Failure and Choices: Heaton Baptist 15/1/06 Download the MP3 or read the transcript below. |
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[Pray to open]
Introduction Joan of Arc / Julius Caesar / Julia Roberts / Winston Churchill / Leonardo da Vinci / Paul Daniels They're all left-handed! Also, although they've all achieved fame, wealth, status, they've also all failed many times. Our society doesn't deal well with failure. Look at how harshly the papers and magazines treat celebs who make bad choices or who prove to be less than perfect. In many areas of life we're bombarded with targets / league tables. Failure's a hard thing to deal with (which is why I only made new year's resolutions that would be easy to keep, like 'Buy lots of books' and 'Fall asleep on the couch more'.) Biblical passage Want to look at God's reponse to people who mess up - biblical celebrities. Read Hebrews 11: 1 - 3, 7, 21, 24 - 34, 39 - 40 (Heros of the faith passage) Noah - Drunkeness Paul - Zealous personality murdered Christians. God didn't zap him and make him all 'nice' and anemic, but he used his personality to further his kingdom. Good news if you feel like a failure: God uses people who mess up and are weak. 2 Cor. 12:10 That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Niece Hazel - pic on Powerpoint. Our choice Read Hebrews 12: 1 - 3 Sin separates us from God, but Jesus provides the way back. We have a choice: OR
Sheep thief story: There were once two brothers who lived in a small farming village a long time ago. Once, when they were both young men, they stole some sheep from a nearby farm. The farmer caught them and their punishment was to have the letters 'ST' for Sheep Thief branded on their foreheads so that everyone in the village would know of their crime. The first brother was so fed up of being treated with suspicion wherever he went that he resigned himself to the fact that his life was ruined and decided to run away from the village. He spent the rest of his years wandering through foreign lands. Wherever he went, people avoided the mysterious outsider with strange letters on his head. He eventually died a miserable outcast. The other brother also found it difficult being treated with suspicion all the time, but he decided that he wasn't going to let his one act of thievery ruin his life. He decided from then on to serve those around him. Over many years he became known as someone who was kind and generous, who was always willing to help others. When he was an old man, no one in the village could remember what the 'ST' on his forehead stood for, but they assumed it meant 'Saint'. This story made me realised that no matter how badly we have messed up and how difficult our circumstances have become, we have a choice about how to react. How we choose to respond to failures fundamentally affects who we become. We can decide to lose hope and give up, always living a half life in the shadows. Or we can allow God to redeem us and transform us into the people that he wants us to be. We all have broken areas of our lives and we can choose to remain broken and hurting, or we can let God turn the mess and the damage into something which glorifies him. Just as the second brother didn't have the letters on his head magically removed, God doesn't just erase the past, but rather transforms it into something beautiful and unique. I can choose to honour God with my sexuality and let it be a lasting testimony of his goodness and love. God can and will transform doubt, weakness and disobedience into faith, power and intimacy with him. Often it looks worse before it gets better. When Jesus was on the cross it was frightening and all looked lost. But then came the resurrection. Marks of the cross still in Jesus' hands and feet after the resurrection, but they're not signs of failure, rather signs of God's victory and glory. We all have different things 'branded' on our lives, but if we give them to God, he can transform the brokenness into something wonderful for him. Let's value our stories and our unique experiences and the way God is continuing to tell his story of salvation and love through us. Exhortation
OR
Response time - whether you're a Christian or not you're welcome to come forward and pray with someone at the end of the service. Let's be real with one another and spur each other on to be the heros of faith that God created us to be. [Pray to close] |
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Live with guilt of unconfessed sin and allow the sin to fill our vision. (Sometimes even Christian stuff can be sin-focussed rather than Jesus-focussed.)