WHAT DO WE DO WHEN WE TRY AND FAIL?
Leadership lessons from Exodus Chapter 5.
Moses had answered Gods call to leave his job as a Shepherd in Median and go to Egypt and free Gods people.
He had met with his brother Aaron. He had met with the Israelites letting them know the plan. Now after 400 years of slavery, hope was rising up in Gods people.
When Moses took the bold step and stood before the pharaoh, for the first time. He failed. In fact he failed in a big way. Not only did the Pharaoh say no to Moses request to allow Gods people to be go worship the Lord in the dessert. The Pharaoh, got angry and punished the Hebrew slaves. Taking wall all the straw they needed to make bricks, but he did not reduce the amount of bricks they had to make. When the people complained to the Egyptian masters, the masters got more angry, beating and even killing them.
The Hebrews came back to Moses, their leader. They were hurt. They were angry. They said to him, "The Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.”
Then Moses left the people and in a private moment, cried out to God, “O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.”
Moses had just gotten started and he already had a major failure. The Pharaoh, didn’t listen and his people are against him. Failure, drove the questions that had been haunting him since the first day he accepted the position as "Leader" to come to the forefront ...
God did you really call me?
You've got the wrong guy.
I don't think I can do this.
Leadership is not easy and failure comes even with the highest of calls.
We all know this. I am sure the Moses knew this.
But for some reason it seems different when its us.
We should succeed. It should be easier than this
But the truth is, leading yourself, leading your family, leading anything is not easy and many times failure may be experienced more often than success.
So what do we do, when we try and fail?
What do we do when it’s not working?
What do we do when deep inside of us we are convinced, Gods got the wrong person in charge … and that person just happens to be us?
We do what Moses did in Exodus Chapter 5. We keep walking into Exodus Chapter 6.
When we try and fail, we simply step into the next chapter of our journey, and try again.
Because maybe, like Moses, we are the one for the job.
But we will never know if we don't keep going.