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Reframing Failure · Rewind

Rock Point Church

66 min

Pastor Scott Rodgers · Nov 27, 2018 · 4 min read · 66 min listen

The big idea

Quoting the message: Failure is an event, not a person, end quote. — it's part of everyone's life, but it doesn't get to define who you are.

In this message

The big idea
Point 1 of 7Failure is a normal part of being human, even for people God uses greatly
Point 2 of 7Peter's resume proves God uses flawed, failing people for great things

Point 3 of 7Peter stepping out of the boat and sinking wasn't a rebuke moment — it may have been a celebration
Point 4 of 7Staying in the boat is more dangerous than the risk of stepping out and failing
Point 5 of 7Don't waste a failure — learn from it, because it's not final
Point 6 of 7Peter's three denials show how failure becomes dangerous only when it becomes our identity
Point 7 of 7God loves to redeem our failure — He used the very Peter who denied Him to birth the church
Take it into your week
Transcript

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Scripture in this message

Matthew 14
Matthew 14:25
Matthew 14:30
Matthew 14:31
Matthew 26
Matthew 26:69

Rewind AI drafted the Big Idea and some point headings shown here from the sermon transcript. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Pastor Scott Rodgers · Nov 27, 2018 · 66 min watch · 2 min read

Reframing Failure

In this message

Big Idea
Key points
Application

Scripture in this message

Matthew 14
Matthew 14:25
Matthew 14:30
Matthew 14:31
Matthew 26
Matthew 26:69

Big Idea Key points Application

Big Idea

Quoting the message: Failure is an event, not a person, end quote. — it's part of everyone's life, but it doesn't get to define who you are.

Every person fails, but God never intended failure to be your identity. Through Peter's story — walking on water, sinking, and later denying Jesus three times — Pastor Scott shows that God delights in redeeming our failures and using us anyway, so we can learn from failure without being haunted by it.

Key points

1
1Failure is a normal part of being human, even for people God uses greatly
Pastor Scott opens with his own story of flunking a sociology class as the only senior in a room full of freshmen and sophomores, and asks the congregation who has ever felt like a failure as a parent, spouse, or worker. He notes that this feeling is universal, Christian or not.
2
2Peter's resume proves God uses flawed, failing people for great things
Pastor Scott points out Peter was one of the Twelve Apostles, the rock Jesus said He'd build His church on, and the human source behind Mark's Gospel and the books of first and second Peter — yet he failed repeatedly, because he was human just like us.
3
3Peter stepping out of the boat and sinking wasn't a rebuke moment — it may have been a celebration
Working through Matthew 14:25-33, Pastor Scott retells how Peter asked to walk on water, did it, then got scared and sank, crying out to be saved. He reframes Jesus's line, "You have so little faith, why did you doubt me," suggesting Jesus may have been celebrating Peter's step of faith rather than scolding him, using the illustration of celebrating his son Dylan's bike crash after riding without training wheels for the first time.
4
4Staying in the boat is more dangerous than the risk of stepping out and failing
Pastor Scott applies the water-walking story to everyday risk: reading and obeying scripture, sharing your faith, and giving generously all feel scary, but he argues a risk-averse life that never requires God to show up is the truly dangerous place to be.
5
5Don't waste a failure — learn from it, because it's not final
Pastor Scott urges believers to ask God what they missed and what to do differently rather than just feeling bad, calling failure painful but a great education if we let it teach us.
6
6Peter's three denials show how failure becomes dangerous only when it becomes our identity
Walking through Matthew 26:69-75, Pastor Scott recounts Peter denying Jesus three times despite vowing he'd die first, then weeping bitterly. He explains the real danger isn't saying "I have failed" but starting to believe "I am a failure," which causes people to sabotage blessings, relationships, and promotions because they feel unworthy of them.
7
7God loves to redeem our failure — He used the very Peter who denied Him to birth the church
Turning to Acts 2, Pastor Scott shows Peter, only weeks after denying Jesus, preaching the first gospel sermon in the power of the Holy Spirit and seeing 3,000 people believe and be baptized, becoming the catalyst for the New Testament church. He adds that after the resurrection Jesus specifically asked that Peter be told the news, arguing none of us think we deserve more grace than Peter got.

A story from life

Scott Rogers shares his own senior-year sociology class failure and being called out by his teacher Mr. Perry

Application

Pastor Scott frames the choice as deciding whether failure will define you, or whether you'll learn from it and keep stepping out in faith.

Stop letting failure become your identity
If regret has been haunting you, decide today that you have failed but you are not a failure, and move forward without carrying that label.
Learn from your failure instead of wasting it
Ask God and close friends what you missed and what to do differently next time, treating failure as a painful but valuable education.
Step out of the boat and trust God with something
If nothing in your life currently requires God to come through, take the risk He's been nudging you toward, whether that's obeying scripture, sharing your faith, or giving generously.

Take it into your week

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“If you have a Bible with you, go to Matthew chapter 14. Anybody here a paper bible person like you got the, you know, the real paper stuff”
From the transcript
“we're gonna start down in verse, let's see here, 25. It says this, about 03:00 in the morning Jesus came toward them walking on the water”
From the transcript
“But, in verse 30, everybody say, but. But when he saw the strong wind and the waves, he was terrified and began to sink. Save me, Lord, he shouted”
From the transcript
“Let's get back to this in verse 31. It says, Jesus immediately reached out and grabbed him and he says this, you have so little faith, why did you doubt me”
From the transcript
“So if you have your Bible, to Matthew 26. Just turn to your right or scroll down. And what's going on in Matthew 26 is, it's important I set this up for you”
From the transcript
“Go way down to verse 69. Matthew 20 nine says, meanwhile Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant girl came over to him and said, you were one of those with Jesus the Galilean”
From the transcript
“Again, Peter denied it, this time with an oath. I don't even know the man”
From the transcript
“Take your Bible, open it up to the book of Acts chapter two, ACTS. It's not the body spray, it's a book in the Bible”
From the transcript
“he says to his disciples, many of you are familiar with it like in Matthew 28, go tell everybody that I've risen from the dead. Share this good news”
From the transcript
“if you look at chapter two verse 36, we're gonna read a few verses. And really, verse 36, it's basically Peter's declaring the message like, know, God has sent Jesus the Messiah whom you crucified to be Lord”
From the transcript
“And then here's what it says in verse 37. It says, Peter's words pierced their hearts. Now what's that mean? Pierced their hearts. What it means is that they were deeply convicted”
From the transcript
“So verse 38, Peter replies, each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God. Which by the way, is always in style. Never goes out of fashion”
From the transcript
“Go down to verse 41. Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day, how many? About 3,000 in all”

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

Sign in to track your progress through this devotional.

Day 1

There is a moment in this passage that is easy to rush past. Before Peter ever climbs out of the boat, Jesus is already walking toward the disciples on the water — in the middle of the night, in the middle of a storm. He comes to them. That matters. The invitation to step out doesn't come from a safe shoreline; it comes from a Jesus who is already present in the chaos. Pastor Scott's sermon opens with this scene because it frames everything that follows: faith is not the absence of a storm. It is a response to a Person who shows up inside one. You may be in the middle of something turbulent right now — a decision, a relationship, a season that feels unsteady underfoot. The remarkable thing is that Jesus does not wait for the water to calm before He moves toward you. He is already there. And His first words to the frightened disciples are worth sitting with today: 'Don't be afraid.' Not 'get it together' or 'you should have seen this coming.' Just — don't be afraid, I'm here. That is the ground the rest of this week is built on.

For reflection

Where in your life right now does Jesus feel most present — and where does He feel hardest to see?

Pray

Pray for eyes to recognize Jesus in the middle of whatever storm you are currently navigating.

Day 2

Peter's request is almost audacious: 'Lord, if it's really You, tell me to come to You, walking on the water.' And Jesus simply says, 'Yes, come.' What happens next is one of the most underappreciated moments in the Gospels — Peter actually gets out of the boat. He walks on water. For a few steps, at least, a human being does something no human being was made to do, because he trusted a word from Jesus more than he trusted what his eyes and instincts were telling him. Pastor Scott made the point clearly: stepping out in faith, even if you eventually sink, is worth more than staying safely in the boat. The disciples who stayed seated were not braver than Peter. They were just more comfortable. There is a kind of safety that is really just avoidance dressed up as wisdom. And while staying in the boat carries zero risk of sinking, it also carries zero chance of walking on water. Today, the question is not whether you might fail if you step out — you might. The question is whether there is a word from Jesus inviting you forward, and whether you are willing to move toward it.

For reflection

Is there a step of faith you have been delaying because the risk of failure feels too high? What would it look like to say yes to it anyway?

Pray

Pray for the courage to take a specific step of faith you have been holding back on — and for trust that Jesus is the one calling you forward.

Day 3

Peter sinks. That is the part of the story most people remember — and honestly, it is the part we most relate to. He takes his eyes off Jesus, feels the full weight of the wind around him, and down he goes. What happened next is the part Pastor Scott wants us to hold onto. Peter cried out, 'Save me, Lord!' and immediately Jesus reached out His hand and caught him. There was no delay. No lecture. No 'I told you so.' Just a hand, already extended. Jesus does ask a question — 'Why did you doubt?' — but He asks it while He is already holding Peter up. The rescue comes before the reflection. That sequence is not accidental. God's response to your failure is not to let you sink until you've learned your lesson and then pull you out. His response is to catch you, and then gently walk with you through what happened. The sinking is real. The failure is real. But so is the hand. If you have experienced a failure recently — a stumble of faith, a decision you regret — the first thing to know is that Jesus reaches before He explains.

For reflection

When you fail or stumble, what is your first instinct — to reach toward Jesus or to pull away? What do you think shapes that response?

Pray

Pray for the humility and honesty to cry out to Jesus in moments of failure rather than pulling away in shame.

Day 4

This passage is harder to sit with than the water-walking scene, and that's exactly why it belongs in this devotional. Peter, the man who walked on water and declared Jesus to be the Son of God, denied knowing Him — not once, but multiple times, to people whose opinion he feared. This was not a stumble. By any reasonable measure, it was a devastating failure. And if we are honest, most of us have our own version of it: a moment when we chose comfort over conviction, or silence over faithfulness, or self-protection over someone who needed us to show up. Pastor Scott does not soften this part of Peter's story, and we shouldn't either. Real failures need to be seen clearly before they can be learned from. But here is what the sermon draws our attention to: this failure did not end Peter's story. It became part of it. The same man who denied Jesus three times would later stand up in Jerusalem and boldly proclaim Him before thousands. Failure is not the conclusion — unless we let it be. The question is not whether you have failed like this. It is what you do with it.

For reflection

Is there a past failure you are still carrying as part of your identity rather than treating as an event you have moved through? What would it take to set it down?

Pray

Pray for the grace to see your past failures as events rather than definitions — and for freedom from the weight of regret.

Day 5

Matthew 28 does not linger long on Peter by name, but its message changes everything for him. The resurrection is the hinge on which the whole arc of his story — and ours — turns. Without it, Peter's denial is simply a tragedy, a man who failed his closest friend at the worst possible moment and then watched Him die. But the empty tomb reframes everything. It means that what looked like the end was not the end. It means that the Jesus Peter denied is alive — and that a conversation still needs to happen, a relationship still has a future, a purpose is still unfolding. Pastor Scott's whole argument rests here, whether he states it this way or not: the reason failure is not final is because the One who redeems failure is not in a tomb. Resurrection is the engine of redemption. For anyone carrying the weight of a past failure today, this is the ground truth to return to — not that your failure didn't matter, but that the God you failed is the God who conquers death. Your story is not over because His story is not over.

For reflection

How does the reality of the resurrection change the way you think about your own failures and the possibility of redemption?

Pray

Pray for a renewed sense of hope rooted in the resurrection — that the same power that raised Jesus is at work in your story.

Day 6

This is the moment the entire sermon builds toward. Fifty days after the resurrection, Peter — the denier, the sinker, the one who swore he didn't know Jesus — stands up in front of a crowd in Jerusalem and preaches the first gospel message of the New Testament church. Three thousand people respond. The same voice that said 'I don't know the man' now declares, 'God has made this Jesus both Lord and Messiah.' Pastor Scott points to this moment as one of the most powerful illustrations of redemption in all of Scripture. God did not disqualify Peter because of his failure. He did not find a more reliable spokesperson. He used the broken, restored, Spirit-filled man who had walked on water and denied Jesus and wept bitterly — and through him, the church was born. This is what it looks like when failure is not given the final word. Your failures, whatever they are, do not disqualify you from being used. They may actually be part of what makes you credible to a world that is also failing and looking for a way forward.

For reflection

Where might God be wanting to use your experience of failure — and His redemption of it — to point someone else toward Jesus?

Pray

Pray for openness to being used by God in ways that feel bigger than your past failures would seem to allow.

Day 7

We end where we began — on the water, in the storm, with Jesus walking toward frightened people in the dark. But after six days of sitting with Peter's story, the scene looks different now. We have watched a man step out and sink, deny and weep, encounter a risen Jesus, and stand up to birth a church. Failure was never the last word. It was always an event inside a much larger story being written by a God who redeems. Pastor Scott's closing challenge was direct: if you are weighed down by a past failure, today is the day to stop being haunted by it. And if you are playing it safe, it may be time to step out of the boat. Those two invitations are really one: trust that God is bigger than what you have done and bigger than what you fear. Failure is an event. You are not your worst moment, your biggest regret, or your most spectacular stumble. You are someone Jesus walked toward in the dark, reached out His hand to, and called by name. That is who you are. Now step out.

For reflection

Looking back over this week, what is the one truth from Peter's story that you most need to carry forward — and what is one concrete step you can take this week in response?

Pray

Pray over both of Pastor Scott's closing challenges — releasing a specific past failure, and identifying one bold step of faith God may be calling you to take.

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

Think of someone — a hero, an athlete, a leader — who failed spectacularly and then came back to do something remarkable. This message asks what made the difference, and whether the same thing is available to us.

Discussion questions

1
In Matthew 14, Peter actually gets out of the boat and walks on water — then sinks. What do you think it means that Jesus still calls that moment worth having, rather than pointing to it as a cautionary tale about doubt?
2
Pastor Scott drew a line between failure as an event and failure as an identity. What's the difference, practically speaking, and why does that distinction matter for how people move forward?
3
By the time Acts 2 opens, Peter has publicly denied Jesus three times — yet he's the one who stands up and preaches the first gospel message, and 3,000 people respond. What does that sequence tell us about how God sees a person's past failures?
4
Pastor Scott made the point that staying in the boat feels safer, but it may cost us something. What does Peter's story suggest about the relationship between risk and faith?
5
Pastor Scott challenged people who are playing it safe to ask whether anything in their life currently requires God to come through — naming things like His Word, sharing faith, generosity, or a relationship. What kinds of things tend to keep people from stepping into that kind of trust?
6
Pastor Scott said failure becomes final only when we make it our identity. As a group, how might we help one another — and the people around us — hold on to that truth when a failure feels overwhelming?

Pray together

Ask God to free us from carrying failure as an identity, and to give us the courage to step out of the boat wherever He is calling us to trust Him

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Go deeper

Where these passages are preached

Matthew 14 Matthew 26 Acts 2 Matthew 28

Explore related topics

Bold Faith Failure and Identity Learning from Mistakes Peter's Denial Redemption

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