Failure Isn't Final - Hope Carpenter

Hello. I am so excited you're with me tonight, wherever you are tuning in from. Thank you so much. Just get you some coffee, get some popcorn. I don't know about the popcorn. You might start slinging that all over your den or wherever you are. Because this message is going to be so good. So good. I just want to start by saying that Jesus loves you. He loves you right where you are. No matter what you've. No matter where you've been or how many times that you've done it. He loves you so much. When we were talking about this message earlier, I told him, I said, I'm going to say Jesus loves you with your sailor mouth, your beer drinking, loving, miniskirt wearing self. Yeah, he sure does. And you know, there's some religious people would say, oh no, he doesn't. He don't like that. I didn't say he did or did not like it. I said he loves you no matter what. He loves you on your best day and he loves you on your worst day. That is so good. If you are saved, if you are a child of God, your name is written in the Lamb's book of life, written in heaven, period. Well, Hope, do you believe that people who do bad things will go to heaven? Well, thank you for asking. If our assurance of going to heaven was based on how good we are, guess what? None of us would go to heaven. Think about it. If our assurance of going to heaven was based on what we do. Man, we miss the mark every day. We fall short every day, every single one of us. It is by grace. The Bible says it is by grace. It is by grace, through faith. Say it again. Hope for the people in the back. It is by grace, through faith. And not of yourselves, not by works or doing good. Ephesians 2:8. It is by grace, through faith and not of yourselves. Not by works or doing good, that is. Listen, just let that sink in. Just let your mind wrap around that. It, it has nothing to do with what you do. That's why Jesus had to come. However, there is this thing called sowing and reaping. You know that what goes around comes around. What goes up must come down. Why? Because it's a law. It's, it's a, that's a law of gravity. If I go and jump off of this stage, I'm not going to go up. I'm not going to stay the same. I'm going to go down. Because it is the law of gravity. You can try to fight it, but it's still the law. Well, Listen. That law of sowing and reaping visited my life back in 2013 when I had confessed to my husband that I had been unfaithful to him. I had lived about nine years hiding in a secret sin and living in a way that just did not please God and in such a way that I was not living worthy of the call of God on my life. Was I still saved? Yes, I was still saved. I loved the Lord. It grieved me, the sin that I was going through. I loved my husband. I loved the church. I loved the people in it. But I had sin. I had secret sin. And I was not living that sacrificial life that. That crucified life that God has called us to once we get saved. And when I had confessed and I moved to North Carolina, listen. I was at one of the lowest places that I had ever been in my life. I call it my deep, dark pit. I lost £23 in 30 days. That's what you call the devastation diet. And I do not recommend that. I cried so much and I cried so long that I. I even wondered, would my face go back to the way it normally looked? I was out of a job. I had no health insurance. I had no hope of for a life that I had known. And this was the law of sowing and reaping at work in my life. And listen, people don't want to talk about this, about where we end up after the things that we do, things being our fault. See, we want to blame it all on the devil or we want to blame it all on what we did or did not get as a child or what somebody else did to us. And I want you to know that I do believe that every adult problem is an unresolved child problem. And then we end up going through our adulthood, our life, with this stinking thinking, with these attitudes and these behaviors and doing things that don't please God, that end up being sin in our life. But what does sin mean? What does that mean anyway? Sin means. Clearly, the Bible says sin is to miss the mark. To miss the mark. What mark? The mark of perfection. No, we are not told that we will get saved and that we end up being perfect every single day. But sin is saying we miss the Mark. And the mark is not perfection. The mark is what we're trying to get to, is the goal and the mission of all of us Christians. And that's Philippians 3:14. I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of Christ Jesus. So when you get saved, there Is a press. There is a press every day. What is that press, Hope? The press is not to slap somebody by noon, Right? The press is not to cuss our neighbor out when their dog comes on our lawn and tears up all of our flowers. The press is to get up every day and be disciplined and spend time in the Word and with the Lord instead of sleeping. The press is to turn off that Netflix series and to get in God's presence. There is a press, a press, a press to be more like Jesus and less like me. So I had stopped pressing. I had started being lazy and living for what Hope wanted. And then I was reaping the consequences of it. Have you ever been there? I'm sure you have. Most of us have. All of us have. And let me be clear about one thing. God does not cause these hard times. He does not bring sickness on us. He does not bring disease on us. He does not make us get a divorce or rape in our life. None of those things. But I can promise you 100% that God will use them every single time. Romans 8:28. And we know that all things shout all things. That does not mean all things are good. But he wants to use all things. That rape, that divorce, that abuse, that abortion, that being lied on, that being cheated, that being talked about, that being misrepresented, all of those things that happen in our life, God wants to use them in our life. All things work together for good. Did not say that all things were good, but he uses all things. I'm not much of a baker. I like to cook, but I don't bake a lot of sweets. But if you've ever baked a cake, you know that there are several ingredients in a cake. There's flour, there's sugar, there's butter, there's salt, there's eggs. Now, sugar in itself, that's pretty good. I could take a big spoonful of sugar and put it in my mouth, right? And that tastes good. Salt tastes good on chips. But if you take a whole salt shaker and start doing this in your mouth after a minute, that's not too good. Eggs, scrambled or boiled, they are so good. But to me, ugh, it's just so yucky to put that raw egg in your mouth. Imagine taking a cup of flour, a whole cup of flour, and say, mm, here's my lunch today. I'm going to eat this cup of flour. That's gross. But what do you do when you take all those ingredients? You take them and you mix them all up together, and then even Looking at it all mixed up, it doesn't look good. But you pour it in that pan and you put it in that oven and let that heat get to it. It's the same way with your life. God is going to take the good, the bad, the ugly, the way you've been lied on, the way you've been misrepresented. And then you might get a good job and God might move you, but he's going to take it all and he's going to use it and he's going to work it out for your good and for his glory. It all turns out good when God gets it and starts to mix it all together. Listen, your trouble, your ups and your downs and your good days and your bad days in the hand of God is going to turn out for your good. I promise you. And sometimes we have to take a teaching, sometimes we have to take a spanking. And it does not mean that he doesn't love us. The Bible even says in Hebrews 12 that he chastens, he disciplines those that he loves. Sometimes you've got to go through some things so that you can come out on the other side better. We don't like that. We all want it to be flowers and roses and pansies and all good days and always all of our bills are paid and everybody likes us. Wouldn't that be nice? But when we are reduced to nothing, please know that God is always up to something in your life. And if that's you right now, you say, you know what, Hope? I don't. I don't see God. I don't feel God. I don't see how God's going to use any of this anywhere in this situation and you feel like giving up. Hold on, hold on. God's going to use this for your good and for his glory. When I ended up homeless, literally living in a counseling home, no car, no income, no hair color, no manicures, no pedicures, no luxuries that I was used to. Depressed, full of doubt, overwhelmed. And I said, will I ever make it out of this pit, this shame, this guilt, this failure. I had to decide at that moment that I would trust God and that I would live and I would not die. I had to decide that I'm not just going to survive this. I'm going to come out on the other side better and I'm going to not just survive and. But I'm going to thrive. I was determined to get to the root of my issues, why I had landed where I landed. All the hurt, the Pain and not use them as an excuse. Not one more day. I asked the Lord to put me on the potter's wheel and remake me into what he wanted me to be. And you know what? He did it. I'm here today. I am a testimony. God did it. And in that house in the woods in North Carolina, I gave myself up to God. I said, not my will. I said, I quit. I quit. I'm done. Not my will, but yours, Lord. And let me tell you something. God always chooses the unlikely to do the unimaginable. You don't think God can use you because you're flawed. You don't think God can use you because you struggle. You don't think God can use you because you might have a secret sin. You don't think God can use you because you like to smoke a circle cigarette. You don't think God can use you because you might have done something 10 years ago that you're ashamed of. Listen. Noah was a drunk. Abraham was old. Jacob was a liar. Joseph was abused. Moses stuttered. Gideon was wimpy. Samson loved the ladies. Whoo. Rahab was a prostitute. David was a murderer, a schemer and an adulterer. Isaiah preached naked. Jonah ran from God. Peter denied Christ multiple times. Guess what? The disciples prayer life wasn't very good. Paul was too religious. And Lazarus was dead. We all come to forks in the road. We all come into tough times and times that we wish had never hit our life. Times we want to run around and hide and never come back out. We all do. There are times when we mess up so miserably. But I want to tell you something tonight. Failure is not final in God. You need to scream that right where you are. Failure is not final when God is in control. Listen, this is what God wants from you. When you find yourself at the bottom of a pit, this is what God wants from you. When you say, I just don't know if God can use me. This is what he wants. You, number one, to stop running. You gotta quit. You gotta surrender to God. He wants you to stop running. And number two, surrender to his will. And then number three, get back on that potter's wheel and say, God, I've been trying to look like this tall vase, but God, you know what? Obviously you don't want me to be a vase. You want me to be a bowl. What about if he wants you to be a little bitty bo? You say, God, I want to be a big bow. No, you got to stop running and you got to surrender to his will and you got to get back on that potter's wheel and you got to say, make me. Mold me into what you want me to be. And then keep pressing. Every single day, keep pressing toward that mark. Do we press toward perfection? No. We press toward the upward call of God. In Christ Jesus, character is ultimately defined. When you mess up, then what do you do with it? Do you stay down? Do you run away? Do you backslide? Do you say, I forget this, I'm going back to drinking and I'm never coming back to church? No, no, we get back up again. Do you stay there? Or do you scratch and claw your way out, out of that pit, toward that upward call. Whoo. Listen, if God can use me, he can use anybody. And guess what? He wants to. God wants to use you. He loves you so much. He loves you just like you are. He knew you were going to sin. He knew you were going to mess up. That's why he had to come. He knew that you could not pay your way out. He knew you could not redeem yourself. So he had to send Jesus Christ the spotless, the one, the only spotless lamb, so that he could lay down his spotless life and pay the price for our sin. You can't be concerned with what Sister so and so thinks about you. Really? Because Sister so and so, she's got her own issues. Or what people say. Because I promise you, people are always going to have something to say. But keep getting back up. Keep getting back up. All things work together for the good of those who love God and who are called according to his purpose and failure. Say it out loud. Failure is not final in God. I want to pray for you tonight. I know how it feels to feel like God can't do anything with you. I know how it feels when people forget about you. I know how it feels to feel like you've been kicked to the side and God can't use you because you've messed up so bad. Or you might have messed up on a public stage. Listen, failure is not final. Failure is not final with God. You got to stop running. You got to surrender to his will. You got to get back on that potter's wheel, and you got to keep pressing toward that upward call. Listen, you can do this. Do not let the devil talk you into giving up. Then he's won. It doesn't matter what people say. It only matters what God says. I believe there's greatness on the inside of you. I believe that there's gifts and callings that God wants to stir up and he wants to pull out of you if you just say yes to Jesus. Father, I thank you tonight that there are people listening that are under the sound of my voice who are contemplating suicide, who thought their life was over. But God, you sent a word tonight and you've rescued people. I thank you God that, that you have great and wonderful things planned for every one of our lives. But we just have to take it one day at a time, resting on the grace of that love of Jesus Christ by which we are saved. I thank you that sinners are coming home tonight. I thank you that there's people who love you with all that heart but who thought they'd gone too far. But you sent a word to them tonight and I thank you for it in Jesus name. If this message has been a blessing to you, if you rededicated your life, let us know. Go to hopecarpenter.com and send us your testimonies. I've got an amazing book out called the Most Beautiful Disaster that will help you repair the broken places in your life. Let us connect with you. I love you. Don't forget failure is not final in God. Hey guys, if you're like me and you've made some really dumb mistakes in your life, you've really just blown it. You feel like, man, I'm at a place I've messed up so bad. How can God use me? Listen, I have an incredible tool book for you. It's my brand new book called the Most Beautiful Disaster. You can get it anywhere books are sold and I would encourage you right now to go and pre order your book. It comes out May 4th on every shelf, but right now, go pre order your book so it can be in your hand first. It is a tool book that will encourage you, that will help you understand that no matter where you find your yourself in life, if you feel like the most horrible disaster, God wants to redeem that and God wants to use it. And this book will tell you how God's going to do something beautiful with all the ugly places in your life.