One of the best things about the Bible is that it is very realistic about both the positives and negatives in the lives of the characters it describes. Moses was used by God to lead His people out of slavery in Egypt, but Moses had his moments of failure. Fortunately God was able to overcome Moses’ fear of failure to use him to lead His people out of Egypt.

Exodus 2:11 reveals a huge moment of failure in Moses’ life: he saw an Egyptian beating one of his Hebrew countrymen and killed the Egyptian, hiding his body in the sand. We don’t know if Moses thought he was going to singlehandedly deliver Israel through his own power or what was in his mind. We do know that God’s plan did not involve murder or deceit. We also know that the next day it became clear that his deed was known and he took off across the desert to make a new life for himself in the land of Midian.

We can learn a lesson from this part of Moses’ story, that everybody fails sometime in their life. James 3:2 is very specific about that. James wrote: “We all stumble in many ways….” Everybody fails in their lives, but failing at something does not make you a failure.

Forty years later Moses had made that new life for himself. He had married and had two sons. He was a shepherd helping to care for his father-in-law’s flocks. One day like any other day as Moses was talking the flocks to pasture he saw a bush that was burning but was never consumed. The Angel of the Lord appeared and told Moses that God wanted him to go and lead Israel out of Egypt. Moses was not excited about the assignment! In fact, he replied with a series of excuses. God replied to each of Moses’ excuses to let him know that He was with Moses and would equip him with what he needed to do the job he was called to do.
The lesson for us is that even if we have failed, we can’t let fear of failure paralyze us and keep us from following where God leads us. Just as God equipped Moses to do what he was calling him to do, so God will equip us and empower us to do what He is leading us to do. Success is not up to us, it is up to God. What is up to us is being willing to get up after failure and going where God leads.

Failure is not final. It was not final for Moses and it does not have to be final for us. The great American inventor Thomas Edison once said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Scripture says it like this in Galatians 6:9: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at a proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Isn’t it true that many of us give up too quickly? I wonder how many people let the fear of failure keep them from getting back up and causing them to give up too quickly.

Don’t let the fear of failure keep you from doing what God is calling you to do.