You screwed up. So did I.

I screwed up. You did too.

Think about it. If you backtrack through your life, you can come up with a painfully long list of times you screwed up.

Some of those incidents were no big deal, like not picking up something at Walmart that was on your shopping list.

Other times you’ve screwed up might be more devastating. A failed relationship. Messing up financially. Making a really bad school or career choice. Not taking care of your health.

Yep. We’ve all screwed up. That begs the question: is there ever a time you screwed up that wasn’t redeemable?

I’m gonna help you – us – today. In order to do that, we’re going to need to hang out for a while with a famous Old Testament character. Good ol’ Moses.

Talk about a journey. He started out poor, ended up rich, went back to poverty, had an opportunity to lead others in an epic journey (which was a bone-crushing burden). This led to a missed national opportunity, which was followed 40 years later by another chance at closure … that he wasn’t allowed to participate in.

That’s quite the story. Moses screwed up, so we’re in good company.

Check this out:

He was born a slave.
He grew up in a palace.
He lived in a desert.
He died in the mountains and was buried in an unmarked grave.
He was never elected to any leadership role.
He wasn’t a king, but he led a nation.
He wasn’t a soldier, but he defeated whole armies.

We need to think about these things. While none of us might not have a life of such sweeping events, there’s a lot we can learn – and be encouraged by. Screwing up doesn’t have to be an ultimate wipe-out.

Moses’ story isn’t one of those rags-to-riches tales. There’s more happening than that. Talk about a career change! It wasn’t like he went from being a doctor to selling cemetery plots. He went from being a slave, to a prince, to a fugitive, to a shepherd for 40 years, and finally another 40 years as a law-giver. I mean, dadgum. How would that look on a resume?

On its face, we have a guy who screwed up in spectacular form all throughout his life. He had several events in his life – bad choices aplenty – that would seem to be total disqualifiers. And yet he was called by God, and called to greatness.

You may not feel like you’re called to greatness. Well, pilgrim, maybe you need to realign your thinking to determine just exactly what “greatness” is.

Greatness doesn’t mean that you need to be some sort of powerful leader. It could. It doesn’t mean you need to be someone outstanding in their career. Possibly.

Greatness, to me, is discovering the niche God has placed you in and serving Him in it.

That’s wide open, now isn’t it? If you’ll agree to my definition, you can find greatness as a friend, spouse, parent, volunteer, most anything.

Back to Moses, though. Remember we determined that he screwed up?

For instance:

He started out with something so awful that it should have derailed his life – he killed a guy and buried him in the sand.
He went into hiding.
He tended sheep – not very prestigious for a prince of Egypt.

Hey. Have you ever tried to do something and it blew up in your face? You screwed up. It might just be, however, that it might’ve been the most important experience of your life. There’s a catch, though. When reflecting on that experience, you have to:

Learn from it.
Find the strength to try again.
Let God’s presence and grace keep you from doing it again.

You aren’t the first person to mess up a potentially good relationship. You aren’t the first to watch money slip through your fingers because you couldn’t control your financial appetites. You’re not the first to watch your intimacy with God crumble.

In short, you aren’t the first person to fail.

It’s typical to play the what-if game.

Maybe it was your fault. Honestly assess that first.
Maybe the situation wasn’t right to begin with.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe all sorts of things.

Take some time to suss it all out, but don’t camp out in your head. Moses wandered around for 40 years, and in your context, 40 years might be a little long. It’s appropriate to ask:

What exactly went wrong?
What bad choices did I make?
What’s the one takeaway lesson for me?
Am I still called to do this?

It’s that old idea of falling off a horse. You don’t lay on the ground, or be paralyzed with fear when considering riding a horse. You saddle up and go again. And again and again.

The one thing after you’ve screwed up that makes that failure permanent is if you quit. Guess what? No one but God has the right to permanently sideline you.

Here’s what I do all too often when I’ve screwed up. Maybe you can relate.

I focus on my disabilities, weaknesses, circumstances, and past failures rather than on God’s power and presence.

Have mercy. Moses would identify with me! He constantly threw excuses at God.

The Egyptians won’t listen.
My people will blow me off.
I’m ancient. I’m, like, a very senior adult.
I stutter. No way can I speak before a group.

Moses complained, but it didn’t help. God straightened him out in spite of the fact that he believed he’d screwed up one time too many.

Here’s God’s response. Brace for impact:

I will be with you.

I read that, and everything just leaps into focus. Because once I absorb that, I realize that nothing else matters.

It’s possible that you cringe and hide when you think about the times you’ve screwed up. You are paralyzed when you think about moving forward, because you’re afraid you’ll screw up again. You’re flat-out scared – you don’t want to hurt like that again. You don’t want to hurt anyone else. You don’t want to let anyone down.

It might just be that God is calling you back to that place you screwed up.

He may be taking you to the place where you got hurt. To the place you failed, the place you crashed and burned.

We can go the Moses route. We can offer God our list of disqualifiers. God will listen patiently. He’s like that.

But, at the end of all your eloquent excuse-making; at the end of all your doubts and fears; at the end of you asking Him for an easy out, here’s what He’ll say: