Let us pray. Our Father, we thank You for bringing us into Your presence, we pray that Your word will awaken faith in our hearts, and we pray that You will expose every agreement with fear, with failure, and with defeat and You will destroy them in Jesus name.
Holy Spirit, we ask that You take absolute control of this service, do what only You can do and let Your name be glorified, in Jesus name we have prayed.
Mountain movers, shout hallelujah! It’s a great joy to join our daddy to welcome every one of us after such a victorious and highly successful convention, and I also want to congratulate every one of us for the elevation of our parish to a Regional Headquarter Parish. And I want to specially congratulate our daddy, our new Regional Pastor.
Thank you so much sir for this opportunity. I thank our mommy who has been strongly supporting our daddy and the entire pastorate, and I also want to thank you that every Sunday you are here to fellowship with us. It’s my prayer that the God that you serve will do great things in your life in Jesus name.
By the grace of God, I want to share with us in today’s service the topic I’ve titled “Two Kinds of Faith: Faith in God or Faith in Failure”. We will take our text, about three of them, Mark 11:22-24, “And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. 23For verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he say saith shall come to pass; it shall have whatsoever he saith. 24Therefore I say unto you, what things soever you desire, when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you shall have them”. Praise the Lord!
Numbers 13: 25-33, “And they returned from searching of the land after forty days. 26And they went and came to Moses, and to Aaron, and to all the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the.wilderness of Paran, to Kadesh; and brought back word unto them, and unto all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. 27And they told him, and said, we came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it.
28Nevertheless the people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great: and moreover we saw the children of Anak there. 29The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south: and the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites, dwell in the mountains: and the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and by the coast of Jordan. 30And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.
31But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we. 32And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. 33And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight”. Numbers 14: 1, “And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night”.
Also Numbers 14: 6-9, “And Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes: 7And they spoke unto all the company of the children of Israel, saying, The land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land. 8If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey. 9Only rebel not ye against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defense is departed from them, and the Lord is with us: fear them not. May the Lord bless the reading of His word in Jesus name.
Beloved, everybody is believing something, that’s the truth. When we hear the word ‘faith’, we usually think of something positive, we usually talk about faith with regards to believing in God, believing God for something, but we know that people can also develop confidence in negative outcomes.
How does this happen? Some people are more certain that they will fail than they are that God will help them. In fact, they are sure that they will fail, they cannot believe that God can help them because of their situation, they trust their fears, their history, their background, a medical report that is not good. They look at the economy, they even consider somebody else’s opinion about themselves more than the trust in God.
And I would like you to just pause for a few seconds and think about this, so what is it that has made you to trust in fears, in uncertainties, in other people’s opinions about you more than what God can do for you? When Jesus said have faith in God, He did not say pretend that the mountains are not there, in fact, the next thing He said is you will say to this mountain. So Jesus also recognizes that [skipped] fear in failure says this challenge will overwhelm me, I can’t get out of it.
What have you become more certain about, brethren? Is it the faithfulness of God or the possibility that you will fail? I ask, it’s only you that can answer that question, brethren, because we are in church, we will all say, “Oh, we believe in God, we believe in the faithfulness of God,” but I tell people that when the chips are down, it is then you know whether we truly believe in God or we have faith or not.
Numbers 13 that we read gives us a very vivid account to illustrate what we are talking about today; twelve spies, they saw the same land, the same fruit, the same cities that had walls, the same giants, but they brought opposite report. Same things they saw, what was the difference? The difference was the object of their confidence.
The ten spies compared themselves with the giants, (take note, brethren), and before the giants they were actually nothing, there was no way for them to defeat those giants and possess that land. But what did Joshua and Caleb do? They changed the reference, they compared the giants with God, and with that kind of comparison, what do you think happened? The giants became nothing, because before God, the giants were nothing, so their faith arose, they were able to inspire the people that we can overcome the land.
So faith in failure gives the problem the authority to predict the future, but that’s what they said, the ten spies, we are not able. It has not even happened but they already were predicting the future that we are not able to achieve this thing, but faith in God sees the same problem but gives God the final word, the Maker of heaven and earth. It’s my prayer that the Lord will help us in Jesus name.
So I’m going to take us through about six examples of our everyday life experiences to show when we manifest this faith in failure. In fact, it’s like a progression, so you know where you are and it’s my prayer today, we will also be taking a few prayers and the choir will help us later so that God will break that cycle, because amongst us here, there are giants, brethren, but the giant in us is sleeping.
Amongst us here are billionaires, if I ask you now, so who are the billionaires you think are in this church? You know some of you will be pointing to other people but you will never point to yourself, that is what we are talking about. No, you will not even point to yourself that is possible, you look at your situation, which magic, how is it going to happen, a maiguard like me in a house here, how is it going to happen? It’s my prayer that the Lord will open our eyes and we’ll begin to see ourselves differently in Jesus name.
So the first thing I want to talk about is fear and unbelief, because this is where faith in failure normally will begin in our expectations, we expect the worst. I had a slip in my staircase a few weeks ago and I hit one of my fingers badly on the rail with blood clot and all of that. I showed somebody, he said whitlow, I said God forbid whitlow. You can see the way we think, where is whitlow coming from?
We expect the worst, that is what fear does, it affects what we expect, it begins with a possibility, sometimes is a question, what if I fail? So why are you asking what if I fail? What if the sickness becomes worse? So why can’t you expect that oh, this sickness will go away? In fact, some of us, even that doctor’s report, the doctor is telling us you will improve, you are saying doctor don’t lie to me, this my own situation, in fact, is not the one that can – no, some of us, even that our doctors – you are having a conversation with your doctor, you think the doctor is not telling you the truth, you think doctor is just whining you to make you feel good.
So why must we always think that way? What if my child never changes? Fear may begin as an emotion, but when it becomes faith in failure, that prediction that is saying – it begins to make us feel it is even God that is speaking, you begin to accept it as if it’s reality.
The passage we read earlier, Numbers 13:31, what did the text say? We be not able to go up against these people, say they are stronger than we, were they lying about the giant? Were there no giants in the land? There were giants, but they left God out of the conclusion.
Please take note, what they saw were giants, but what was wrong in what they concluded? They left God out because that’s what some of us do, but Joshua and Caleb said, “The Lord is with us, fear them not.” Fear magnifies the enemy until God disappears from the conversation, that’s what fear does. It makes you to just begin to focus, ‘oh, this thing is so bad’, all of a sudden, you cannot even think that God can send you help but faith brings God into the conversation. It’s my prayer that the Lord will help us in Jesus name.
Let’s quickly look at some contemporary ways we look at this thing that it manifests. Two people who are qualified, they see the same job opening, one of them says people like me are never selected, (he has not even applied), I cannot face another rejection. What then happens? He does not apply. It’s a tragedy, brethren.
The other says, I may not be able to control the decision, I don’t even know anybody in that company, but what will I do? I will pray, I will prepare, I will apply. Are we saying here that all your application will be successful? No, so faith doesn’t guarantee that every application will succeed, but it refuses to let an imagined rejection make the final decision even before the employer does. Because you did not apply, so an imagined rejection has already caught you up from that process. It’s my prayer that the Lord will deliver us in Jesus name.
So we can say that fear is faith in the power of what might go wrong. You believe so much in it, it can never happen, haba, how would they take somebody like me? Therefore you don’t even apply. But faith in God is confidence in the One who remains in control; I’ve been in interview panel and I saw myself even clarifying questions to people we are interviewing, so you never can tell what God will do, but if you allow fear to limit you, you will not even be able to move forward at all.
Fear moves from the mind, then to the mouth, that’s the next thing. So what we repeatedly expect, we soon begin to announce with our own mouth. Negative confession is the second thing I want to talk about. Speaking defeat into the future, the future that has never happened, so negative confession affects what we say, the mouth begins to announce the defeat that fear has already accepted in our hearts.
Numbers 14:2 says, with God that we had died in the wilderness, that’s what they were saying, Israelites, but at the end, in fact, even in Numbers 14:28, God told them, as you have spoken in my ears, I will do for you; so all of them died in the wilderness. Let’s be careful what we say with our mouth, brethren.
So let’s look at (maybe) contemporary example of this, what is the language of faith on failure? Nothing ever works for me, who says? My children will never change, who says? Nobody in my family succeeds; at my age, is too late. You just give up on yourself, you speak things that you should not be saying to yourself, these are sweeping verdicts over a future that belongs to God, a future that does not belong to you.
Beloved, anything can change in another one year, in fact, anything can change before the end of this month, so don’t make proclamations about your future carelessly brethren, because you belong to God.
So let me see a practical example of this. A parent repeatedly calls a struggling child useless, what do you think the child will do? The child accepts and begins to wear the label, ‘mommy says I’m useless anyway’. A business owner declares after just one bad season, this business can never recover, what do you think the owner will do? He will stop looking for solution because he has declared that oh, nothing good can come from this business again.
Meanwhile, there are turnaround experts, there are businesses that died they brought back, in fact, there are even people that look for businesses that are dying to buy. The Lord will help us in Jesus name.
The third thing, because negative words then grow from a negative perception of ourselves, the spies did not only see giants, they see themselves as grasshoppers. So comparison and inferiority is the next thing I want to talk about, seeing ourselves as grasshoppers just because of what we see about others.
Inferiority affects how we see ourselves, the phrase in our own sight is crucial because we say we were in our own sight like grasshoppers, before the enemy defeated them they had already reduced themselves and forgotten that they are covenant children, they belong to God, they forgot.
In fact, if you look at what happened between the Israelites and Goliath, when they saw Goliath, they ran away, they fled. But David looked at the same Goliath and said, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine?” Was David physically bigger than Goliath? No, he simply compared Goliath with God rather than comparing himself with Goliath. When David did that, immediately he started to see that Goliath was nothing compared to God, he saw that oh, this Goliath can be defeated.
So let’s look at a contemporary way we also express this. We begin to look at people with Master’s degrees from Wanton, from Harvard, your own is from one state school or private school that is not even known. We look at salaries that people earn, 200 million, 300 million, you’re not even earning up to 100,000; we look at marriages, appearance, connections, and unfortunately with social media, edited successes that people put out there on social media, edited.
Comparison says, “She has what I do not have, therefore, I cannot become what God has called me to be’, is that true? But that’s what we do. Praise the Lord.
So let’s see a practical example. You may not have another person’s education, which is true, you may not have another person’s accent, my English is not Queen’s English, but thank God you can hear me. You may not have another person’s net worth or starting capital, those facts may affect your root. I started from Ijegun, some of you don’t even know apart from Lekki; Ijegun is somewhere in Alimosho local government, but I’m here in your midst today, appreciate God for me brethren.
When I had my first child I could not afford the napkin (I think it’s napkin they call it, no, I said napkin you’re going too far with diapers), my wife had to use (women know how to sort out themselves) the pieces of cloth that they have used, but when I had the last one, twins, they used diapers for two years, that is how God works. Praise the Lord.
Don’t look at somebody else and begin to use that to just look down yourself, nothing good can happen again in your life. It may require training, brethren, so faith is not ignoring the things you need to do. You may need to seek counsel, you may need to do more work, I know how it was when I got married but I know how my daughter got married last year. I was ready to just serve zobo, but I wouldn’t give you zobo last year. Praise the Lord!
So don’t let inferiority convert a disadvantage into a death sentence. It’s true some people, if you look at it, God bless our RCCG, God bless CTL, in this church you can see we have MDs here, we also have security maiguards, house-helps here in this same service, I mean look at that gap but don’t look down on yourself because of that, brethren, there is hope for you in Jesus name.
Don’t make another person’s advantage to become the proof of your own impossibility, no, it’s not, it’s not at all, but the problem is once people begin to feel small about themselves, they begin to interpret visible resources as the absolute boundary of what can happen, they forget that God can do beyond their resources, so the next thing is then walking only by sight, leaving God out of the calculation.
So sight only thinking, what does it do? It affects how we interpret circumstances. In fact, when Jesus told the disciples, what do we have? We have a lot of multitude here to feed, John 6:7 says, 200 penny worth of bread is not sufficient for them, meanwhile Jesus already knew what He was going to do but Philip already concluded we don’t have anything for these people.
Let’s take a contemporary way we also look at this walking by sight. I do not have the money so it cannot happen, I don’t know anybody influential so no door can open for me, the report is so negative so it means therefore there is no hope. Does it mean there’s no hope? The report could actually be very bad but you have to seek complete care, seek help, seek guidance and trust what God can do. It’s my prayer that God will turn things around for you in Jesus name. Praise the Lord!
So the next thing now we’ll look at is procrastination, because what He has instructed me to do, so are we doing what God has instructed us to do? Procrastination and disobedience, postponing the action that faith requires, we are praying and praying but we are not doing what we are supposed to do.
In fact, Joshua 18:3 says how long are ye slack to go to possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers hath given you? Israel needed to still go and possess the land but they were slack. So people pray for employment but they don’t update their CV, they don’t even apply; they pray for reconciliation they don’t even apologize; they pray for good health but they ignore that they have been talking about go for checkup, they ignore appropriate treatment, they live a life that damages health.
They are praying for financial stability but they spend anyhow, they don’t even care. How will it happen? Sometime, procrastination, we say we are waiting on God, are we really waiting on God? God is waiting on us to take action. The Lord will deliver us in Jesus name.
What is procrastination in short? It is faith in tomorrow’s opportunity without obedience to today’s instruction. So what you are supposed to do today, you are not doing it; you are believing that you will be a billionaire, how will it happen? Beloved, you are just daydreaming, the Lord will deliver us from such dreams in Jesus name.
But what if you did act and still failed? What if the disappointment is not imagined, but it’s real. That’s the last thing we’ll just talk about before we pray, allowing past failure to become a permanent identity. Past failure affects who we believe we are, I’ll just give us an example, so you failed, what will you conclude? I’m a failure. Is it not what we say? I failed, I’m a failure, just one event, it creates an identity.
A failed examination becomes what? I’m unintelligent; a collapsed business becomes I can never succeed in anything, it was business, but you now say ‘in anything’; even a believer who fell into sin, God can never use me again.
Beloved, faith in God learns from failure, you must learn from your failure, examine what happened, accept responsibility, make restitution where necessary, seek counsel, change the habits that are destructive and the patterns that have not been serving you so that God will turn things around for you.
In conclusion, brethren, you have to change your agreement. Can you see what we have talked about? Faith in failure begins by predicting what will happen and ends by telling us who we are, but faith in God reverses that progression. Faith in God says my expectation is from God, the Lord is with me, I am well able, I’m His child, yes the facts are real but God has the final word. At Your word, Lord, I will obey, I may have fallen but I will arise. It’s my prayer that we will arise in Jesus name.
Just before we pray, brethren, the biggest failure we can have is to live our lives not fulfilling purpose, is to live here on earth and not make heaven. I don’t know if anybody is in the house, you want to surrender your life to Jesus, but you must address the greatest failure that is possible to die without reconciling with God, it can happen anytime.
[Altar call]
Let us stand up as we pray. Beloved, you’re going to join me, I don’t know where you belong in all of these things we have talked about but I want you to just cry to God and say Father, please have mercy on me, forgive every fearful conclusion, unbelieving agreement and negative verdict I have spoken over my future.
Just begin to pray; in any way even by your own mouth you have said nothing good will ever come out of me, no matter how I struggle, is not possible, I will not get a husband again. Who says you will not get a husband again? Who says it’s too late for you? Beloved, cry to God, Father, please have mercy, have mercy on me, help me, help my unbelief, renew my mind. In Jesus name we have prayed.
You are still going to join me and say Father, every stronghold of inferiority complex, every stronghold of failure consciousness operating in my life, Lord, let them be destroyed by Your power, in Jesus name we have prayed.
You will still join me and say Father, every mountain of sickness, every mountain of delay, every mountain of stagnation, oppression, barrenness, repeated failure standing against Your purpose for my life, Lord, let them all become a plain, in Jesus name we have prayed.
So we’ll just take this declaration quickly. You will join me, you will say my faith is in God, I reject fear, I reject unbelief, I reject negative confession, I refuse comparison, I refuse grasshopper mentality, I will not limit God to what I can see, I receive grace to obey God’s instruction without delay. My past failure you will not become my identity, the Lord is with me therefore I am well able, every mountain before me shall become a plain, where I’ve fallen before I shall arise again.
As we have declared so will the Lord do for you in Jesus name. God bless you.
