Flourish || When You Feel Like You Are Failing
What does it mean to Flourish?
Definition: To sprout, to blossom, to break forth
Meaning: To break forth as a, bud, to spread, to fly
Let’s talk about when we feel we are Failing?
Feeling come from our Heart: thoughts, feelings and desires
God cautions us not to trust our feeling
Jeremiah 17:9 NLT
The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked.
Sometimes, we feel we are failing but we actually are not.
2 Corinthians 10:5 says, “We must take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.”
Let’s be real here, sometimes we feel like we are failing because we are failing.
We need to take these things to the Lord.
“Lord, I'm feeling this way, I’m having these thoughts, are they yours?”
He is so good! John 8:32, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
What is the truth? What does God say about Failing?
Failure- Hamartia (hah-mar-tee-ah).
Meaning: missing the mark, hence guilt, sin: fault, failure (in an ethical sense), sinful deed
Like an Archery Target (Vision God gave me)
We get to try again! With Him!
How do we flourish when we feel like we are failing?
By being transplanted into His courts!
Psalms 92:12-15. “But ‘you’ godly ‘women’ will flourish like palm trees and grow strong like the cedars of Lebanon.13 For ‘you’ are transplanted to the Lord’s own house. ‘You will’ flourish in the courts of our God. 14 Even in old age ‘you’ will still produce fruit; ‘you’ will remain vital and green. 15 ‘You” will declare, “The Lord is just! He is my rock! There is no evil in him!”
Once we come to Him, repent...He wipes it all clean!
He takes us from where we were and transplants us into His beautiful garden in His own house!
Now we are a new person in a new place! The old life is gone, a new life has begun! A new life of flourishing because we are in the Lord's own house! (2 Corinthians 5:17)
We give Him the bow and arrow and commit to doing life with HIm!
Psalms 103:12, “He has removed our sin as far from us as the east is from the west.
He remembers our failures or missed marks no more!
Ephesians 1:7, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.”
Remain in Him!
John 15:1-5
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes[a] so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
1 Kings 17:8-24.
The Widow at Zarephath 1 Kings 17:8-24 NIV
8 Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah: 9 “Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.” 10 So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” 11 As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.”
12 “As surely as the Lord your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”
This is a woman who felt like she was failing, actually I think she already has decided she has failed!
13 Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. 14 For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.’”
She heard the Lord's voice.
God gave her an opportunity to try for the target again, this time with Him.
15 She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. 16 For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah.
Her obedience allowed her to flourish even though she felt like she was failing!
Did You catch that? It produced overflow for her, her family and her city!
Her obedience allowed her to flourish!
Obedience=Success! Obedience =Overflow!
17 Some time later the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse, and finally stopped breathing. 18 She said to Elijah, “What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?”
The spirit of Failure came knocking her door again!
She took her feelings of failure and sin back to God. To the only One who can fix them.
19 “Give me your son,” Elijah replied.
Bring your failures to God!
He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. 20 Then he cried out to the Lord, “Lord my God, have you brought tragedy even on this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?” 21 Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried out to the Lord, “Lord my God, let this boy’s life return to him!”
22 The Lord heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived. 23 Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, “Look, your son is alive!”
24 Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.”
When we give God our dead, defeated failures He gives them back to us alive!
Now her eyes are on God, not her failures!
This is what God wants to do in your lives. Give Him your failures!!!
4 Ways to Flourish When you Feel Like you are Failing:
First: Repent and Forget the Past Failures. Do not dwell on the past.
My Testimony
2 years ago during corporate fast, reading through the New Testament
Sitting in Secret Place I realized I had failed as a
Wife:
wasn’t submitted to my husband
Dishonoring him
Mother:
Allowed my children to witness my dishonor
Allowed them to participate with me
More concerned with their behavior making me look bad then their heart
Now beginning to join serve teams while I was not committed to the values of The Lord's House
I sat there wallowing in my self pity and dwelling upon all my failures when God brought me to Isaiah 43:18-19.
He said it so clearly to me.
“Celeste, forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
As I sat there in His presence repenting for my sins, failures I felt His forgiveness. His love and His promise of hope to make a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland for me.
I felt Him transplanting me from my old self to my new place in His courts. Where He can take care of me as the gardener does.
He showed me what He was doing in my life and my heart. How He was transforming my heart, thoughts and eventually my behaviors to be more like His.
He showed me that it’s not about modifying my behavior, it’s about the POWER of God!
It’s Him transforming me!
He just wanted me to sit still in His presence and allow Him to do it!
I gave Him my failures!
I repented. He forgave me and gave me the strength to forget the former things and to no longer dwell in the past.
Word of advice: We only look back at our failures when God brings it up because He wants to heal, deliver or teach us something.
Second: Daily, Seek Him in the Secret Place.
Psalms 91:1-2 KJV, “He that dwelleth in the Secret Place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.”
Get into His presence!
Church shouldn’t only be were you encounter HIm
Ask for His eyes to see yourself as He sees you.
Daughter of the living King
Loved
Forgiven
Transplanted to and flourishing in His courts
THIRD: Walk in Obedience.
John 14:23, Jeus replied, “All who love me will do what I say. My father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of you.”
This is how we flourish! It’s Him in us!
He is going to show you things in the Secret Place. Don’t wait to be obedient. Obedience equals success.
Examples of obediences God has called me into
fourth: Remain in His courts and visualize yourself Flourishing! He is the one that makes us flourish!
It’s living a life submitted to Him.
It’s His transforming power that takes us from where we were, and “transplants us into the Lord’s own house. There we will flourish in the courts of our God,” Psalms 92:13.
Practical advice. My sticky notes, our shirts!
Ministry Moment:
Ask God to show us where we have picked up the bow and told Him we can do it ourselves.
Give Him our failures
Pray Isaiah 43:18-19
Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.19 See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
