Full Quiver Ministries

One of the questions I’ve been challenged with in the last few months is who defines the parameters of living for me? I feel like as a Christian, the obvious answer is God. But the question remains for me, is that how I live? One area of my life that was challenged by this question that I felt like I was supposed to share is the area of failure.

Recently I was doing a fast and I felt like the Lord was going to deal with some of the fears that I’ve had. Fears like missing out, abandonment, and failure. At first, I was a little apprehensive at first, but then the Lord reminded me of a verse. 

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

1 John 4:18

What I felt like the Lord was telling me was that instead of being apprehensive about facing my fears and potentially reliving my pain, I should shift my perspective to receiving perfect love. It’s much less painful to receive love than it is to face my fears. With that new perspective at work, I began to search out what each of those fears meant, and then what scripture had to say about it. The process I want to share with you today is my journey through the fear of failure. 

What I recognized about my fear, especially in my walk with Jesus,  is that I wouldn’t even attempt to talk to people, pray for them, share my testimony if I was even remotely convinced that they wouldn’t receive me. I wouldn’t start projects at home and cite the constraints of the project as a reason for my hesitation, but really it was my family’s potential response to any project that kept me from even attempting it. I was afraid that they wouldn’t like it or appreciate it. My fear of failure fed off of my fear of rejection in that way. So after doing some soul searching about how my fears manifested, I looked them up to see what they were. That’s where things got interesting. 

Really, all I did was look up the definition for failure and what Oxford says is that failure is defined as “the lack of success.” So if failure is just the lack of success, what is success? Oxford’s definition is exactly what you would expect, achieving goals and wealth and fame. It’s everything that I thought success was. This is the world’s definition of success. It’s interesting to note here that it’s the rational and reasonable definition of success as well. I think that if you went to anyone on the street and asked them what success was, they would respond with something like that.  Maybe they’d relay an individual goal that they wanted to see happen in their personal life, or a relationship ideal. For the most part safe to say that it would be something achievable through skill and effort. 

I even talked to a friend of mine about the idea of success and his mindset was more of what I think you’ll find in the church. He said that he believes God gives us talents and abilities that make us successful. In that way, the glory belongs to God because it’s his gift of talents and abilities that make success possible. What I want to point out here though, is that this is taking the answer God gives, and plugging it into the world’s definition. It satisfies the question, but creates a culture sized boundary. Whatever the culture defines as success, will be pervasive in the people of that culture.

My thought here is that I needed a new definition, a God definition of what success really is. So that’s when I opened up scripture to see where I can find success in the Bible and I was not disappointed. Turns out that there is a set of phrases that accompany the word success in the Old Testament. They point out that success is a gift from God, or that being with God makes us successful. I feel like they are both true independently, but that they work together to make something amazing. Here’s some of the verses I found about success:

Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharoah’s officials, the captain of the guard, bought him for the Ishmaelites who had taken him there. The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned……Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined. But while Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him; He showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there. The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph’s care, because the Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.

Genesis 39:1-4; 20-23 NIV

“Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord will be with you wherever you go.”

Joshua 1:7-9 NIV

So he sent David away from him and gave him command over a thousand men, and David led the troops in their campaigns. In everything he did he had great success, because the Lord was with him. 

1 Samuel 18:13-14 NIV

“Now, my son, the Lord be with you, and may you have success and build the house of the Lord your God, as he said you would.

1 Chronicles 22:11 NIV

Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. He held fast to the Lord and did not stop following Him; he kept the commands the Lord had given Moses. And the Lord was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him. 

2 Kings 18:5-7 NIV

When I read these verses, I find that success is being with God. One of my favorite tidbits about this little study is that there doesn’t seem to be a Greek word translated as success in the New Testament. You find words like that translate roughly to “prosperity” and “accomplish” and things like that, but not the Greek word that translates as “success”. Here’s what I think that means. 

If you think about the guys that penned the new testament, they are the disciples of Jesus and Jesus’ brother and Paul. It’s a mix of guys that would know Jesus in a specific way, as Immanuel. They know Jesus as “God with us” so to them, they would have success as a guarantee. There would be no need to address the topic of success, because they would’ve already had the idea from the Old Testament that being the God was success. 

And that brings me to the invitation I feel like God is giving us. It’s a chance to be freed from the world’s boundaries and have them defined by a limitless God. What it challenged me to do was take the things that I believe and make sure that I have the Lord’s answers plugged into the Lord’s definition. It’s a neat concept that He asks questions and makes demands that He promises to fulfill. That’s the beauty of surrender. That I am yielding my will and striving and in place of them I am receiving grace and freedom. 

In closing this blog, I would just ask you guys a simple question. Who’s definitions are you governed by?