God Does Not Waste Anything

I don’t think I’ve ever taught a message where the content felt more personal — more current to where I am in my life — than this one.

I’m walking through a season I never imagined for my life. A season I never would have chosen.

And I’m sure for many of you it’s caused sadness or questioning.

And for others, it hits differently — because you’ve been there. Or maybe you’re in it too.

And I’ll just say this up front: I don’t have all the answers tied up in a nice little bow.

I’m not on the other side looking back with hindsight. I’m in the middle of it.

There are still moments where I feel disoriented.
There are days when the grief is overwhelming.
There are times I still ask God, “What are you doing with this?”

But even now — especially now — I’m learning something about how God works.

And it’s not theoretical. It’s not abstract. It’s real.

And it’s this:

God does not waste a hurt. But even more than that — God does not waste anything.

Not the parts of your life that went according to plan.
Not the parts that unraveled.
Not the wins.
Not the wounds.
Not the pieces you wish you could forget.
Not the seasons you still don’t understand.

God doesn’t waste any of it.

This is what today’s message is about.

We’re in week 6 of our Made for More series — where we’ve been exploring how God has uniquely shaped you for a life of purpose and impact.

We’ve looked at:

Spiritual Gifts — how the Spirit empowers you.
Heart — the passions that move you.
Abilities — the natural talents God has wired into you.
Personality — the unique way you engage the world.

And today, we come to the “E” in SHAPE — Experience.

And here’s the truth I want to plant deep in your heart today:

God uses every experience — the beautiful and the broken — to shape your life for his purposes.

In fact, listen to how the apostle Paul says it in Romans 8:

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

And just for fun — I looked up the Greek word for “all things” in that verse.

Do you know what it means?

All things.

Even the hard things.
Even the confusing things.
Even the things that felt like detours or dead ends.
Even the times you felt like a failure.
Even the parts of your story you would like to skip or hide.

God is in the business of weaving every thread of your life — the joyful and the painful — into a redemptive story that makes an impact.

So here’s where we’re going today:

We’re going to talk about how God works through your experiences:

To shape your calling
To form your character
To bring healing and hope to others
And to invite you into a story that’s bigger than your past

And my prayer — especially for those of you who are in the middle of a hard chapter — is that this message brings clarity… and courage… and hope.

Because your story is not over.

And none of it is wasted.

Alright, so lets dig in. This first point is this:

Your story is sacred — even the parts you didn’t choose.

We all love the idea that God uses our experiences to shape our calling — but most of us imagine that means the good experiences.

The mountaintops.
The successes.
The clear, winsome moments we’d post on Instagram with a Bible verse in the caption.

But according to the writers of Scripture, God uses the whole story — not just the shiny parts.

And sometimes it’s the moments you never would have scripted that become the ones God most powerfully redeems.

Let’s be honest — if we were writing the Bible, we’d clean it up a bit.

We’d leave out the messy parts of people’s lives.
We’d skip over the trauma, the loss, the failure, the betrayal.

But the writers of Scripture don’t do that.

Why?

Because God doesn’t waste anything in your story — even the parts you wish weren’t there.

In that verse I just read — Romans 8:28:

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

The Greek word translated “all things” is panta — it doesn’t mean some things. It doesn’t mean the stuff you’re proud of.

It means… everything.

Your upbringing.
Your wounds.
Your past relationships.
Your big wins and embarrassing fails.
Your career missteps and vocational pivots.
Your greatest joys and deepest heartbreaks.

God is the only one who can take all of it — and make it meaningful.

I never imagined that part of my story would include divorce.

It’s not what I wanted.
It’s not what I prayed for.
It’s not what I stood on the altar imagining years ago.

But here I am — in the middle of something I didn’t choose…

…and I have to believe, based on the character of God and the promise of Scripture, that even this will be part of what God uses.

Not just to shape my future ministry.

But to shape me.

Because sometimes (a lot of times — most of the time) it’s not about what you do next — it’s about who you’re becoming along the way.

I want to show you some examples from Scripture:

Joseph

Betrayed by his brothers.
Sold as a slave.
Falsely accused.
Forgotten in prison.

And yet Joseph says at the end:

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good… (Gen. 50:20)

Notice: Joseph doesn’t deny the harm. But he trusts that God was active even in the harm.

Peter

Peter’s worst moment wasn’t just personal failure — it was public. He denied Jesus three times.

The shame of that moment could have defined him.

But what does Jesus do?

He restores him — and then commissions him:

Feed my sheep. (John 21:17)

Peter’s failure didn’t disqualify him. It formed him. It gave him a shepherd’s heart.

Paul

Begged God to remove his “thorn in the flesh,” but God responded:

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9)

Paul doesn’t get an answer — he gets a deeper kind of strength.

And that strength becomes the engine of his ministry.

Moses

Moses was one of the greatest leaders in Scripture — but when God called him to lead, he’d spent 40 years wandering the wilderness, tending sheep.

Why?

Because he killed a man and ran.

And that 40-year detour wasn’t just punishment. It was preparation.

The wilderness would become the very terrain he would one day lead others through.

And the sheep weren’t just a time-filler.

They were a training ground for leading stubborn, wandering, grumbling people.

Moses’ experience — even the painful parts — was God’s classroom.

And that same principle still applies.

There are things in your story that probably feel like random scraps of experience:

That season of parenting where you felt isolated and under-appreciated.
That project at work you poured yourself into and no one noticed.
That odd skill you picked up — fixing things, organizing teams, caring for someone with dementia — and you’ve wondered, “Why did I need to go through that?”

But what feels random to us often ends up being required by God.

Think about David — not as king, but as a young shepherd boy.

He’s the youngest in his family, stuck doing the grunt work while his older brothers are off at war.

But while he’s out there in the fields — he’s practicing with a sling. Protecting sheep from wild animals.

Learning courage.
Learning dependence.
Learning to take initiative.

So when Goliath comes… David’s not intimidated.

Why?

Because he’s already faced lions and bears.

And he’s already discovered that God shows up in unexpected battles.

God had been shaping him all along — with real skills in real experiences.

Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them… (1 Samuel 17:36)

David didn’t learn courage in the spotlight.

He learned it in the shadows — when no one was watching but God.

So where has God been shaping you?

You might not have fought lions or led sheep, but:

Maybe you learned resilience from a season of illness.
Maybe your experience working retail gave you emotional intelligence and conflict resolution.
Maybe you learned how to manage chaos because your childhood was full of it.

Those experiences weren’t just things you survived. They’re things God can use.

Even the painful ones… especially the painful ones.

Do you know what all these stories from Scripture have in common?

The hardship was real.
The pain wasn’t avoided.
But God used it to shape who they became.

God doesn’t just use the mountaintop moments.

He uses the valleys.
He uses the wilderness seasons.
He uses the storms.
He uses the stillness.

And sometimes what shapes us most are the things we wouldn’t have signed up for.

In modern Western culture — especially in places like the Bay Area — we love stories that are curated and controlled.

We want résumés that make sense.
Instagram lives that look polished.
And spiritual lives that move upward and to the right.

But real transformation usually looks messier.

Real formation happens in the desert, not on a platform.

Our society values instant results. We want microwave purpose.

But God shapes people like oak trees, not weeds.

Roots that go down deep. And growth that lasts.

And that takes time.

So don’t resent the slow seasons.
Don’t despise the struggle.

It might be that God is forming the kind of character that will one day sustain the calling he’s preparing you for.

Some of you really need to hear what I’m about to say to you:

You are not behind.
You are not forgotten.
You are not disqualified.

You are being formed.

And who you’re becoming in this season is just as important to God as what you’ll do in the next one.

That’s why this part of your story — the one you’re tempted to skip — might actually be the most sacred part of all.

Recently I took my son to see The Smashing Machine — Dwayne Johnson plays a man whose life is defined by both extraordinary power and profound brokenness.

At one point, the film alludes to a Japanese art form called kin-tsoo-gee — where broken pottery isn’t discarded… it’s mended with gold.

The cracks are not hidden, they’re highlighted.

And the repaired pieces become the most valuable part.

That’s what grace does.

It doesn’t hide the fractures in your story. It fills them with something more beautiful — the redemptive power of God.

Some of us treat our past like it’s a movie we’re embarrassed we starred in.

You’re like, “That was my prequel — it doesn’t count anymore.”

But here’s the truth: God doesn’t delete scenes.

He just rewrites the story so the old stuff makes sense in light of the ending.

Even your blooper reel can become someone else’s breakthrough.

And this leads us to the second point about your experiences:

Your past experiences are a training ground for future impact.

Some of the most formative experiences in your life didn’t come with a syllabus or a certificate of completion.

You didn’t ask for the job where you had to stretch way beyond your comfort zone.
You didn’t sign up for the family dysfunction that forced you to develop patience.
You didn’t expect that health diagnosis, or that financial hit, or that rejection letter.

But you came through it with something more than just memories.

You gained wisdom.

And wisdom, in Scripture, is often learned through experience — not just instruction.

Job 32:7 says:

I thought, “Age should speak; advanced years should teach wisdom.” (Job 32:7)

But here’s the twist:

It’s not age that makes someone wise. It’s what they’ve learned from what they’ve lived.

Let’s look at someone we don’t talk about nearly enough: Naomi, in the book of Ruth.

Naomi is widowed.
Both of her sons die.
She’s devastated and essentially says, “God has dealt bitterly with me.”

But — here’s what we miss — Naomi still shows up for Ruth.

She gives guidance. She knows how her culture works. She knows what Ruth needs to do.

And in a pivotal moment, it’s Naomi’s experience — her street smarts, her lived pain — that help Ruth find a future.

Her loss became the soil for someone else’s redemption.

That doesn’t mean God caused her pain.

But God certainly used it.

And let’s not forget the outcome of that story — Ruth and Boaz become ancestors of Jesus.

That’s what God can do with a life marked by heartbreak and healing.

In modern Western culture, we often think knowledge comes from degrees or textbooks or maybe the occasional online MasterClass with Tom Hanks.

But in ancient Jewish culture, learning happened by apprenticeship.

You learned a trade by doing it.
You learned the Torah by walking with a rabbi.
You learned wisdom by watching someone live it.

In other words: experience was education.

And some of the best things you now know didn’t come from a sermon or a seminary — they came from living through something hard… and refusing to waste it.

Think about the worst job you’ve ever had.

Like… customer service during the holidays. Or teaching middle school. (Which is basically customer service during the holidays.)

In the moment, you may have hated it.

But now…

You know how to handle difficult people.
You developed grit.
You learned when to speak and when to just smile and nod politely.

That was experience shaping you.

And you didn’t even realize it was happening.

Sometimes the thing that felt like punishment was actually preparation.

Like some of those seemingly “useless skills” you’ve picked up.

You’re the spreadsheet ninja in your friend group.
You know the optimal parking spot at every Costco in the Bay Area.
You can read people’s body language like you have a PhD in awkward silences.

And you’re thinking, “God can’t use this.” Are you sure?

Because the God who used a shepherd’s sling, a widow’s oil, and a tax collector’s pen…

…can definitely use your obscure knowledge of fantasy football algorithms or your uncanny ability to calm toddlers in crisis.

God doesn’t waste anything.

Even your quirks can become your contribution.

Alright point 3 is this:

God can redeem even your most painful experiences for good.

Let’s talk about the part of your story you’d rather skip:

The chapter you don’t read out loud.
The failure you’d like to forget.
The wound that still aches a little when you think about it.

Most of us have something like that.

A regret.
A season of suffering.
A relational fracture.

And we wonder… Can anything good come from that?

The writers of Scripture don’t just say “yes.”

They insists on it.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:

Praise be to the God… who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. (2 Corinthians 1:3–4)

Paul had been beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked, rejected, misunderstood — and he learned how to comfort others not because he was always strong, but because he had been comforted.

He could say to others, “I know what this pain feels like. And I also know the faithfulness of God in the middle of it.”

God’s comfort flows through people who have suffered.

That’s the pattern of redemptive experience.

You’ve been comforted — now you can comfort.
You’ve been broken — now you can relate.

There’s a particular kind of wisdom and empathy that only comes from having been there.

You can read all the books. You can quote all the verses.

But when someone’s walking through a valley, what often helps most is not someone who knows the answer…

It’s someone who knows the feeling.

God allows your experiences — especially your painful ones — to become a resource, not just for you, but for others.

You see, pain doesn’t disqualify you. It prepares you.

There’s a name for God that only appears once in all of Scripture.

It’s El Roi — “The God who sees me.”

It’s not given by Abraham, or Moses, or David.

It’s not spoken in a palace or a temple or a moment of triumph.

It’s given by Hagar — an Egyptian servant girl — in a moment of absolute despair.

She wasn’t part of the covenant promise.
She wasn’t even free to make her own choices.
She was a foreigner, a slave, used by Abraham and Sarah to “help God” fulfill a promise.

And when things got complicated — as they always do when we try to manipulate God’s timing — she was cast out.

Alone. Pregnant. Wandering in the wilderness.

You have to picture this: a young woman with no resources, no status, and no rights — wandering the desert road near Shur, the ancient boundary of Egypt, perhaps thinking she could make it back to the home she’d once been taken from.

In every way, Hagar was invisible to the people who claimed to be God’s chosen.

But she was not invisible to God.

Genesis 16:7 says:

The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert. (Genesis 16:7)

This is the first time in the Bible that the angel of the Lord appears — and it’s not to a patriarch. It’s not to a prophet. It’s to a pregnant, abused runaway.

And he speaks to her by name.

He said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” (Genesis 16:8)

Now, that’s not because he doesn’t know. It’s because she doesn’t.

Hagar doesn’t answer the second part of the question. She doesn’t know where she’s going — only where she’s come from.

That’s what pain does to us. It narrows our vision. It makes tomorrow disappear.

But in that wilderness moment, God sees her.

He acknowledges her pain.
He calls her by name.
He gives her a promise for her child.

And Hagar responds with one of the most powerful declarations in all of Scripture:

“You are the God who sees me.” (Genesis 16:13)

And then she adds:

“I have now seen the One who sees me.”

Some of you are walking through your own desert right now.

You didn’t ask for this season.
You didn’t choose the pain.
You feel invisible — like nobody really knows what you’re carrying.

You keep showing up at work.
You keep managing the drop-offs.
You keep leading the small group or singing on the worship team — but inside, you’re exhausted. Bruised. Maybe even a little bitter.

And what Hagar’s story tells us is this:

God sees you.
He sees the rejection.
He sees the exhaustion.
He sees the confusion about where you’ve come from and the fear about where you’re going.

And just like Hagar, he comes to find you there.

He doesn’t wait for you to make it back to the house.

He meets you by the spring in the wilderness — the place you weren’t even sure you were allowed to be.

And when you’ve been seen by God in your suffering…

You can become a window of grace for someone else in theirs.
You carry that name of God with you — El Roi — “The God who sees me.”

When you listen to someone’s story with empathy…
When you check in on someone quietly grieving…
When you refuse to explain away someone’s pain with spiritual clichés…

You become the hands and feet of the God who sees.

I’m learning this in a deeper way right now.

This season of my life has made me feel unseen at times.

Like I’m carrying things no one else can quite understand.

But I’ve also experienced El Roi in ways I never had before.

In the middle of it all, I’ve felt the presence of God gently say, “I see you.” Not the version of you that preaches sermons or leads a church.

Just you.
The person.
The man.
The father.
The one in the wilderness.

And it’s changing me.

It’s making me more aware of the pain other people carry — sometimes silently.
It’s making me a little slower to speak and a lot quicker to see.

That’s the power of El Roi.

Let’s be honest, christ followers aren’t always the best at this.

Someone shares about their suffering and we say:

“Well, everything happens for a reason.”
“God won’t give you more than you can handle.” (Not in the Bible, by the way.)
Or the worst: “God just needed another angel in heaven.”

No.

God doesn’t need your pain to do something good.

But he can work good out of your pain — because he sees you.

Just like he saw Hagar.

He sees you in the waiting room.
In the court hearing.
In the tear-streaked pillow.
In the quiet moments where you’re just trying to hold it together for your kids.

And that story — your story — isn’t wasted.

It can become the very thing that helps someone else believe they’re not alone.

Which leads us to the fourth point:

Your story isn’t over — and God may use your experience in ways you don’t see yet.

If there’s one thing that keeps us from trusting God with our experiences, it’s this:

“It doesn’t feel finished.”

Maybe your story still feels… unresolved.

The marriage didn’t get saved.
The diagnosis didn’t get reversed.
The prayers didn’t get answered the way you hoped.
The dream didn’t come true.

You’re still in the middle of the story — and that’s hard.

Think about Naomi in the book of Ruth that I mentioned just a few moments ago.

When we meet her, she’s lost everything: Her husband, her sons, her security, her future.

She goes back to her hometown and says:

Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. (Ruth 1:20)

You can feel the weight of her sorrow in that name change.

Naomi means “pleasant.” Mara means “bitter.”

She doesn’t sugarcoat it. She’s not pretending. She’s honest about the hurt.

But Naomi’s story wasn’t over.

Through Ruth — a foreigner, a widow, a surprising source of blessing — Naomi becomes the great-great-grandmother of King David.

And through David, the ancestor of Jesus Christ.

Can you imagine?

She thought her story was closing in bitterness…

But she went from bitter to blessed — not because everything got easy, but because she stayed open to what God was doing in her even when everything around her was broken.

God was still writing in the redemption arc.

And that’s true for you, too.

Some of you are walking through heartbreak right now.

You’re sitting in church, doing your best not to cry when worship songs touch a nerve you weren’t ready to face.

And maybe you’re wondering:

“How is God going to use this?”

I get it. There are days I ask, “God, what are you doing with me?”

And sometimes, all I hear is: “I’m doing something in you.”

There are days when I wonder, “What will this mean for my calling? For my future? For my identity?”

And yet… in the cracks, grace seeps through.

Because I’m learning that even in this, God is not finished.

Even now, God is shaping something new in me — a deeper empathy, a slower judgment, a quieter strength.

This isn’t a polished story with a perfect bow at the end.

I’m still in the middle.

But already, I can see that this chapter is part of the calling — not apart from it.

And if you’re walking through something right now, please hear me:

God doesn’t just redeem the final outcome.
He redeems you.
The whole you.
Even the messy, limping, hurting version of you.

In Hebrew storytelling, they didn’t rush to the ending.

They lingered in the tension. They let questions breathe.

Because sometimes that’s where faith is formed — not in resolution, but in waiting.

So if you’re in the middle, take heart.

Your story is not over.

And God is not done with you yet.

Alright, last point:

Your experiences are meant to be shared.

Some of us live like our stories are meant to be kept in a vault.

We don’t want people to know what we’ve walked through.

We think:

“If they knew the whole story, they’d respect me less.”

Or maybe, “If they knew the mess, they’d stop seeing me as strong.”

But when Jesus changes your life, the most powerful thing you can do… is tell someone what he’s done.

In John 4, Jesus meets a woman at a well.

She has a complicated story.

Five marriages. Rejected by her community. Coming to the well at noon to avoid the stares.

She’s not exactly the model citizen in town.

But Jesus doesn’t shame her. He speaks to her with dignity. He sees her.

He gives her living water. And then something powerful happens.

She runs back to her village — the same village that likely rejected her:

Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”

The very experiences she once hid become the invitation to meet Jesus.

She doesn’t quote Scripture.
She doesn’t have theological training.
She just tells her story — and people respond.

And the text says:

They came out of the town and made their way toward him. (John 4:28–30)

This woman went from shame to storyteller in the span of a conversation.

Why?

Because she realized the most powerful thing she had… was her honest experience with Jesus.

So many people think they have nothing to offer because they’re still in process.

But what if the very fact that you’re in process is what makes you relatable?

There’s someone in your life who doesn’t need a sermon. They don’t need a pep talk.

They just need to hear that you get it — that you’ve walked through grief, or addiction, or disillusionment, or that you’ve had your faith rattled and didn’t walk away.

Your experience might be the reason someone else doesn’t give up.
The pain you’ve walked through might give someone else the strength to keep walking.
The insight you’ve gained might be the exact encouragement someone needs in their lowest moment.

You don’t need to share everything. But when the time is right, the story God is writing in you may be exactly what someone else needs to hear to trust that he’s still at work.

Your pain doesn’t disqualify you from ministry — it qualifies you to love people more deeply.

Sometimes we want to move on from our past so quickly that we miss the chance to mine it for wisdom.

What did that experience teach you?
What did God show you in the waiting?
How did it grow your character?

Because someone else is about to walk that road — and they need a guide.

They need someone who’s limped through it.
They need someone who can say, “I’ve been there… and I’m still here. And I believe you will be too.”

And let’s be clear:

You don’t need a stage.
You don’t need a podcast.
You don’t need a huge platform.
You just need courage to share what God’s done.

Maybe with a friend over coffee.
Maybe in your small group.
Maybe by showing up consistently for someone else who feels like they’re drowning.

God doesn’t waste anything. Not even the parts of your story you’d rather erase.

He repurposes them — so someone else can find hope.

Have you ever heard someone share their story and think, “Wow. My story is boring in comparison.”

Like:

“I was doing cocaine in a hot tub with the Russian mafia — and then Jesus appeared to me in a vision through the steam.”

Meanwhile, you’re like:

“I started following Jesus in 3rd grade after watching a VeggieTales episode…”

Listen — it’s not about dramatic conversion. It’s about authentic transformation.

And you have no idea what God can do with your honest story.

Your marriage that’s still a work-in-progress.
Your career shift that felt like failure but turned into freedom.
Your long road through grief.
Your journey with anxiety.
Your experience as a caregiver.
Your life as a single parent.

Don’t underestimate the power of your scars and the weight of your words.

You know what — there’s this subtle lie a lot of us buy into:

That once we’ve healed, once we’ve got everything figured out, once we’ve resolved the pain or made sense of the past… then God will use us.

But God doesn’t wait for that.

God uses broken vessels.
God uses winding paths.
God uses scars that are still healing.

And if you’re in a season right now where you’re wondering: “Can anything good come from this?”

You’re not alone.

I’m walking through a painful, unexpected chapter — and I’m asking God some of the same things you are.

But I’m learning that our most painful experiences often become the most powerful places of connection.

The gospel is not about having it all together.

The gospel is that Jesus came to meet us in the middle of our mess — and redeem every part of our story for his purpose.

And what the enemy intended to shame you or silence you… God may just use to save someone else.

You are made for more.
You’ve been shaped by experience.
And your story — yes, your story — may be exactly what someone else needs to hear to take a step toward Jesus.

So don’t hide it.
Don’t edit it.
And don’t assume God can’t use it.

He already is.

Alright, pray with me as the worship team comes to lead us in a closing song.