Failure is NOT Final
The world will not understand your faith,in most cases family and friends will turn against you.They won’t understand because they can’t understand. Faith is a deeply personal thing that only God and you are privy to. Faith and doubt are things of the heart and only you and God can go there, walk by faith, walking by sight will keep you a slave to the world. When I got out of prison I realize the only way I would find peace joy and happiness was to walk by faith.
Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes (in his heart) that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Mark 11: 23
Others cannot help you in your walk of faith. They can encourage you, they can point you to the right scriptures, and they can give you what impressions they may have by the Holy Spirit, but that is it. Because faith requires one to step out and take a risk, they will try to talk you out of it. What if Peter had asked the others in the boat if he should try walking on water? You know they would have talked him out of it. It made no sense. Faith only makes sense to the one who believes. You must claim it, because you believe in the living God…
The world will try to tear your faith down, and many times those around you will NOT help. Jesus had this problem throughout his life. He was blazing a new path of faith for all humanity, and it is not surprising that most if not all the people around Him did not understand. Many were downright hostile to Him, including members of His own family.
My cell phone vibrated against the boardroom table for the tenth time in an hour. I apologized and excused myself from the room. I was out of state in a business meeting while one of my employees was back home handling a $20 million deal. He was scared out of his mind that he would mess up.The last thing I wanted was to find myself upside down on a deal that large. However, I’d prayed it through and had clear direction from the Lord. He gave me the greenlight for the project but specified that he was the one to handle it.“You can do this,” I assured him. “Just remember that I’m praying for you.”My employees called me The Shepherd because I spent so much time in prayer.I liked this new title. It felt good to guide, like a shepherd.
Owning any business, especially an oil company, meant being bombarded with opportunities to get into fear. I refused to do it. I knew that fear was a tool of the devil and any decision I made prompted by fear would be wrong. My goal was to operate in complete faith. Once I was convinced that God wanted me to do something, I was fearless.My Chief Financial Officer (CFO) appeared puffed up and pompous as he marched into my office one day and put a spreadsheet on my desk. “We’re going broke!” he announced.I didn’t take the bait. “We have money in the bank,” I said in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper.“Sure, we do now! But if you’ll look at these projections, you’ll see that in six months we’ll be in trouble. Out of respect to your employees, you should call everyone together and tell them you’re going broke.”“I don’t think so.”“What do you intend to do?” “Wait on God and watch Him do a miracle.”
My CFO gathered up his spreadsheets and huffed out of my office. I refused to get into fear and neither would I micromanage him. I took the situation to God in prayer.
Six months later, we had a balanced budget. We weren’t even close to going broke.I let my CFO go.
On another occasion, I’d been in negotiations with Shell Oil and American Airlines in a $100 million deal to buy jet fuel. It looked sweet but when I crunched the numbers, it didn’t work. In addition, I didn’t have a green light from God. So I bowed out of the deal.People got crazy when millions of dollars were on the line. Afterwards, the trader called and threatened to kill me.
“I’m killing you!” he screamed. The sound of gunfire blasted through the telephone. I wasn’t afraid. In fact, I found him entertaining.“I know where you live!” he shouted. “I’m coming for you!”“Let me make sure you have the right address,” I said reeling it off without an ounce of fear.When I got off the phone, I prayed for the guy. He needed help.I’d figured out that until I learned to control distractions, I would never be able to do what God called me to do.
Sometimes God will simply run a protective shield around you where nothing will be able to get through to attack you. Other times something will start to slip through to come directly against you, and then God will move ahead of you to take it out. This is where God will literally take your enemy head on and do battle with it.
Sometimes God will fight the actual battle through you,other times He will simply tell you to hold your position and do absolutely nothing, and then He will move Himself to completely take out the attack coming against you. This is where God shows you how powerful and how awesome He really is when He moves into battle to personally protect you. I committed crimes and was sent to prison, God fought all of my battles inside those walls of hell on earth, “prison”
