Success-Failure as A God-Ordained Pattern

UV 1551/10000 Success-Failure as A God-Ordained Pattern
Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee: and the light shall shine upon thy ways.
Job 22 v 28

Leadership is rulership. If one does not rule over oneself and one’s actions and passions, then he does not and cannot rule or lead others. Decision making is a key aspect of leadership. Like rulers we decree and not just decide. When we decree with faith in God and His Word, then our decision is invested with the authority, power and blessing of the Lord and nothing in all the universe and the spiritual world can conspire against it. A decree is signed under the authority of a ruler. When we decide a thing, our spirit, mind and body should back it to the hilt and so nothing can halt it. If our decisions are aligned with the will and Word of God, He shall establish it for us and cause the light of His glory and grace to shine upon all that we do to execute that which we have decreed. Is our decision in keeping with the ordinances and statutes of God’s Word? A decision is not mere intention. The forming of the intent is just the initiation or the very initial stage. It is comparable to striking a match to light a fire. It requires a vision of the end result that we want established. It requires the vision to be translated into goals. The goals need to be then incorporated into a comprehensive plan. The plan needs to be executed with doing all that needs to be done thereafter in accordance with the intent, the vision, the goals and the plan.

The Kingdom of God is participatory democracy at its perfect best. We need to take every decision and decree it or proclaim it. God will not take the decision on our behalf or proclaim it. Our spirits should not be wavering. Our minds should not entertain doubts whether or not it will happen. The unstable mind or the wavering spirit will not receive anything from the hand of the Lord. We will see things with the clarity of daylight and pursue that which we decreed or decided with determination, confidence and faith. The Lord will not interfere with our efforts but will nudge us or guide us with His unseen hand. His peace and His presence will guide us till that which we decreed is established.
We need to acknowledge or trust Him in all our ways and not distrust or doubt that He can make even the impossible possible. We need to do due diligence on our part and not test God by not doing all that lies with us to do. We even need to go the extra mile in terms of being proactive and in terms of doing our very best. It also does not mean that the believer will not experience failure. Sometimes, the Lord teaches and establishes us through a series of failures that lead us to midstream corrections. He might want to help us learn something truly great and deep in a moment of failure that we cannot learn through success. Often, after a series of failures, we will experience outstanding success. From our perspective, we evaluate ourselves as successes or failures after each event or outcome but for the Lord, He is looking for the success-failure pattern. Success-failure is a pattern and not a one-off event or result. Our personalities are strength-weakness patterns and our lives are success-failure patterns. The Lord whose Name is Jehovah Nissi or Jehovah the Successful One is more concerned that the finishing point of the pattern is success. God declares our lives a success when we begin our lives in Jesus and end in Jesus who experienced absolute penalty of absolute sin, absolute disgrace, absolute desertion, absolute failure , absolute powerlessness and turned all of these into absolute success. Contrast this teaching with the heresy that the Pope spoke of recently when he said that Jesus ended his life in failure on the cross. E We live in an age where success is deified and worshipped as a demi-god and failure decried. But the Word reveals that we learn and are most benefitted from a mix of success and failure. All things- both success and failure add up to good for those who love Him and trust in His name.

Prateep V Philip