Latest / Witness the Wonder Christian Podcast: Supernatural Christian Testimonies, Miracles, and God Stories / Finding the Blessing in Failure | Pastor Duke White Jr.

Transcript

Finding the Blessing in Failure | Pastor Duke White Jr. · Witness the Wonder Christian Podcast: Supernatural Christian Testimonies, Miracles, and God Stories

• 0:00
  And then I get cancer. Some stories change the way you
• 0:03
  see failure, not because of what was lost, but because of what
• 0:07
  faith looks like when there's nothing left to hold on to.
• 0:11
  And I'm like, now my body's failing me and I'm going, God,
• 0:15
  what would you bring me this far for now that I'm going to now
• 0:18
  I'm going to die of cancer. And now I'm fearing this.
• 0:21
  And I'm like, wait a second. I'm not going to stay in my head
• 0:24
  because I have community now. So I started telling people,
• 0:28
  particularly you guys, the warrior, right?
• 0:30
  And I started telling you guys, hey, this is what's happening.
• 0:32
  The benefit of knowing that I had people praying for me.
• 0:37
  I'm like, I'm coming out of this because I had kidney cancer and
• 0:40
  colon cancer at the same time. So I'm going, there's no way
• 0:44
  that I'm going to like the doctor already has the
• 0:46
  diagnosis, right? So I only have two choices to
• 0:50
  trust him and have faith or my, my body's already failing me
• 0:54
  that that decision is already made.
• 0:55
  So I, I, so I'm like, well, there's no other choice.
• 0:57
  If I want to live, I have to invest in faith and trusting
• 1:01
  him. I would feel the prayers of the
• 1:04
  believers when I put it out there and let people know what
• 1:06
  was going on with me. And somehow when I had to go
• 1:09
  through that resting place, it 1 miracle was they found the
• 1:13
  cancer was on the kidney but not in the kidney.
• 1:16
  This let me know that there's often failure can be on us but
• 1:21
  not in US. And as long as failure is not in
• 1:23
  you, you can still still push through and fade.
• 1:26
  And so I was like, I don't have to let this in.
• 1:28
  But there was only one way to do it.
• 1:30
  I had to completely surrender to step away from the radio show.
• 1:33
  I had to step away from Goodview.
• 1:35
  And now I'm letting that go, which took me so long to build
• 1:39
  and connect with people. And I remember going, Oh my
• 1:41
  gosh, how is this going to work without me?
• 1:43
  How is that going to work without me, me, me.
• 1:46
  And I'm like, oh, I deep inside, it's still about my ability.
• 1:50
  And so I just went into this place of rest and surrender and
• 1:54
  peace. And the world kept turning and
• 1:57
  it didn't fall apart. People were still praying for
• 1:59
  me. I get healed going for the colon
• 2:01
  cancer surgery and I get a report back that I was
• 2:05
  completely healed. And interesting enough, there
• 2:08
  was a woman by the name of Shannon that I met on TikTok.
• 2:11
  And I was encouraging them on TikTok.
• 2:13
  And she asked me when I told them what was going to happen.
• 2:15
  And she kept saying, it's going to be amazing when they go in
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  there and find nothing. And I was like, all right, yeah.
• 2:21
  But I'm more like, I'm like, but even if he doesn't, I know that
• 2:25
  he can. That was my, I was trying to
• 2:26
  play it safe, right? Why?
• 2:28
  I'm still trying to avoid failure and disappointment
• 2:33
  because when your body's sick and your, your life's on the
• 2:36
  line, you're afraid to believe that you can be healed in one
• 2:41
  sense, but you're also afraid to not trust God fully.
• 2:44
  So we try to find scriptures that like little loopholes.
• 2:47
  Well, even if we go through the fire, you know, I know that he
• 2:50
  can or if he doesn't deliver me, I saw I was choosing that
• 2:53
  scripture because it was safe, but she kept pushing me to say,
• 2:56
  no, they're going to go in there and find nothing.
• 2:58
  And I honestly just wanted her to be quiet during the prayer.
• 3:01
  Like just pray and and I'll yeah, and she wouldn't let me.
• 3:04
  She just kept every time she was like, it's going to be amazing
• 3:07
  that they're going to find out. Go well, even if it doesn't.
• 3:09
  She did it three times and I was like, OK, you're right.
• 3:12
  Sure enough, they go in there and the IT, the cancer just goes
• 3:16
  away, you know, and I think 3 weeks later I'm at NRB, the next
• 3:20
  NRB and that's where I met you was the very next and I'm
• 3:24
  looking and I'm going show the the the opposite of failure is
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  not success. The opposite of failure is
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  trusting God. I was going to say it's.
• 3:35
  Faith, it's faith. The opposite of failure is faith
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  because failure can give you a revelation, Failure can correct
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  you Failure can can become a fuel to say, OK, well now that I
• 3:47
  I know that God has called me to do this.
• 3:49
  Now that I know that that wasn't the right way, Now that I know
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  that that wasn't God, if we don't remove our ego, what
• 3:54
  happens is we'll try to just keep doing the same thing over.
• 3:58
  I know God showed me this way. Well, what if he showed you that
• 4:02
  he was going to do something? But what were your instructions?
• 4:06
  Yo did did you try to do what he said he was going to do through
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  you? And and This is why dependency
• 4:13
  is, is so important to have this saying what inspires you,
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  informs you and what informs you interrupts you and what it
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  strucks you, you will believe and what you believe is what you
• 4:27
  become. This is where it's like, well,
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  God, you are my inspiration. He started showing me how it
• 4:34
  even looks like failure was there with God.
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  He gave man instructions. Don't eat the fruit, they ate
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  the fruit. He made man.
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  Man brings all this chaos, yet he also had salvation before the
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  earth was. Now this is big.
• 4:49
  This is huge. When it comes to to our
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  identity, I call God the all prepared one.
• 4:55
  Not only is he all knowing, is he all powerful, but he's always
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  prepared. So I realized most of us try to
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  use our faith as reactive, not preparation.
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  You know, most of us, the reason why failure is so heavy on us is
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  because most of us go right into we want to go from presence to
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  perform when the truth is it's presence process, perform.
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  God propels prepared people and if we don't give God time enough
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  to prepare us, then when we, when we launch ourselves out,
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  we're naturally going to be inadequate.
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  So we've got to have patience for God to really give us peace
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  for God to show us that we're, we're, we're strong enough on
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  the inside, not because of our own strength, but because we're
• 5:43
  in his hands. He's the same God that can make
• 5:46
  a son with his hands, but also hold you so just as strong as he
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  can carve out a, a, a mountain with his spirit in his hands.
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  He can also be gentle enough to untangle you from wrong thinking
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  insecurities. You know, these are, these are
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  things that will entangle us, keeping us from pure faith.
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  The more that we're in his presence, the more prepared we
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  become, the more, the less we're trying to control the outcome.
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  And, and, and the storms that are on the outside, we have the
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  ability to keep them on the outside and, and instead of
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  letting the storms on the inside.
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  And it reminds me of when they're on the boat and Jesus is
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  sleeping on the boat. And Peter is like, hey, this
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  storm is massive. It's going to take us out and
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  and he's crying out, don't you care?
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  Because this is what usually happens when things don't go the
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  way we planned. Jesus sleep on the boat and he
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  goes, don't you? Don't you care that we're about
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  to perish? And Jesus gets up and he calms
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  the storm and he says ye of little faith to Peter.
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  Once again, it's always Peter. I noticed the reason why it's
• 6:52
  always Peter is because often the most passionate people are
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  challenged with the biggest fear, the biggest concerns, the
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  biggest worry, because again, these are issues of doers.
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  But what's interesting about that story is the scripture says
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  that there were other boats around.
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  And This is why it's so important for believers to have
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  a proper understanding of failure because the enemy wants
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  to sift us out because of a lack of faith or a lack of word.
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  The scripture says that there were other boats around, so the
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  same story from their perspective is the same storm
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  that's about to take them out too.
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  When they look at the boat that Jesus and the disciples are on,
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  they don't see him sleeping. They hear the disciples crying
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  out. The scripture only shows from
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  the angle of being on the boat. They hear the disciples crying
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  out to Jesus. They watch Jesus rise up and
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  calm their storm too. If we understand the opportunity
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  of when we feel that sense of failure, that that's the
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  opportunity to cry out to the one that can calm not just our
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  storm, but all of our storms, other people can gain faith from
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  what most people would call failure.
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  This is why our testimonies are so important.
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  And this is the very reason that community is so important,
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  because it's another angle on our own story.
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  We might see it from a place of failure, but someone else goes.
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  But did you see what God did here?
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  Did you see what God did here? And I, I, I'm a pastor at
• 8:22
  Refresh Community Church. I'm the associate pastor and the
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  head pastor is Pastor Thomas Andreas.
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  My norm was to, to, to, to be the doer and to come in.
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  And he saw how neglected I was. He saw how broken I was and he
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  goes, I don't want anything from you.
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  I just want you to sit in this presence.
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  I'm like, well, I can do this and I can do that and I can do
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  this. He goes, no, no, no, I just want
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  you to sit in this presence. I didn't even know how to
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  interpret that. I realized, wait a minute, you
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  know, let me, let me just see what he's talking about.
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  And sure enough, peace, revelation and increase of
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  wisdom, healing. You know, the, the pressure
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  though, I was trying to do the work of the Lord, It broke up my
• 9:01
  family. This is ministry and, and, and
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  that's one of the reasons why this particular subject of
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  failure is so important, because most men and women of God do not
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  want to admit that failing God is a priority.
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  But not feeling God is an obsession, not feeling their
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  family, you know, doing, doing everything right because the
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  world is watching, the church is watching, people of God are
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  watching, you know, proving that we hear from God.
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  All these things can become emotional idolatry actually,
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  when really throughout the Scripture, all God has ever
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  called us to do was to trust him, to endure, to put him first
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  and to not get distracted by these storms, to not get
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  distracted by fear. You know, it says that faith
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  cast out all fear. We have so many promises of God
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  that if we can learn to speak those promises in those moments
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  of fear, we've got to learn how to speak the word of God over
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  ourselves because we can get direction from failure.
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  You know, all of the disciples were martyred.
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  That would look like failure, but yet the words of life
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  prevailed, changing the world because they were willing to
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  surrender all. So in the face of persecution
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  and being beheaded and all these real issues and most in Western
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  civilization, in America, our fear is we don't make money or
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  something like that. These people were being
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  beheaded. So what level of surrender were
• 10:26
  they operating on? Our fear?
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  I was like, oh man, I might have to get a job to do this
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  ministry. And what if that is exactly what
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  God is saying? Or I might have to do something
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  like ask for help that you're talking about depleting the ego,
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  especially when you're in ministry.
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  It's like, hey, guys, we just need help.
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  Those, those become real challenges.
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  And if you're going to be real about it, you know, social media
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  can create failure where you do something awesome and you don't
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  get the likes or the views. And you see someone else has
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  200,000 and you have 20. You know, it's just like, well,
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  what if you're assigned to those 20, right?
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  What if you can build intimacy with those 20?
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  What do This is why we we've really got to be careful at how
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  we allow failure to define us because if failure is defining
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  you the smallest amount that is not of God, it's just not you
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  can. The only purpose of failure is
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  to show us where we're at either mentally emotionally, you know,
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  as far as our decision and it is an indicator of where we are
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  trusting or not trusting God. And so this is This is why the
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  true solution to that is to make sure that we are constantly in
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  his presence. The Scripture says blesses the
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  man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly nor stand
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  in the way of the Sinner or sit in the seat of the scornful, but
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  his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law do with he
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  meditate day and night That meditation is the very intimacy
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  with God. Order my steps Lord yo show me
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  where to go. We don't have to worry about
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  exception and we definitely don't have to worry about
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  failure when we know we're obeying God.
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  That's the real conversation is like, God, keep me at peace.
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  Your peace and the word Shalom doesn't just mean peace.
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  It means the Lord's peace upon you, the Lord's peace upon your
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  family, the Lord's peace upon your health, and the Lord's
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  peace upon your prosperity. That's what that one word means.
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  And it's all about His giving to you, His coming to you.
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  And so it's impossible to be a failure when you're in the hands
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  of God. When you're in his perfect will,
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  that's the thing we like walk along and like you said, we can
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  get off the path. Good intentions look good,
• 12:43
  right? The things that we're doing look
• 12:45
  good. Like I spent 29 years doing
• 12:48
  children's and youth ministry. Before I ever went into
• 12:50
  children's and youth ministry, God spoke to me.
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  I was called to be an evangelist that I would speak to the
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  nation's at 18 years old. And so now here I am doing youth
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  ministry and children's ministry for 29 years.
• 13:03
  And I'm thinking I must have missed it.
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  I must have missed, you know, what he was saying because I'm
• 13:09
  not Speaking of nations. I'm not really outside the
• 13:12
  church evangelizing. I'm like inside the church, you
• 13:16
  know, teaching these kids for 18-9, almost 19 years running my
• 13:21
  own business. I was youth pastoring.
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  So it was like I was doing like a full time job.
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  I was homeschooling my daughter. I was literally working 3 full
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  time jobs and I was struggling to balance all of that.
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  I was doing it. Was I doing it?
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  Well, maybe, maybe not. But there came a point you were
• 13:39
  talking about your body failing you, right?
• 13:41
  There came a point where my body's like, no, I had a mental
• 13:44
  health breakdown. I was like, I can't do this
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  anymore. And slowly, little by little, my
• 13:50
  daughter graduated. God told me to step down from
• 13:53
  youth pastoring, and then he told me to close my business.
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  Now my business was prospering. Like at this point, all I had
• 13:59
  was my business. You talked about identity,
• 14:02
  right? Like everything, literally God
• 14:05
  required me to lay everything I had tied to my identity down.
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  And now that's all gone. And I'm like, what do I do?
• 14:13
  It's like when you were talking about your pastor telling you, I
• 14:16
  need you to sit, I need you to rest.
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  I did that to me. He's like, you need to
• 14:21
  understand what it means to rest.
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  And I did that. And when he told me to close my
• 14:27
  business, my business was successful then he told me to
• 14:29
  close it. And I I didn't tell anyone for
• 14:33
  the longest time. When he spoke it to me, it was
• 14:35
  in January of 2023 and I had gone through a 21 day fast and
• 14:40
  he told me to close my business. During that I told my husband
• 14:44
  and I told my pastor. Both of them confirmed that they
• 14:47
  felt that was of God. But inside of me, this is my
• 14:51
  baby. Right.
• 14:52
  This was my baby, kind of like your kiosk and you're coming
• 14:56
  soon. Jesus, this like this was my
• 14:58
  baby. It grew up with my daughter.
• 15:00
  God had given me that business and I in the beginning I almost
• 15:04
  lost it because I tried to do it myself.
• 15:06
  Basically I was about ready to lose everything, my house, the
• 15:09
  business, everything. And I gave it back to God.
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  I said, God, this is your business.
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  You called me to do this. You're the CEO of this.
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  That's the. And I, I give it to you because
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  I have screwed it up and I'm about ready to lose everything.
• 15:24
  And he told me exactly what to do it.
• 15:27
  I was failing big time, massive failing.
• 15:31
  But in the process of that, he ended up giving me direction on
• 15:36
  exactly what to do. And within three months,
• 15:39
  business turned completely around.
• 15:41
  Well, he had called me to do the business because I had, I had
• 15:44
  prayed my heart. He said he was going to grant my
• 15:47
  heart's desire. Well, my husband and I doctor
• 15:49
  said it was impossible to have kids.
• 15:50
  Well, we got pregnant and I traveled for my job and I didn't
• 15:54
  want to travel. And my heart's desire that I
• 15:58
  thought when he said that I'm going to grant your harsh
• 16:00
  desire, but you already gave me a child.
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  I was pregnant. I'm like, touch my belly.
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  You already did that. And in that moment, he's like,
• 16:05
  not that one. And I knew immediately he was
• 16:08
  talking about the business. I was a serial entrepreneur.
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  I kept trying to start businesses here and there and
• 16:15
  nothing would ever take. And he spoke to me with this one
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  and I knew that I knew that I knew that it was his.
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  I think that's the key because guess what, no matter what he
• 16:24
  calls you to, there's going to come a moment when it's going to
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  feel too much. When it feels like you're
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  drowning like Peter when he was sinking in that water.
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  It's going to feel like too much.
• 16:37
  It's going to feel like you've screwed up.
• 16:39
  And you'd have it. You might have gotten off of
• 16:42
  God's perfect plan, but He's not left you.
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  He's still there. If he called you to it, his
• 16:48
  purpose for that thing in your life is still valid.
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  You just have to redirect back to the source and find out where
• 16:57
  you got off the path to get back on.
• 16:58
  And that's what he did to me and he and he gave me direction.
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  Yeah, it's so funny because this is such a ministry.
• 17:06
  You know, the way we act when our phones die, we're like, I
• 17:09
  need a charge record. Do you have a charge record
• 17:11
  tomorrow? I got to find somewhere to plug
• 17:12
  it in. Now you can't use it.
• 17:14
  What do we say? My phone is dead and we don't.
• 17:17
  When we feel like our phone is dead, we're really saying our
• 17:20
  ability to connect is dead, Our ability to communicate is dead.
• 17:25
  My access to my community is dead.
• 17:28
  And what do we have to do? We know in order for this to
• 17:31
  work, you have to plug in and give it time to recharge.
• 17:36
  One of the things that I understood about myself is that
• 17:38
  the reason why I didn't respect rest is because I wanted to make
• 17:42
  sure God knew I wasn't lazy. I wanted to make sure everyone
• 17:45
  knew that I wasn't lazy. And also in order to be
• 17:48
  successful, you can't be lazy and you, you can't be seduced by
• 17:52
  comfort. And so these are things that I
• 17:53
  was trying to avoid and prove and it was all a
• 17:56
  misinterpretation. Rest is actually the most active
• 18:00
  thing you can do. That is when you're being
• 18:02
  restored, you're being reached, charged, you're being refreshed,
• 18:06
  you're you're being repositioned, redirected,
• 18:09
  refilled, renewed. You know you're being renewed.
• 18:14
  He's willing to do that, but you have to take time to make sure
• 18:17
  you plug in with the same passion.
• 18:20
  But but I talked about all prepared 1.
• 18:22
  You have to be aware when, when do we see it significant to
• 18:27
  charge our phones? Do we wait until it's all I'm at
• 18:30
  2% because the phone call is so important or this and that?
• 18:34
  That's good. We want to make sure we stay
• 18:37
  charged up, have praise on credit, have worship on credit,
• 18:41
  God's. This is where the phone analogy
• 18:43
  is over. God's always wanting to plug in
• 18:46
  with us. This is the difference between
• 18:48
  having an experience with God and God actually making your
• 18:51
  heart His throne. Right and a relationship, a
• 18:55
  relationship is a two way St. that's all the time, right?
• 18:58
  If you don't talk to your spouse, that's not a
• 19:01
  relationship. You're you're going to
• 19:03
  disconnect. You're not, you're going to be
• 19:05
  over here doing this, your thing, and he's going to be
• 19:07
  doing his thing and the two shall not meet because you're
• 19:09
  going the opposite directions. And that's the way it is with
• 19:12
  God if we're going doing our own thing and we're not listening.
• 19:16
  I think during my season of rest, Duke, and I don't know if
• 19:19
  you found this or not, when God told me to close my business, I
• 19:23
  taught me many, many years ago the importance of obedience.
• 19:26
  I don't want to be in the wilderness for 40 years because
• 19:28
  I'm not listening. I would follow and be obedient.
• 19:31
  I got faster and faster the more I had learned the consequences
• 19:35
  of being disobedient. But when He told me to do this,
• 19:38
  I knew that I had no choice. And then He confirmed it.
• 19:40
  Between my husband and my pastor, I knew I didn't have a
• 19:43
  choice but to close my business. For me, the failure wasn't about
• 19:47
  closing my business. For me, it was about what other
• 19:50
  people would think. Yes, yeah.
• 19:52
  It wasn't, I didn't feel failure in closing my business.
• 19:55
  I felt failure in, well, other people think that I failed, that
• 20:00
  my business wasn't successful, that there was another reason
• 20:03
  besides God telling me to do it or that I was crazy for doing
• 20:07
  it. Because honestly, everyone was
• 20:08
  like, what are you doing? You know, And I'm like, but I
• 20:12
  know that I know they know. And they're like, well, how are
• 20:13
  you going to survive? I don't know, God.
• 20:15
  God got a plan. He's got to play.
• 20:17
  It nobody, not even you, has a right to define you because you
• 20:24
  didn't create you. Your parents can't define you
• 20:26
  because they may have brought you into life, but they didn't
• 20:29
  give you your divine identity. They didn't get on a cross.
• 20:31
  For you, though, it's like, Oh yeah, you brought me into this
• 20:33
  world, but you didn't die for the sins of the world.
• 20:36
  You brought me in as a Sinner, mom and dad, you brought me in
• 20:39
  to this, this chaos. And and he's the one that that
• 20:43
  does all the work. So when we get into defining
• 20:45
  ourselves, we're automatically into emotional idolatry and ego
• 20:50
  and self idolatry automatically the the moment we don't even
• 20:54
  have a right to speak I'll of ourselves, especially when we
• 20:58
  become it's it's habit. Don't know Christ and it's the
• 21:00
  form of the flesh. But as children of God, we
• 21:02
  actually don't even have a right to speak against ourselves
• 21:06
  because we're using now the power in life and death that
• 21:08
  he's authorized us to have. We are we are these children and
• 21:12
  we have power. And so the enemy thrives off of
• 21:15
  those moments where we believe how other people have defined
• 21:20
  US. And, and interesting enough,
• 21:22
  it's easy to relate and identify with failure because it's
• 21:26
  consistent. And the flesh fails because the
• 21:29
  flesh is going into the ground. So there's this battle where
• 21:33
  there's this honest truth, you're going to fail, I'm going
• 21:37
  to fail. But the Spirit doesn't.
• 21:40
  And as long as we're being recharged and intuitive, the
• 21:42
  Spirit and we're in that obedience and in the presence of
• 21:45
  God, that's where all the protection is.
• 21:47
  The flesh has a legal right to say you can't, you can't, you
• 21:50
  can't. And the answer is, but because
• 21:53
  of Christ I can. But because he showed me I can,
• 21:56
  because it's his will, not mine, I can.
• 21:59
  And that's that's how you get to that resurrected Christ coming
• 22:04
  through you even though everything looks dead.
• 22:06
  I mean the disciples thought he was dead. 3 days he was dead.
• 22:10
  John the Baptist thought he failed, he was going through and
• 22:13
  he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, is he the one or should
• 22:16
  they look for another? Well, he's the one that baptized
• 22:19
  him. So now Jesus going on John
• 22:21
  thinks that I'm a failure, you know, because he's in a tough
• 22:23
  situation and we have to be careful because people will try
• 22:26
  to define us by the situations they're in.
• 22:30
  You know, so because I can't do it, I'm going to tell you that
• 22:33
  you can't do it basically. And and so we careful and This
• 22:37
  is why it's so important when it comes to defining who we are.
• 22:40
  That is a space that only God can be in.
• 22:43
  Absolutely. We're talking about failure.
• 22:45
  We're talking about rest. During that season of rest.
• 22:48
  That whole season felt like a season of failure for me.
• 22:50
  It was one of the hardest seasons of my life.
• 22:53
  It felt like one huge, long 2 1/2, three years of failure.
• 22:57
  OK, right. But on the other side of it, but
• 23:01
  throughout all of it, even though it was feeling like a
• 23:04
  failure, there was still resting in the midst of it.
• 23:07
  Does that make sense? Like I was resting and what was
• 23:10
  happening in the rest was my dependence was having to become
• 23:14
  more and more and more on God. And the more I depended on Him,
• 23:19
  the more my my ears got tuned into His voice, the more that it
• 23:25
  looked like things were failing. I would draw closer because I
• 23:28
  didn't have any other thing to hold on to everything and I
• 23:31
  defined my identity by was being stripped away and all I was left
• 23:36
  with was him. And not that he's not enough,
• 23:39
  he's like more than enough honestly.
• 23:41
  Like he's all I need. But in the process of it, this
• 23:46
  cool thing happened. I began to learn how to operate
• 23:50
  from a place of rest as he was stripping all of the religious
• 23:54
  mindsets that I had built up in all my years as a Christian away
• 23:58
  so that he could build me back up in such a way that I could
• 24:02
  begin to learn to operate in the things he was calling me to from
• 24:08
  a place of rest. Yeah.
• 24:10
  So that he didn't get back to that point where I was in mental
• 24:14
  health breakdown, you know, mode.
• 24:16
  Because I'm trying to do it all in my strength.
• 24:18
  Yeah, our strength fades, but but when we are surrendered,
• 24:23
  we're constantly connected to that power sources.
• 24:26
  So in that Scripture, in Psalm One, it says, for he shall be
• 24:29
  like a tree planted by the rivers of water.
• 24:32
  That means that the root of who we are is laid in all of the
• 24:37
  nutrients that we need to grow and develop.
• 24:40
  So that's why it's so important. And I love that you said we're
• 24:43
  all over the place, but but that's exactly what then that
• 24:46
  seed of faith, what it does is it takes root.
• 24:49
  And most people think when you plant a seed, it sprouts up and
• 24:53
  it doesn't. When you plant this, it's, it's,
• 24:55
  it's, it takes root and then it sprouts up and then it spreads
• 24:59
  and then it produces. So particularly for creatives,
• 25:02
  for doers, we have to make peace with process because with our
• 25:07
  own ambition, we'll think that God is the devil.
• 25:12
  The cool thing that, that, that the devil's coming against us,
• 25:15
  but it's really God, say, taking something from us so that we can
• 25:18
  grow and, and, and sometimes God's pruning us back.
• 25:21
  We're like you, we cast you out devil.
• 25:23
  And God's like, OK, whatever. I knew he had called me to
• 25:25
  media. I knew that he called me to come
• 25:27
  to Jesus. I knew that he made, he called
• 25:29
  me to make an impact in the world.
• 25:31
  But I'm like, God, you're doing all of this because of your
• 25:35
  promises. He's connecting me with people
• 25:37
  and opening doors through people.
• 25:39
  And that's why it's so important.
• 25:42
  My prayer is that people find their community because that's
• 25:46
  the rivers of water. That's the the the seed is the
• 25:50
  word of God. But our relationships, our
• 25:52
  community, that's the rivers of water.
• 25:54
  God will bring us the resources through other believers.
• 25:58
  And it becomes this beautiful body of Christ where there's
• 26:03
  there's only so much that your arm can do, you know, there's
• 26:07
  only so much your mind can do. But when we're connected to the
• 26:11
  people that God has truly called us to be connected to, the will
• 26:15
  of God is the only inevitable thing that can happen when
• 26:18
  believers come together in faith.
• 26:20
  And that's why the the scripture says let there be no division
• 26:24
  amongst you. That's why Ephesians 2 says we
• 26:27
  will become one new man, the body of Christ.
• 26:30
  That's why he says the man and the woman will become one flesh.
• 26:33
  In John 17, he says, Father make them one as we are one.
• 26:38
  Fear often happens when we've we've taken on too much, but
• 26:43
  also when God is trying to take something away for a season like
• 26:48
  the seed has to fail in order for the tree to grow.
• 26:51
  You know, failure is an awesome opportunity for transformation
• 26:54
  redirection. I want people to walk away from
• 26:57
  this one hour broadcast really encouraged that they don't have
• 27:02
  to fear failure. They can go back and pick up
• 27:04
  their dreams if God has called them to do that.
• 27:07
  But if it was feel fear of failure, if that's indeed what
• 27:11
  it was that stopped you, then God probably wasn't the one that
• 27:15
  stopped you. It was either your flesh or the
• 27:17
  enemy itself. So I want to encourage everybody
• 27:21
  just really form a healthy perspective with the word
• 27:24
  failure and and to really understand the importance of
• 27:27
  community. And of course, get your
• 27:29
  community involved as well as because that is your support
• 27:34
  structure, right? A plant you're talking about the
• 27:37
  roots. We got to get to get those roots
• 27:39
  deep. They've got to have water,
• 27:41
  they've got to have sun, they've got to have good soil, right?
• 27:45
  All the community right there, right?
• 27:48
  Some water, some plant like, that's the community around you
• 27:52
  is providing all of those nutrients that you need to grow
• 27:56
  into that strong tree that God's going to use to produce much
• 28:02
  fruit. If you're enjoying Witness the
• 28:05
  Wonder, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss future
• 28:08
  episodes, leaving a review or sharing the show with someone
• 28:12
  you know. Really, it does help these
• 28:14
  stories reach more people. Remember, God is always at work
• 28:18
  in your story.