LIVE Join our service streaming live right now! Click here to watch.
What happens when the life you planned collapses and your worst failure seems to have settled what you can ever become? Exodus 3–4 brings that question to Moses, a fugitive tending sheep in the wilderness, when the holy God calls him from a burning bush and sends him toward the people and place he fled.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The sermon contrasts how we often think God qualifies people (based on past accomplishments, education, or a clean record) with how he actually works. Can you think of a time when you felt disqualified by your past or your failures, only to discover God had other plans?
Moses spent forty years in the wilderness replaying his failures before God called him. Why do you think God sometimes allows us to sit with our mistakes for a long time before calling us into service—and what might he be doing in that waiting period?
The sermon suggests that “God doesn’t call the qualified, but qualifies the called” is only half the story—that our life experiences, even painful ones, become part of how God equips us. Can you identify a difficult chapter in your own story that later became useful in serving others?
What does it mean that “we serve by grace” just as much as “we are saved by grace”? How does that change the way you think about your ability—or inability—to do God’s work?
God’s core assurance to Moses was simply, “I will be with you” (Exodus 3:12). What step of obedience might God be calling you to take right now, even before you feel fully qualified or confident?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
So today we are beginning a new series. We’ve been doing a trilogy over the summer about rambling through the Bible, and today we’re starting a series called Accidental Missionaries, thinking about different parts of the way that God’s calling works in the lives of people who weren’t necessarily thinking that God was going to work in those ways. And that’s probably true of everybody to an extent. It is true of everybody to an extent. But we’re going to be looking at the lives of individuals who weren’t necessarily going anywhere near the direction that God was going to direct them, and how He used them. And as we think about how He can use people in spite of themselves, in spite of where they thought they were going, in spite of their past, in spite of their accomplishments, in spite of everything that we normally think of from a human standpoint that we bring to the table, it helps us to think about how God is going to use us as well. Because so often we limit God on the basis of all these human qualifications and accomplishments. God wants us instead to look to Him.
So to begin this series, let’s come before God, ask for His guidance, and then we’ll dig in. Let’s pray. Father, we thank You for Your Word, which is always good and true. And as we look through Your Word once again today, as we look at the Old Testament today, and we’ll be going through that the next few weeks, and then going to the New Testament once again, and thinking about how You work, how You enable people to serve You in spite of themselves, in spite of human wisdom, in spite of our sinfulness. Lord, would You encourage each of us to see how Your grace works in our lives, that You don’t stop when You redeem us. You go further, Lord. You continue to work in our lives, and You use us. You equip us to do Your good work. Lord, would You help us to see that today, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Reading about a man named Raul, who, this is not some ancient person, I’m not going back to someone from the Bible, I’m not referring to someone from an ancient history text, someone actually, this is an ongoing story about a man, a Navy veteran and a longtime border patrol agent. He had been serving with the Customs Department, patrolling the border for the last 18 years. Well, actually, I guess that he served for 18 years going up to 2018, because a problem he encountered is a problem that most of us, I don’t think, would imagine encountering, but he didn’t either, and that was that he discovered, after serving his country in the Navy, serving his country as a border patrol agent, that he wasn’t actually a citizen of the country. You see, his father had brought him over from Mexico when he was a little boy, and had somehow managed to obtain a falsified birth certificate. And so, for all these years, Raul believed himself to be an American citizen, in fact, enforcing immigration controls, even, only to discover, when trying to help his brother obtain a visa, that they weren’t actually American citizens at all.
His whole identity started to break down at that point, because here was a man who had built his whole life on service to his country, including enforcing and encouraging the obedience to the American immigration system and how it should work, and here was a man, then, that realized he, himself, should be deported. What do you do in a situation like that? What do you do when your whole identity is built up like that? You think you know who you are, you think you know where you’re going, and you’re not even sure if you’re supposed to remain in the country. He suddenly had everything come crashing down. When he was serving in the military, apparently he’d been stationed in Mexico for a period of time, in fact, and so his son had been born in Mexico, and the web of problems continued to spread out, because since he wasn’t an American citizen, while normally, if you’re an American citizen serving in the armed forces and your child’s born in a different country, he would receive American citizenship, his son turned out not to be an American citizen either. What do you do in a situation like that?
Well, he was put on leave from his duties with the Border Patrol, not surprisingly, soon terminated. His son soon was also brought up on the list potentially to be deported, so you have two generations here, and then the third generation, the grandkids, they’re American citizens, but their two generations before that may not be. Actually, no may about it, they aren’t. Just an incredibly crazy situation. I think about this man and everything that he had built his life on, everything he thought brought purpose to his life, would come crashing down in that moment, both his work and his family, because everything would be uncertain at that point.
And here’s the thing that he realized, for all his years, and how normally, how we function as people, whatever country we might be citizens of, is we assume, well, as long as I obey the laws of the country I’m a citizen to, I’m okay, everything will keep moving along, when suddenly you realize that your whole life, including where you belong geographically, where you belong nationally, it turns out to be a lie. You realize it’s completely out of your power. Raul has spent years hiding in his home now, because he realizes if he goes out and happens to be pulled over, happens to just be like his blinker goes out, or he’s speeding, or anything that normally wouldn’t be a major deal for someone, it might get you in trouble, but it wouldn’t be a major deal, might lead to him actually never seeing his grandkids again. What do you do in a situation like that?
Well, one of the challenges, I think, when we contemplate a situation like that, we say, wow, it’s so uncontrollable, it’s nice to feel like you have a little bit of control over your destiny, and yet the truth is none of us do. We can’t even begin to do what God wants us to do without him working in our lives. Otherwise, we might as well be those who think we have citizenship someplace and really have it somewhere else. We’re in just as much of an uncontrolled situation as Raul.
Exodus 3, verse 1. We find Moses as an exile. He was raised in Egypt, but now he’s hiding in the desert. It says, “Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned. When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, Moses! Moses! And he said, Here I am. And he said, Do not come near. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. He said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.”
Moses has the right sense there, but I tend to think that Moses has it for two different reasons. One, if any of us encounter God, we should fear him. Not in the sense that God is evil, not in the sense that God wishes us harm, but rather God is holy, we are not. When we encounter that purity, when we encounter one who has no stain of evil at all upon him, how do we come to him and not want to cover our face just like Moses? Moses has more to his story. Moses has found himself in this situation. He’s found himself out in the wilderness. He’s found himself tending this flock and the son-in-law of this man named Jethro. Why? Because he is an exile. He’s a fugitive. He’s fled Egypt because he’s murdered a man.
Now, we can quibble a little bit maybe with that characterization. Moses is in Egypt. If you know the background of the story of Moses, Moses is born. He’s a Hebrew. The Pharaoh doesn’t want any more Hebrew males born in his country because he’s afraid they’re going to rise up against him, and so he orders all the baby boys killed. But the princess, the daughter of the Pharaoh, encounters this little baby floating in a raft because his parents aren’t willing to just kill him. He’s raised up in the household of the Pharaoh. He’s not really a child of the Pharaoh’s family, but that’s his identity. Just like Raul is thinking he’s an American citizen, Moses is raised up as one who has all the power and prestige of someone in the house of the king of the land. And he goes out. He knows the truth. He’s not surprised like Raul, but he goes out as someone who has that authority, has that air, probably walks with the importance of nobility as he’s going out and seeing the people. People need to treat him with respect. And he sees an Egyptian man mistreating a Hebrew. He says, wait a second here. I don’t like this. And so Moses is overcome with anger, and what does he do? He kills the man who’s mistreating the Hebrew.
Now, yes, he’s been raised in Pharaoh’s household. He’s still a Hebrew. And Moses isn’t dumb. He knows if everyone knows that he’s done this, he’s not going to get the pardon of the son or the grandson of the Pharaoh. He is going to be treated as the person that he really is as a Hebrew. He’s going to be treated as a Hebrew who killed an Egyptian. And so the next day when he sees another fight going on, this time between two of his own people, and they’re fighting and he realizes that word has gotten out of what he did the day before. He flees. Moses has hid the body. He thought he had it all taken care of. It doesn’t work out that way.
So yes, does Moses have the right impulses? Is he trying to bring about justice in a way, but he clearly lets his anger out of control. He didn’t need to kill the Egyptian. And now he realizes his tenuous position as an adopted member of Pharaoh’s family isn’t going to work out so well anymore. So out in the wilderness, this is where he encounters God. And I have to think that as he approaches God and he sees this holiness of God here that he’s encountering, Moses isn’t purely thinking, whoa, here’s the holy God of the universe, but here’s the holy God of the universe, and here I am a murderer that had to flee my own country. Everything I know, everything I was used to.
So he encounters God’s holiness, and it says that he encounters God’s holiness at the Mount of God, but this is to give the reader later on, Moses is writing this presumably towards the end of his life. He’s writing to people who know what the mountain of God is. Moses doesn’t know it’s the mountain of God right now. He’s just tending the flock. Trying to be anonymous. Hoping people don’t realize who he is so he can just have this new life that he started here.
He encounters God, and he sees the burning bush, the bush that is on fire and yet not consumed. He encounters God. God speaks to him and identifies himself. And Moses now needs to ask, what do I do in this situation? What do I do when I encounter God? Because God’s going to know who I am. He’s going to know all the things that maybe I haven’t told the villagers around here. All the people that my father-in-law deals with, they don’t know that I’m a murderer. I don’t, we don’t even know if his father-in-law knows that he’s a murderer. But God knows. Now God is probably going to destroy me. I have to think that’s something that’s going through Moses’ head. What am I going to do? Because surely God wouldn’t want to use me. I’m a murderer. I’m a reject. I’m a reject from my own people and from my adopted people. I’m just a stench to all of them because of my situation.
Now what? What do we learn here? We learn first and foremost that God’s plan for you, God’s plan for me, is not determined by our past. That doesn’t mean that this is a carte blanche that we should go ahead and be unrighteous. It’s not permission. Hey, do terrible things. You can be like Moses and kill people. It’s not advocating that we live that way. But here’s the important truth we shouldn’t miss.
When God decides that he’s going to use us, and every person here tonight, every person watching online tonight, God has a plan to use you, to give you purpose. When God looks at you, he knows all your faults. He knows all those things in the past, and he doesn’t say, oh, well, I would have used you if only you hadn’t done this. God can overcome that.
Now, Moses has a past. Moses doesn’t have—he’s not going to pass the background checks. If he applied at a church today and said, I’d like a job as a leader of God’s people, and they file for just the cheapest background check, it comes up felony murder charge. Do you think he’s getting hired? No. If he applies to be a grocery store clerk, is he getting hired? Probably not. Perfect past isn’t required for God’s work. He will use us wherever we are.
It doesn’t mean having perfect abilities either, and that’s the second thing that Moses needs to learn. Verse 7. Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings.” Now, Moses has several good reasons to ask this question, and a good starting point is, I’m a murderer. You don’t want me to go talk to Pharaoh. It’s not going to fare well for me in front of Pharaoh. This is going to be bad, God. Don’t you realize that? But there’s more than that, and Moses presents a case over the conversation that follows. He presents a case to God on why he shouldn’t be the one to go do this. It starts with his weakness.
Moses tried to bring justice where he saw injustice. He saw the Egyptian mistreating the Israelite, and what did he do? Well, he tried to bring justice, but he did it in a very wrong way, right? He killed the Egyptian to do it. Then he goes on, he tries to resolve something between his own people. They don’t see him as, oh, here is a man that is one of our own yet has privilege, and this man is ready and willing to help us. No. His first mistake is going to lead into his inability to do anything at all to help his people in that moment, because as he looks to his own strength, he makes a second mistake, which is to think that somehow he can overcome his weakness. Somehow, even though he didn’t get to work the first day, the second day it will work, and he’ll just come and they’ll say, oh, here’s a reasonable man. We’ll listen to him.
So he came in with all this bravado, all this importance as someone from Pharaoh’s household, and it just is ripped right away from him. He realizes it doesn’t work, and now as he encounters God, he says, God, I’ve tried to lead people before. I’ve tried to bring about justice from the injustice of the Egyptian oppression. You know what, God? I stink at it. I can’t do that.
Isn’t it amazing how we can go zero to 60 and then back to zero again in our lives? We can think, I have this. I have it all under control. I am so good at what I’m doing, and then we smack into a wall and suddenly we think, I can’t do anything at all. Anyone else ever had that feeling? I have that feeling sometimes. I think I have it all down until there’s the slightest indication or a really big indication that I don’t, and then I think, I have nothing down, and God, you would be wise to back away from me right now. Don’t even try to use me.
Imagine that man I mentioned earlier, Raul, as he’s hiding in his house. Here’s a man who’s supposed to keep the country safe, keep people that aren’t supposed to be in out, keep people using the proper procedures around borders. Now he is in this little confines of borders around his house. He can’t even leave his house. His wife in an interview said that she was so worried every day what would happen with him and if he would even keep going on at all because here was a man who had this dignity and this record of service. He’d been given awards for his service to his country. He had pictures of meeting the head of the Customs Border and Customs Patrol that were giving him this Medal of Valor, and now he’s afraid to leave his house.
I think Moses, he wasn’t afraid to leave his house, but Moses had the same sorts of things. He had the pictures of all the times he went on vacation in the Pharaoh’s household, and Pharaoh’s right there. They’re doing selfies together on the Nile River, and now he’s out in the wilderness just hoping that no one who knows anything about Egyptian movers and shakers ever meets him. He knows his weakness now, weakness that he should have recognized to begin with, and he remembers his failures very clearly.
Here’s what I was referring to earlier, Exodus 2:13. “When he went out the second day and saw two Hebrews fighting, he said to the one who did the wrong, Why are you striking your fellow Hebrew?” I think that whole sequence of events probably played out in Moses’ head over and over and over again, and we’re talking four decades of time between the time that Moses flees and the time that Moses becomes the leader of the Israelites to lead them out on the Exodus. We’re talking a very long time for Moses to play over and over in his head how he had failed, how it hadn’t worked out. Who is he?
Is he the grandson of the Pharaoh, the one who has the prestige and power of one of the most powerful entities ever assembled up to that period of time in human history? Maybe, but he can’t really claim it anymore. Is he an Israelite, part of God’s chosen people? Well, they all see him probably as sort of a traitor. He always hung out with the Egyptians. Who is he at this point? He’s an anonymous man hiding in the wilderness, and when we face failure, we often wish we were anonymous, often try to become anonymous because we think the best thing that can possibly happen is that no one knows who I am. The best thing that can happen is that no one knows who I am because if they do, they’ll know what I have failed at, and they will see me as every bit of a failure as I know that I am. And if somehow, somehow, maybe God cannot know who I am either, that would be really good because I’m of no use.
I found myself, in our church chat this week, we were sharing photos of the history that led up to the forming of Little Hills, and I found myself doing a lot of reminiscing, and part of it took me back even further to the predecessor ministry I was doing over at the university. And for example, some of you may have never seen some of these photos. So this is a photo, we had a freshman ministry fair every time, every year about this time, and as you can see, we had all of these different ministries exhibiting. We had hundreds of students come in every single year. I got to put it on the official schedule because I was a university employee, and I could bring them in there, and I could tell them about the opportunities they had to get plugged in with ministry that would help them to know Jesus. It was exciting.
Here’s a picture, I’m preaching at that event in 2015, the last time I got to do it. And as I did that, I was able to get a lot of people to come in. And as I did that, you know, I wish it didn’t affect me at all, but I have to say, being up on that giant stage in the Scheidegger Center with all the high-tech lights, professional sound crew, I had backup microphones incidentally, they put two microphones on you every single time you went up there to make sure it always worked, and then there was a dedicated crew to do it. Two microphones, friends, it was great, always worked. I have to say that was pretty nice. And you stood up there, and I was really overjoyed to share God’s Word, and it really, here’s an identity for me, right? Here I am, I am a professor of religion, I am the chaplain of the university, and I get to meet every single student when they come in and tell them about who Jesus is and help them to get plugged in.
Four months later, I was out of that university because they no longer wanted to have a historically Christian program being driven within the university. They shut it down. Our Christian ministry studies program was gone within a month of that. That chapel was never to be seen again. And I was out of it. Everything that we’d worked on for years, all the things we’d built up, all those ministries cooperating, all that gone. And then the question is, was this a fluke? Was it me? And if that can’t work, if that can’t work, then what am I going to do? As long as I’m looking at myself, it feels pretty hopeless. Apparently, I can’t make it fly. I can’t deal with the university politics. New administration comes in, other people get the president’s ear, I’m out.
What do you do when you try to think, well, now what? That was what I was planning to do for the rest of my working life. I wanted to be there. I wanted to be one of those people that just taught and served at that university from the very beginning to the very end. I was going to be there. And I was gone. What was I going to do?
Reflecting on a situation that didn’t work out in ministry, a not terribly helpful colleague said, “Well, that other stuff didn’t work out for you, so why do you think this is going to?” I didn’t really need him to say that because I was already thinking it, right? What is it that makes me think it’s going to work any better? I can’t do this.
But notice what God promises Moses in Exodus 3:16. He says, “Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and of Jacob has appeared to me saying, I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt.” God gives Moses a commission. He says, I know your past. I don’t even need to ask for a background check. I am the ultimate background check, Moses. I know what’s going on. I’m going to use you despite your failures.
It’s not enough for Moses. It goes on. The conversation continues in chapter four. Moses says, okay, but I don’t have that confidence anymore, God. He not only has failures. He not only has this past. He’s just filled with complete self-doubt about anything he can do. He says in verse one, “Then Moses answered, but behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice for they will say the Lord did not appear to you.”
Here’s that conversation I’m sure playing back from 40 years earlier. He’s thinking it didn’t work then God. Why? Just because now I’m going to say the Lord spoke to me. Do you think it’s going to be any different? I was in the household of Pharaoh. They wouldn’t listen to me. Why do you think just because I say I heard from God that people are going to suddenly listen to me? It’s a reasonable question from Moses.
If I come to you tomorrow and say, well, God spoke to me and he says that you should quit your job. You should wear only purple and green polka dot clothing and you should proclaim that God is going to liberate his people. Would you do it? Or would you call mental health services for me? That’s where Moses is here. He’s thinking, God, they’re going to think I’m nuts and everything in my past would go along with that. If they know anything about me, they’re going to think only some self-important deluded maniac is going to come back here now and say this.
How do we go from here? I showed you those pictures. Let’s reminisce a little more. This look familiar? Look around this room here a little bit, shall we? You recognize this room that’s in the picture there? Kind of, yes, kind of, right? So let me tell you a little bit about this picture.
We have our Lutheran friends there from Emanuel Lutheran. So those of you that may not have heard this story, put it all together, this space we originally shared with the Lutheran Student Union and they were the ones who actually rented it. So one of the ministries I’ve been partnered with back in my days as chaplain was the Lutheran Student Union. And they were anxious to have a student lounge area, like an actual student union where believers could come. And so they wanted something with chairs and tables and so on and so forth that people could come to and hear about ministry.
And so it is that Scott, Pastor Schmieding, who’s holding up the camera taking pictures along with me, we were both taking pictures at the same time there apparently, he wanted to do that. When suddenly all that Christian ministry effort was erased, he decided to rent this space right here where we’re standing right now or you’re watching, peering into right now. And as you can see, it doesn’t really look super promising. Exposed vent pipes, plain walls. Doesn’t that, can you imagine that?
Whole kitchen fits in that picture there? I mean, it’s kind of hard for me to even get my head around it. And so they did put, they got some chairs, some couches. Here’s what we now call our multi-purpose room. It’s a storage room here, you can see, kind of crowded. Here’s all the stuff just kind of being, moving around because you had to keep moving stuff around to make it do all the different things it was supposed to do.
Think about for a moment, here’s what sometimes would run through my head. We had had, all this ministry technology, all this funding, all this support from the university. We had one of the nicest theaters in the entire metro area at our disposal for ministry. And now we’re in a space that initially is just sort of an old, little office in a strip mall next to the university.
And then when the Lutherans kindly, because some of us had been working together, wanted to continue doing ministry, that’s, here comes Faith Tree, wanted to continue to do that ministry. We can borrow that space and all that stuff that you saw laid out and so on. We’d have to wire it. Can you imagine? We have enough trouble now. We had to wire everything every single time we got together, hours and hours, rolling out wires and hooking everything up so that we could have a service.
And you think about it, God, this is going in the wrong direction here. Yeah, okay, now we have a little space, but we had a big space. We’re talking about maybe taking over an entire building on campus and doing ministry in it. Now we have this little space. What do you do in those situations? Do we focus on ourselves?
When you encounter failure in your life, when things aren’t going the way you do, do you allow those self-doubts to keep building and thinking about what you can do? Moses keeps thinking about his ability to convince folks on his own that somehow they should listen to him.
Acts 7:25, Stephen’s reflecting on Moses and it says, “He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand.” That was initially before he flees, but they did not understand.
So Moses thinks back to that, and he thinks back to everything that led up to that point, and he feels like he’s in a little strip mall now out in the wilderness, and somehow God’s saying, you’re going to call my people. You’re going to take them, and you’re going to call them, and you’re going to do all this stuff, Moses. And Moses is saying, no one is going to look at where I was and where I am now and think I’m worth listening to.
But God’s going to do what he’s going to do with Moses. He’s going to do what he’s going to do with you, and he’s going to do what he’s going to do with me, and it doesn’t matter how much we get in the way. He is going to do what his will is. That’s what we see here.
The story of Raul isn’t finished yet, not for today, but also not completely. He hasn’t yet gotten this all cleared up. He has, because he’s a veteran, been connected with an organization that helps veterans who turn out to need citizenship for whatever reason, to be able to get citizenship. But that’s a very long and arduous process, one in which he’s had some successful hearings in the last year, but he’s not there yet. The question is, where is his identity now? Even once he has citizenship, he’s not going to be able to go back to his old job. What does he do now? What is his purpose now? Where did this all lead to and what’s remarkable? And this is the key thing when we reflect on God’s calling, I believe. We have to ask that question and then say, well, what is God going to do with me now?
Because if we keep looking at our own failures and how everything’s gone wrong, we’re going to end up wallowing and useless and just feel like I’m just passing time until finally I kick the bucket because what else am I going to do with me?
What does he start to do? He started to contact other people through this organization who are going through the same sorts of situations that he’s been going through. The rejection, the isolation, talking to men and women who have served in the armed forces but can’t remain in the country because they’re not citizens. And what he does is he now contacts them and he walks them through the processes they’re applying for the various government programs that help veterans who don’t have citizenship to receive citizenship. He helps them through that process and he helps encourage them through that process.
The organization he’s with has helped apparently 10,000 veterans over the last year go through that process. So he didn’t stop where he was. He’s not there yet.
Moses in the wilderness has a question. He’s not there yet. People haven’t decided he’s a leader. All he knows is failure. The question is, though, is he going to respond to God’s call?
That’s a challenge for all of us. We’re not going to be there yet. We’re not going to have all kinds of earthly affirmation that finally says, okay, now we can do God’s call because it’s all together. Where are we going to go in the moment? Do we believe that God can do what he’s going to do with us? It’s not about us. It’s not about our abilities. It’s not about our past. It’s not about our present. It’s not about our future. It’s about God and his will and what he’s going to do to author that future.
Moses, I think, even got locked up in his educational background a bit. Stephen remarks in Acts 7, “And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and his deeds.” Now, in Exodus 3 and 4, it doesn’t sound like that’s the case. Moses says, well, they’re never going to listen to me. I’m slow in speech. I’m not eloquent.
What’s Moses talking about here? Moses is thinking back to his formal education that he’d received, a world-class education at the very top schools in Egypt. He was in Cairo University studying under the most elite professors of the time, studying how to make arguments and convince people. And he said it didn’t work. And if that doesn’t work, God, then no one is ever going to listen to me.
Do you bring that kind of thing to God? God, no one’s going to listen to me. I’ve had all the good training. It didn’t work. Or I haven’t had any training at all. It didn’t work. What’s God doing in your life if you start to look at the different pieces? What was God doing in Moses’ life? He was moving him to the place where he had utter dependence upon the Lord, but could be then sent back to the very land he had fled, knowing how that land worked, knowing how to speak, knowing all these things, even though he wouldn’t give himself credit for it now. But you can see how God would pull those pieces together and use them to lead God’s people.
There’s the saying, “God doesn’t call the qualified but qualifies the called.” I want to quibble a little bit with that. I think it falls into a couple of different problems. First, it forgets how oftentimes our life experience is part of qualification and how God puts us in situations that are going to prepare us for what he’s going to do with us. Sometimes they seem like really bad situations. Sometimes they seem like demoralizing situations. Sometimes they’re terrible mistakes we’ve made, but he’s going to use those. Sometimes it’s formal education. There’s nothing wrong with going and seeking education to help us in our abilities. That’s a good thing.
Here’s what I think God really does. He uses the qualifications and the weaknesses that we have and the circumstances we experience to accomplish the call that he has for us, because part of that calling is all those things. Not in the way that we often think, where we’re going to do it by our own strength, but because of God’s plan.
And as I was thinking this week, as we were looking at those pictures and we had some conversations on our threads, and actually even after service last week, that’s where it all started, talking about where we’ve been before, I started to think about all the different threads that God has used to bring us where we’re standing here this Sunday.
Let me show you, this is going to seem like a very typical picture here, my mom and Melanie eating ice cream at Freddy’s. It was really good ice cream, by the way. I had one too. This was 2018. And you might wonder, well, why am I showing you that picture? Well, I’m showing you that picture because the Krennings were sitting one row over in Freddy’s. Yeah, he tried. It didn’t work. It didn’t work.
And here’s the amazing thread. So bear with me for a moment here. Remember, I showed you Lindenwood in that beautiful theater that we were in. We hosted a group, a worship group called The Attic, and they brought in a thousand people, and we were all worshiping God together. It was amazing. I got to know them that way. And then as I was serving in another ministry and I found out just the week of that picture that that ministry was going to have a door slammed on it as well. Oh boy, I’m really, I’m raving success story here, aren’t I? That ministry was, I just found out just days before, that’s going to be slammed as well. But I was still there and I had this connection to The Attic and I’d already invited them to come and to perform at this other ministry. So they were going to be coming and they came and then a number of us apparently, it seemed like the right thing to do afterwards, to go to Freddy’s and eat ice cream.
Anyway, so that all gets to there. All these just pieces, right? So why am I telling you all this? Am I just rambling? No. So what happened? Well, a few months later we ran an ad for the church plant and I just wanted to see, you know, things have not been going well in ministry. These things have not been coming together. Is there anything that can come of this? And I get a message from Jim and he says, I’d be interested in getting details I’d like to serve. And I wrote back and I said, well, I’m not sure if you know, but we met, we’ve talked before. In fact, we were at Freddy’s together and Jim says, yeah, that’s why I wrote.
Wow. You know, Lindenwood attic ice cream. Maybe the moral story is the ice cream, right? But and so now here, here we are, here we are. And Jim is serving here and helping so much. I’m so thankful for all the encouragement and help that he has given over the years. And it would have happened except for those pieces there, right? All coming together.
God works pieces, even pieces that seem like failures. Would I have been there eating that ice cream that night if things have been going better at the other ministry? Probably not.
Listen to what God says to Moses. He says, “Now therefore go and I will be with you, your mouth. I’ll be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”
Here’s a man with worldly training who realizes worldly training doesn’t work. And God says, I’m going to use you though, to accomplish what I want you to do. And there’s the pattern of how we’re going to serve our God. It’s not going to be through our own accomplishments.
The bits I’m telling you here, the story leading to Little Hills aren’t about my accomplishments. If you notice, it’s really a path of failures. You’re thinking, well, let’s back. Oh, there goes Jim right now. He’s going to walk out the door, out the door.
These are not, Little Hills isn’t here because of me. God wants Little Hills here. That’s why we’re here today. And if you think about these things and how he does this over and over again, he’s going to do it in your life as well. And I, I know most of you, if not all of you could probably tell me cases where he has. God works through our failures. God works through the difficult circumstances.
Devon’s testimony, spoken word today, she was telling about the difficulties of life and the challenges and yet how she knows that God is there and using her. And wow, is he using her? And wow, is he using every person in this room? It’s authenticated by God’s working. That’s how we know what we’re, where we’re supposed to be going.
God’s going to give Moses a spectacular sign. The Lord said to him, “What is in your hand?” Moses has a staff. Well, it’s not going to be a staff in the normal sense for long, right? Because if you know the story, Moses is going to be able to throw it down and it turns into a snake.
You say, well, if God would give me a staff that turned into a snake, I would know he was working with me as well. But you know what’s more amazing than a staff that turns into a snake? It’s a life that seems like it’s constantly running into dead ends that God uses to accomplish his will. And that’s what I think most of us can probably testify to, to some extent. All the times where we’ve just felt utterly discouraged, but God keeps moving.
And what we need to do when we’re discouraged in the moment is to go back and look at how he’s worked in the past. And ultimately how he’s worked in Jesus. That’s where it really all comes down to. What we’re told in Hebrews 1, God spoke through prophets, but now we have the very son of God who gave his life for us. He keeps working.
So why do we look back? We don’t look back to be discouraged like Moses was doing to feel like, oh, I’m a failure. No one’s ever going to listen to me. Why do we look back? Because we see that despite all that, despite how we are failures, despite how we have every reason for God to just utterly reject us, God is going to use us.
Let’s do a few more photos here. I can’t help it. I’m sorry. Here is the very first time we gathered as faith group, September, 2016. You can see a few familiar faces there, and you can see this room a little more in shape than it was in that picture I showed you, but not really a whole lot different. It’s still not really much to talk about then, but God started bringing together a community. And you’ll see both people who are here and also people who have been deeply praying for us.
You’ll see our Southern Campus there as well. There’s Joyce amongst the others there. God kept working. He kept drawing people together. There’s Pastor Brad, who is taking the school supplies we gathered over at Bible Baptist and getting them to kids in need. There’s Laura in the back who comes and helps us once a month with singing. Just different people that God has brought in over the years, drawing us together.
There’s Brad really rocking it there, isn’t he? And then God started to bring really wonderful events at Faith Tree. There we are. We have Faithtoberfest 2019. We had 50 people there gathered out in the parking lot, worshiping God, praising God. And it was sort of like, oh, I put up the next day on Facebook, Faithtoberfest 2020. What is that going to be like? What was that going to be like?
And then in between there, all the plans for Little Hills were coming together in that. And just to give another shout out to Pastor Brad and his church, Bible Baptist. They were so encouraging every step of the way in planting this church. We’re just a mile down the road from them. And I’m so thankful for them and how they faithfully prayed for us. And they were excited when we were supposed to launch spring 2020.
This is what the Upper Room 2020 looked like. Because we had all, we got to March 2020, things are going so great, and then you can’t even meet in person. This look familiar? Yeah, but you know, here’s the amazing thing too. Here’s the amazing thing of how God works. He works in our failures, both our individual ones and our global ones.
That was our very first online Tuesday night Bible study. We’re still going. And you know what the neat thing? God’s used the fact that we’re online to allow people to come that can’t necessarily come either because of where they are geographically or because of time to still come and participate.
There’s my mom running the controls for the live stream of the Monday Night Steadfast in 2020. And you think about how that was supposed to be a three-week series to tide us over until the pandemic ended. It’s still going and the pandemic obviously went a lot longer than that. But all these things that suddenly, okay, we don’t have a church meeting in person, but God started to allow us to be online and to connect with people online. We did worship online. We did a whole bunch of the in-person services we used to do. We started to do those online for Faith Tree.
And then we gathered and we prayed for this building. We thought, okay, March 2022, we’re going to launch here now. Now is the time that it’s going to work. We got this down and then we, yeah, the building didn’t go so well, right? Because it starts leaking. And there’s some lovely pictures of our plaster. There’s our equipment all covered up trying to keep it from being too damaged.
This was, I believe, the very day that we were supposed to launch. But then God did allow us to launch. And he’s allowed us to be gathered together. And he’s allowed us fellowship. And he’s allowed us through the online ministry to meet people like Greg, who otherwise would never have been a part of this. And yet from New Jersey is a part of our church family and is constantly encouraging us and just right there with us.
We had Faithtoberfest again this last fall. It came back in person. We did it online before that, but it was in person. We actually get to have meals together now. Isn’t that amazing? Here was a few weeks ago when we received our new members and we just celebrated being together. I mean, just look at that. This is what God is doing.
I say this because I was telling you those threads earlier about what I’ve been through, but here’s the thing. This is what all of us have been through together. And you think, well, can God use me? Can God use me in my failures? Here’s the thing, friends, that you need to know. God is using you. And if you’re a part of this service tonight, you’re a part of this story that God’s been working there.
And he’s not done with this story and he’s not done with how he’s going to send us out and to serve our community and our world together because of that story.
Exodus 3:12, once again, what’s God’s real assurance? “But I will be with you.” I will be with you. Can God use you? Can God use me? Yes, he’s using us right now. Those pictures show us how the failures are God building his church as much as the successes are.
We can’t do it on our own. We can’t accomplish it. But our failures are not the determining factor of God’s success. God uses our failures. God uses our successes. And God uses them for his glory.
Would you pray with me, please? Lord, so often we get caught up in our failures. We don’t know how it’s going to work. And yet you use us. Would you remind each person, whether he or she’s watching online or is here in person, that God offers each of us the opportunity to be a part of his plan, that he has a calling for each of us, and that our failures, our inability to pull things off, just as we proclaim as Christians that we are saved by grace, we also serve by grace. And we are saved by grace.
Just as we proclaim as Christians that we are saved by grace, we also serve by grace. Would you help us to really hold on to that today, Lord? Do you realize that all of us are, in some sense, accidental missionaries, those called into your world to serve, to build your kingdom, not because we’re so great, not because we’re so accomplished, but because you are the one who will make it happen. We pray this in Jesus’ name.
Start the Conversation