of
encouragement for those who feel their life has
been a failure.
Lots and lots of people feel that they
have messed up their life so badly and
they wonder, what can I do with my
life for God now?
There is a message of hope in the
word of God for such people.
There are many brothers and sisters, believers who
feel that because they have sinned and failed
God at some time in their past lives,
therefore they can't fulfill God's perfect plan for
their lives now.
Because they say, well, once upon a time,
when I was young, if I had yielded
completely to God and lived in His perfect
will, maybe I could have, but I have
made such a mess of my life, what
can I do now?
Now, according to logic and our own human
understanding, that sounds right.
But let's look at the scriptures and you
may find that God's thoughts are completely different.
God's ways are completely different.
There's hope, even for you.
Notice, first of all, how the Bible begins.
In the beginning, God created the heaven and
the earth.
That's written in Genesis 1, verse 1.
And after the heavens and the earth were
made, when God makes anything, it's perfect.
They must have been perfect, because He never
does anything imperfect.
But some of the angels whom He had
created fell away, and that's described in Isaiah
14, verses 11 to 15, and Ezekiel 28,
verse 13 to 18.
And when that happened, we read in Genesis
1, 2, the earth became formless and void
and empty and dark.
But then, what did God do?
He didn't leave the earth in that condition.
It says, the Holy Spirit began to move
upon that earth, and the word of God
went forth on that earth, and God remade
that earth.
He worked on that shapeless, empty, dark mass
and made something so beautiful out of that
mess, that at the end of it, He
could say in Genesis 1, 31, it's very
good.
Now, what's the lesson in the first chapter
of the Bible?
That even if the devil has made a
mess of your life, if you surrender to
God's word, you see how God said, God
said, God said appears in the first chapter?
And to the Holy Spirit, He can make
something excellent out of your life, no matter
how much you fail.
Now, before this failure of Lucifer, God must
have had a perfect plan for the heavens
and the earth.
But when Lucifer sinned, that plan had to
be set aside, but God remade the heavens
and still made something good out of it.
And now see what happens next.
God creates man and woman, and He's got
a perfect plan for Adam and Eve.
And in God's perfect plan for Adam and
Eve, there was no provision for them to
eat of this forbidden tree.
That was not God's will.
In fact, God clearly said you shouldn't eat
of that.
So if God had a plan for them,
the plan was they should not eat of
it.
But they did eat of it, and they
spoiled God's plan.
Now if we go by logic and reason,
we'll have to say, well, now they cannot
fulfill God's perfect plan.
Now we have to go to God's second
best.
But what do we read there?
We read there that the Lord comes to
Adam and Eve after they have sinned and
tells them, well, don't worry, I'm going to
solve this problem.
I'm going to send a seed through the
woman, that's referring to Christ, who will come
and bruise the serpent, the devil on his
head, and destroy his power over you.
So there He's speaking about Christ dying for
our sins and overcoming Satan on Calvary.
Now tell me this, what is your answer
to this question?
Was the death of Christ part of God's
perfect plan for us from all eternity or
not?
The Bible says in Revelation 13, verse 8,
that the Lamb was slain from the foundation
of the world.
So was that in God's mind from eternity,
or was it God's second best?
How many of you would dare to say
that the death of Christ on Calvary was
God's second best?
Wasn't it His perfect plan?
It was.
But yet, when you turn to Genesis 3,
logically you have to say Christ had to
die only because Adam and Eve failed.
If Adam and Eve had not sinned, there
would be no need for Christ to die
on the cross at all.
So then, was it God's perfect plan or
not?
And we would not have known of God's
love if Adam had not sinned.
There would have been no Calvary's cross.
What's the answer?
You're confused.
Because our human understanding cannot grasp this.
That even where man has failed, God can
still fulfill His perfect plan.
Now human logic fails here, it baffles us.
That's why the Bible says, don't lean on
your own understanding.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart.
If God was working according to mathematical logic,
then we'd have to say that Christ coming
to the earth was God's second best plan.
But that's blasphemous.
It was part of God's perfect plan.
God makes no mistakes.
God, who knows the end from the beginning
and who silently plans for us in love,
plans something allowing for our failures.
He knows that we're going to fail, He
allows for our failures and has made a
perfect plan for us.
That's the word of encouragement that there is
for you.
God's perfect plan for Adam was certainly not
that they should eat of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil, but because He
knew the end from the beginning, He knew
that they would fail and so He'd already
made a plan that accounted for that failure.
The same way in your life.
There are a lot of things you've done
in your life that God never wanted you
to do.
But do you know that in His great
love for you and in His perfect wisdom,
He has made allowance for that failure and
can still lead you into His perfect plan.
His ways are not our ways.
His thoughts are not our thoughts.
So don't let your logic and reason say,
oh, now I cannot do God's perfect will
for my life.
God's message to us from these opening pages
of the Bible is just this, that He
can take a man who has failed and
make something glorious out of him and still
make him fulfill.
God's perfect plan for his life.
That's in the first pages of the Bible
and we must never forget it.
And if you're a failure, God can pick
you up and fulfill not His second best
or third best, but His perfect plan.
That's why it's important for you to give
the rest of your life totally to God.
See because even our failure may, though it's
not part of God's perfect plan, may be
permitted by Him to teach us some lessons.
For example, we never learn humility, unfortunately, except
through many failures.
We try to get victory over sin so
many times we fail and fail and fail
and fail and fail and we realize finally
that we cannot without God's help.
Well, that's an education we got through our
failure.
See for example, Peter.
Part of Peter's training for leadership was failure.
The Lord could not break Peter through educating
him, through teaching him, but when he denied
the Lord three times, which was certainly not
God's perfect will, it accomplished something in Peter.
It broke him.
And that was God's perfect will, that it
should be broken.
So God can use failure to accomplish something
good.
See, one of the biggest problems that God
has with us is to bless us in
such a way that the blessing does not
puff us up with pride.
You see, if you get victory over anger
and then you become proud, that's falling into
a far deeper pit than anger itself.
So it's not only important to get victory
over sin, it's important to be humble at
the end of it.
And how does that happen?
Only if God allows us to fail many
times.
Genuine victory is always accompanied by humility.
And the other thing is, if we have
failed many times, we can never despise another
person.
Because we know we've failed ourselves.
So we're not saying that a man should
therefore keep on sinning.
You know, Paul speaks about that, saying, well,
if my dishonesty brought glory to God, Romans
3, 7 and 8.
If you follow through with that idea, you
come to this, the worse we are, the
better God likes it.
But the damnation of those who say such
things is just.
No, we're not saying that we have to
sin.
What we're saying is, if we have failed,
God is not frustrated in fulfilling His plan
for our life.
Every man whom God has used has failed.
Peter, Paul, John, James, you, I, everyone.
God has not called people who never made
mistakes in their life.
If God could fulfill His perfect plan only
in the lives of those who never made
a mistake, then we'd have to say Jesus
Christ was the only person who ever fulfilled
God's perfect plan for his life.
Nobody else.
Great men of God may not have told
you about their failures, but they have failed
too.
Now the question is whether you can believe
that or not.
You see, if you don't believe this, if
you say, no, no, no, no, it's not
possible in my case, then it won't work.
But if you can believe, Lord, there's nothing
impossible for you.
You can take the mess I've made of
my life and still accomplish something glorious, fulfill
your perfect plan.
It will happen according to your faith.
Think of the story of the prodigal son
who wasted so many years and all the
father's money.
And when he came back, the Bible says
he got the best robe and the best
seat.
What was that?
It's a message that says that God can
pick up a person who's made a mess
of his life and make something glorious out
of him.
That's the story of the prodigal son.
Think of the story of the man who
went out hiring laborers.
He went at six o'clock in the
morning and hired laborers.
And then he went at five o'clock
in the evening to hire laborers who could
work only for one hour out of twelve.
In other words, they had wasted ninety percent
of their life.
Eleven hours out of twelve.
And they went and worked and they got
their reward first.
What does that parable in Matthew twenty teach
us?
That God can do something even with those
who have ruined ninety percent of their lives.
Nobody is so hopeless that God cannot do
something with them.
Jesus came to destroy the works of the
devil.
We read in one John three verse eight.
He can untie all the knots that the
devil has tied up in your life.
My brother, my sister, don't listen to the
lies of the devil.
When he says no, that's impossible.
If you believe him, it'll be impossible.
But if you believe God, who can take
the broken vessel and as a potter make
it again, anew, then it will be fulfilled
in your life.
Whatever your blunders and failures, you can make
a new beginning.
And if you've made a thousand new beginnings,
make a thousand and first new beginning today.
God can make something glorious out of your
life.
Give glory to God by believing this is
true.
And one day in eternity, God will show
you as a person who has a failure,
but from whom He brought tremendous glory in
your earthly life.