Key points
- 1
1God sees you in your desert season and often calls you to go back rather than only forward.
- 2
2The wilderness seasons of life are secret training grounds — God teaches us without us realizing He is teaching us.
- 3
3Try again with what you have learned: your season of shepherding, stewarding, and surviving prepares you for what God is calling you into next.
“what have you been doing for forty years that you did not know was actually preparing you for the next forty years”
“God has a sneaky way of training us in seasons that prepare us for new seasons”
Illustration
A college student complaining about a class they felt was useless, used to illustrate how God trains people in seasons they don't recognize as preparation.
- 4
4Trying again requires abandoning your own strategy and embracing God's — Moses' one-Egyptian approach was replaced by a divine exodus plan.
- 5
5Unresolved failure can become a hidden trigger that prevents you from stepping into the calling that has always been inside you.
Related passage - 6
6God wants you whole — try again, but this time try with a healed heart.
“Are you really healed or are you just really good at avoiding the triggers”
“Try it again, but this time try it with a healed heart”
“a place that had caused so much pain and a place of failure, I could tell you twenty years later I'm preaching at a place that God is now bringing restoration to”
“God is getting ready to set you up for listen, a place that caused you failure, God is gonna use to bring restoration”
A story from life
A chapel speaker who had been expelled from Life Pacific University twenty years earlier returns to preach there and experiences a full-circle moment of restoration.
Application
The sermon calls each person to honestly ask: Is there a dream, a relationship, a calling, or a ministry you walked away from because it failed — and have you really dealt with that failure, or just learned to avoid the trigger? God's invitation through Moses is to try again, but to try differently. First, take stock of what this season has quietly taught you — the endurance, the faithfulness in small things, the lessons you didn't know you were learning. Second, stop retrying your old strategy and ask God for His plan; write it down and follow it. Third, and most importantly, let God bring healing to the wound that failure left behind, because a healed heart is the thing that makes the try-again possible.
