Oak Hill Church of Christ 4-13-25 Message: "God Uses Failures"

Oak Hill Church of Christ Preaching Minister, Randy Sterling, delivers a lesson on the importance of acknowledging God's work in our lives, even when we experience failure.

Nobody likes failure. There's no revolutionary truth in that statement, anyone can understand that failure hurts. In fact, the body undergoes physiological changes when we fail. Our brain causes the body to release hormones that slow us down, make us introspective, prevent us from being too hasty in making the same mistake again. Sometimes, when we go for too long without analyzing our failures and changing our tack, we can become mired in a depressive mood. Our body keeps releasing the hormone that slows us down, waiting for us to admit we fell short, and point out that we know what we'll do better next time. There's a reason the old statement goes, "the first step to recovery is admitting there's a problem."

God is the same way with our spirits. God doesn't hate that we fail. On the contrary, He loves us so much that He sent His own Son, Jesus, so that we might be able to be mended from our failures. God doesn't ask us to be perfect or demand that we be sinless; that was Jesus' job. What God asks of us is that we try again. And, most of all, that when we try again, we don't try alone.

God is there to guide and direct us, to help us discover what might've gone wrong, and to help us figure out how to do better next time. In the meantime, God is there to comfort us while we experience the sorrow of failure. While Jesus didn't fail, he did know what it was like to 'lose'. He knew that at his death on the Cross, so many of his followers would abandon him, even Peter.

Jesus was able to turn those losses into successes by trusting in God. On the Cross, you can imagine the forces of darkness believed they had won. At last, God's Son, the Savior of mankind would die. Yet, through God, that wasn't the end. Jesus returned, and redeemed his lost flock, including Peter.

Have you failed? Have you lost? Don't let it be the end. Don't waste away. Let Christ redeem you, and help you with a plan to get up and try again.