Failure Does Not Have To Be The Final Chapter Of Your Life!
Failure Does Not Have To Be The Final Chapter Of Your Life!
Genesis 18:10-16
10 And He said, “I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son.”
(Sarah was listening in the tent door which was behind him.) 11 Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age; and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. 12 Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?”
13 And the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I surely bear a child, since I am old?’ 14 Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.”
15 But Sarah denied it, saying, “I did not laugh,” for she was afraid.
And He said, “No, but you did laugh!”
Sarah made two major mistakes in this passage, first she laughed at God and His promise that she would have a son. To the natural mind this is understandable, after all, she had been barren all of her life, and she was now 90 years old, well beyond child bearing years.
Laughter can be fun and joyful, or it can be painful. It is fun to laugh with someone or a group, but it hurts to be laughed at, for such laughter is either grounded in ridicule or scorn. Sarah’s laughter was ridiculing God and scorning His Word of Promise.
God challenged this mindset in verse 13 & 14, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I surely bear a child, since I am old?’ 14 Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.”
In verse 15 Sarah tried to cover up her actions with a lie, “15 But Sarah denied it, saying, ‘I did not laugh,’ for she was afraid.”
The natural mind would look at this moment in Sarah’s life and say, “She’s 90 years old, she ridiculed God and laughed Him to scorn, she lied to God, the last chapter of her life is not going to be pretty. However, in Isaiah 55:11 we see God proclaiming, “ 11 So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” And Numbers 23:19 reveals “God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent.
Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?”
Let’s peek at the final chapter of Sarah’s life as it is revealed in Hebrews 11:11, “By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.”
At age 90, because of her unbelief, she ridiculed God, laughed Him to scorn, and then lied to Him, yet in the end she judged Him faithful who had promised, and God listed her in His Faith Hall of Fame!
I said all of that to say this, your past does not define you in God’s eyes. I don’t care how old you are, I don’t care how big your failure, through faith it is never too late to turn the final chapter of your life around and live the final days of your life pleasing to God. After all, Hebrews 11:6 reveals the only way to please God is through faith.