Hey y'all this is Troy, so I want to talk about failure and success today and I
believe that people can label you a failure for so many different reasons.
Maybe if you don't make enough money or if you're not smart enough or funny
enough, or maybe if it doesn't seem like you're successful enough and I think a
lot of times we can even label ourselves as failures, and that can be an even
greater weight than when someone else labels us like that, and maybe it's
because we've let down someone we love -- I know I've done that before -- or maybe it's
because we haven't got around to fulfilling this dream that we thought we
would have fulfilled by now, but whatever it may be, and whatever it is that
causes us to feel like a failure, we need to remember something; and that is that
God sees failure and success differently than we do. So I want to tell you a story
today about a man in the Bible named Gideon who saw himself as a failure. So
if you don't know anything about the story of Gideon, Gideon was an Israelite
who lived during the time when the Israelites -- which were God's chosen
people -- they were living in defeat to another people group called the
Midianites and it's because of some of the sins they had committed and some of
the things they had done that God had allowed the Midianites to come in and to
rule over them. And so because some of the Israelites begin to repent and they
begin to cry out to God for deliverance, He chooses to use Gideon to lead them to
victory over the Midianites. So I want to start reading in Judges chapter 6 verse
12, it says, "The angel of the Lord appeared to him (talking about Gideon)
and said to him, 'The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior.' Then Gideon said to him,
'O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And
where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about saying, "Did not the
Lord bring us up from Egypt?" But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into
the hand of Midian.'" So one thing that you can see from the start is that God comes
to get in and He says "I'm with you." yet Gideon is already filled with all
this doubt, he's already questioning God's ability to use him. And then so
let's look at God's response in verse 14, "The Lord looked at him and said, 'Go in
this your strength and deliver israel from the hand of Midian. Have I not sent
you?'" So God's response to Gideon's doubt is to give him a goal or a mission. He
gives him something to do, up until this point Gideon's been setting his own
goals for his life and I feel like some of us feel like failures because we're
not allowing the Lord to set our goals for us. So let's see what Gideon says in
verse 15, "He said to Him, 'O Lord, how shall I deliver Israel? Behold my family is the
least in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father's house.'" So Gideon makes a
pretty good argument here, he's saying, "Out of anyone you could have chosen I'm
the worst candidate, why did you choose me?" And here's what's interesting about
that: I feel like we do that a lot of the time, too because it's so easy to
look at maybe our past mistakes or maybe how unqualified we are and to say, "God I
don't really believe You can use me the way You're saying You can use me," and the
the thing about that is that we label ourselves as failures before we even get
started. Maybe God.. maybe we are allowing God to set our goals, but we're not
believing that He can actually use us to meet that goal, He can actually use us
for what He desires for us to do and I think some of us feel like we look at
other people who are believers and we say, "I'm just not a good enough Christian,
you know, for God to do something great in my life, for God to be able to use me
for His kingdom. I'm just not there," but I think we sell ourselves short a
little bit because God said that "when we are weak He is strong." So I want to look
at two reasons that God chose to use Gideon when He could have chosen
anyone else. The first reason is that Gideon was going to be obedient to what
God said, and God knew that. God knew he could trust Gideon to be obedient. The
second reason is that God knew that He was gonna get the glory
for it. God knew that Gideon was not gonna take the credit, instead he was
gonna let God get the credit. So I want to jump down to verse 25 and this is
when God actually tells Gideon the first thing He wants him to do. "Now on the same
night the Lord said to him, 'Take your father's bull and a second bull seven
years old, and pull down the altar of Baal which belongs to your father, and
cut down the Asherah that is beside it; and build an altar to the Lord your God
on the top of this stronghold in an orderly manner." So the altar of
Baal and the Asherah pole; these were idols that the people had set up and
they are specifically these were the ones in Gideon's father's household and
so a lot of people probably worship these idols or prayed to these idols
because there are a lot of people in Gideon's father's house, but here's the
thing this is part of the reason that they were in subjugation to the
Midianites in the first place, because instead of worshiping God they were
worshiping these false idols, and so God tells Gideon go and tear down
these idols and build an altar to the Lord and so this is where we see that
first reason that God chose Gideon come into play and that Gideon is obedient to
what God asked him to do. But he's not completely void of fear necessarily
because Gideon doesn't just go and do it in broad daylight, he actually waits
until the night when no one's watching and everyone's asleep. So he gets some of
the servants and they go and they tear down these two idols, these two altars,
and they build this altar to the Lord and then the next day everyone comes and
I see that these altars have been knocked over, torn down and they get
upset, they get mad, and they go to Gideon's father and they say, if you read
the passage, they say, "Bring him out here so we can kill him," that's how mad they
were. And obviously, you know their hearts were following these other idols instead
of following God but here's what's so cool about it. What Gideon's father
says, he defends Gideon. He says, and I'm paraphrasing but if you read the passage
it's pretty awesome you need to go back and read the whole passage, I'm
paraphrasing but he says, "Then let these altars, if these are really gods,
if you really believe they're gods, let them defend themselves. Don't, you know
you don't have to defend these "gods" if they really
are gods, just let them do it themselves," and so in saying this he saves Gideon
from the people who wanted to kill him. But here's what's so cool about it:
when when we really look at this passage you can see clearly that the people
thought Gideon was a failure. Based on his actions, based on what he did they
thought -- look at what Gideon did he's a failure. And yet based on those exact
same actions God saw Gideon as a success because Gideon was willing to be
obedient in faith. So I want to jump ahead to another part in Gideon's life
which is found in Judges chapter 7 so this is where God actually tells Gideon
"Get some men together, get an army together and go defeat the Midianites,"
and so he's got 32,000 men together and he's preparing to go fight this battle
against a much larger army so the odds aren't looking too good. So I want to
read Judges chapter 7 verse 2 and see what happens. "The Lord said to
Gideon, 'The people who are with you are too many for me to give Midian into
their hands, for Israel would become boastful, saying, 'My own power has
delivered me.'" So here's the second reason coming into play that God chose Gideon
to lead the Israelites to victory and it's because God knew that He would get
the credit. And and we see this right here that God knows if there's
there's enough people fighting in Gideon's army the Israelites are gonna
look at that and go "look at the strength that we had, even when we were
outnumbered we had enough strength to defeat them" and so what God chooses to
do -- and Gideon goes along with it -- is God narrows Gideon's army down from 32,000
people to simply 300 men. And so it immediately goes from Gideon not having
much of a chance to literally it being impossible for them to win, and that's
when God's strength shows up in Gideon's life and the people who looked at Gideon
in this situation; 300 men going against a massive army, they would have already
labeled him as a failure. They would have already said "no, it's impossible he's
already failed, he's on a suicide mission there's no way he can do it" and yet what
we've got to remember is that God sees failure and
success differently than we do. See God was viewing what Gideon was doing it as
a success because Gideon was continuing to be obedient in faith, and I want to
talk about obedience real quick because God is not so interested in our
obedience apart from faith -- and what I mean is that we can be obedient
for a lot of different reasons maybe you're -- like for example, we can be
obedient because maybe we want to look good in front of other people or
maybe we're being obedient because we're afraid of punishment or
maybe we're being obedient, you know, for our own like self justification,
whatever it is. But God desires obedience through faith because of faith, and what
that simply means is that we choose to believe the words of God and because
we're believing what He said then our actions that follow are in obedience and
that's what Gideon did, God told him "I'm gonna be with you, I'm sending you if you
obey Me, if you do this you're gonna have victory" and Gideon believed God and
because of that he acted on faith. So because of Gideon's belief in the Word
of God we see two results: we see first when he tears down those
altars we see that his father protects him from the people. And then number two,
in this story where Gideon goes up against this massive army what ends up
happening -- I'm not going to read it but you need to go back and read it yourself --
what ends up happening is that God fights the battle for him and he
gets victory over this massive army with only 300 people. So what does God desire
us to do now in order to view us as a success? There's one specific answer I
want to look at it's found in John 6:29 it says, "Jesus answered and said to them,
'This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.'"
It's very basic it's so simple, Jesus says the work that God requires
you to do is to believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and the reason
He said that, it's because there's a principle that happens -- a principle
that goes along with the belief and here's the principle, I'm gonna try to
lay it out for you in four steps: it starts with belief. We hear the word of
God, we believe it, and then through belief the grace of God
begins to work in our hearts and begins to transform us so it goes from belief,
to receiving grace, and then as we we walk in the grace of God, the Holy Spirit
pours out the love of God in our hearts. And so we believe we receive the grace
of God, we abide in the love of God, and because that love is at work inside of
us through His grace, we can't help but love other people. Because it's
filling our heart so much it's literally pouring out of us. And then the fourth
step is obedience. So it goes from belief, grace, love, and then obedience, but if
we're just jumping straight to obedience we're trying to please God by just
doing all the right things, we're missing everything else in between, we're missing
what He actually wants from us. See people look at the outside but God looks
at the heart, and God is looking "you are you
believing what I've said?" that's what He's looking at first because He knows
if we're really believing the actions are gonna follow. So I want to look at a
verse in the New Testament that shows clearly how the Apostle Paul relied on
the grace of God in this way. And you can look at the Apostle Paul, you can see
that he literally did more for the New Testament church than anyone else in
in the New Testament. And so where did all his motivation come from
to do all these good works, to be so obedient to God and to do all these
things and and here it is right here, it's in 1st Corinthians 15:10, he says,
"For by the grace of God I am what I am, for His grace toward me did not prove
vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God
with me." See Paul understood that it wasn't through his own human effort that
he was getting things done for God, that he was being obedient to God, that he
was fulfilling the call of God on his life, it was because of the grace of God
at work inside of him. He had received the love of God on such a deep
level that he could not help himself but love other people.
If you look at the story of Gideon it's so easy to see that people would have
labeled him as a failure from the start but someone else that people would have
labeled as a failure is Jesus. See when Jesus went to the cross the Pharisees
would have looked at him and said "we've succeeded in our mission to stop him and
he has failed he's a failure because he's hanging on that cross" and even His
own disciples looked at Jesus on the cross and they said "whatever He was
planning on doing it's over now, He's failed" and yet even though when He
was hanging on that cross, and when He was in the tomb for three days, a lot of
people would have looked at Him and thought He's a failure God looked at
what He was doing and God saw the big biggest success in the history of the
world. So I actually want to share a quick personal testimony about an area
in my life where I sometimes felt like a failure. And I'm gonna be real honest
with you right now because I'm actually talking about this YouTube
channel. So I started the channel about four years ago and I actually started
writing books before that and the reason I started all of it was because
at one point I got a word from the Lord: when I was going for a run and I was
about to start running I was stretched, you know, I was fully stretched and I went out
on this road I'm about to start jogging, and I'd been praying while I was
stretching and suddenly the Holy Spirit just spoke into my spirit a word and it
was very simple and it was just "books and videos" and I just thought "books and
videos" I know God just told me that He wants me to do something with
books and videos, and He was already building this passion inside of me to
write these books, my testimony story and some other books and then also to create
videos and there's been a lot of times over the last four years when
I've had to look back at that word that He gave me, and I've had to say "I'm gonna
keep doing this because I believe God has called me to do this" and
sometimes for no other reason. Because I've come up against a lot of obstacles
that have either made me look at myself as a failure or have even given
other people the right to label me as a failure. For instance I've had to give up
basically, give up my opportunity to make more money.
For several years now I've been working on this YouTube channel when I have time
and I've been putting off other things that I could be doing, and other ways
that I could be making more money and then now this year I actually decided
based on the leading of the Holy Spirit to start doing this part-time and so you
know that was a big leap of faith for us, we didn't know how that was gonna work
but I believe and I continue to believe that God is still gonna provide and I
just want to give a quick shout out to my patreon supporters on patreon.com.
Y'all are awesome y'all definitely have made this leap easier than it would have
been without you. About a year ago I actually got specifically, got a high
paying job offer. Then I looked at it and I prayed about it for a
couple weeks and I thought "this is a really good opportunity, they want to pay
me a lot of money to do this" and yet I knew I couldn't do it and continue to do
what I'm doing now and so I said no, believing that God still had work for
me to do here. And on top of that I put a lot of time and effort into it, this has
not been an easy thing to do, and I've had people come to me and give me weird
looks and say "why are you doing this, why are you spending so much time and effort
doing this? You could be doing something a whole lot better with your
time" but at the same time there's there's this driving force inside of me
because I believe that God has given me this to do. So I want to read a comment
to you that I recently got on a video and -- I'm not reading this to try to
toot my own horn or to try to say "oh look at how good of a job I'm doing" or
anything like that but after I read the comment I'm gonna
tell you why I'm reading it; so it says, "I have done so many wrong thing," and this
is a comment from someone watching one of my videos, "I have done so many wrong
things that I have even made promises to God like, 'I won't do this evil act
again' but I kept doing it and my conscience judges me but today I kneel
and ask God for mercy. I want a relationship with Him that will never
break. I choose to live my life for God. I pray I receive the Holy Spirit into my
being to direct my every move and I thank God because He always loves and
thinks of me. Thank you, Jesus, and I am sorry for disobeying You. Thank you, Lord,
for forgiving me." So the reason I read this comment is because I get a lot of
comments on my videos, and when I get a comment
like this, it is such a clear reminder to me that God views success differently
than I do, because there's a lot of aspects about this channel or about my
books or whatever it may be, or the things I've worked on that I
could look at and feel like "oh that, that's a failure" but...but I'll tell
you what I want above above all else: what I want is that when I die and
I go to heaven I want to stand before God and I want Him to say "Well done, good
and faithful servant," and no matter what happens in this life on earth, if God
says that to me one day I will know that I have succeeded, and here's the really
good news about that, hearing that from God: it's not based on our
merit, it's not based on and how much good we've done it's based on the
relationship that we have in Jesus Christ. See this is really good news and
you need to hear this if you're sitting there and you're watching this video and
you feel like a failure today, I want you to understand that if you have believed
in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, one day you're gonna stand before God
and He's gonna say "Well done, good and faithful servant" because He's gonna be
looking at you, but He's not gonna be seeing your sin or your mistakes, instead
He's gonna be seeing the perfect righteousness of His Son Jesus. So if you
believed in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, God already sees you as a success.
Let your belief in Him continue to motivate you towards obedience.