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Failure to Launch

Pr Michael Koh
22-07-2018

Psalm 78:9-11 New King James Version (NKJV)
9 The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows,
Turned back in the day of battle.
10 They did not keep the covenant of God;
They refused to walk in His law,
11 And forgot His works
And His wonders that He had shown them.



Sometimes we can feel we are arrows in the Hand of God but we never had our launching.

You never had an experience of being and doing what God had called you to do, i.e. your destiny.

You come up against the wall of reality and you experience a faultline in your character that prevents us from going all the way.

The trajectory of the arrow that is in our life hangs on certain moments--the kairos moments that are critical and important that they define where we will be.

There is another moment that determines a critical decision point for Israel and they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. The 12 spies went into the land with the spiritual currency and encountered giants and enemies and 10 of them experience the failure to launch. Israel made a decision, corporately, to not enter in.

God sets us up to be prepared to do something. His call to destiny for us is way beyond our own ability that we cannot do in the natural eg. crossing the Jordan and the Red Sea.

If we don't get a grasp of that, we may keep on experience the failure to launch.

God has a word of hope for us.

Joshua 14:6-13 New King James Version (NKJV)
Caleb Inherits Hebron
6 Then the children of Judah came to Joshua in Gilgal. And Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him: “You know the word which the Lord said to Moses the man of God concerning you and me in Kadesh Barnea. 7 I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land, and I brought back word to him as it was in my heart. 8 Nevertheless my brethren who went up with me made the [a]heart of the people melt, but I wholly followed the Lord my God. 9 So Moses swore on that day, saying, ‘Surely the land where your foot has trodden shall be your inheritance and your children’s forever, because you have wholly followed the Lord my God.’ 10 And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, as He said, these forty-five years, ever since the Lord spoke this word to Moses while Israel [b]wandered in the wilderness; and now, here I am this day, eighty-five years old. 11 As yet I am as strong this day as on the day that Moses sent me; just as my strength was then, so now is my strength for war, both for going out and for coming in. 12 Now therefore, give me this mountain of which the Lord spoke in that day; for you heard in that day how the Anakim were there, and that the cities were great and fortified. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall be able to drive them out as the Lord said.”

13 And Joshua blessed him, and gave Hebron to Caleb the son of Jephunneh as an inheritance.

For Caleb, he wholeheartedly followed the Lord and the Lord gave him a promise.

For the generation before him, the promise to enter the Promise Land as their inheritance did not come to pass.

Either God's not true to His Word or a promise is more than a prediction. It is an invitation to walk through life with God.

To be a person of promise is to live it in the micro decisions in life. It is a walk of promise before the promise is revealed.

A promise is an invitation to come to become one with the Word and become one with what God is doing.

We are not a people of destination. We are a people of destiny.

Promises are words that are meant to break the shell of unbelief in us until it becomes part of our blood and our marrow.

It is not to wait passively for that future.

Promises are supposed to be operational now. The Word of God is meant to be wholeheartedly followed.

Isaiah 26:3 New King James Version (NKJV)
3 You will keep him in perfect peace,
Whose mind is stayed on You,
Because he trusts in You.

How do you take away the nervousness because you want to win?

How do you find that rest in God?

Peace cannot come by just making ourselves peaceful.

You have to allow the Word of God authoritatively in your life.

You have to be immersed in the Word of God. It is His own presence and His own being.

Otherwise, when it is time for us to be launched, we will find that our anxiety is stronger than our faith.

Have the confidence of God in you.

We are a people of destiny.

When God enriches us, He breaks us down.

2 Corinthians 4:6-12 New King James Version (NKJV)
6 For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Cast Down but Unconquered
7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. 8 We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— 10 always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. 11 For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So then death is working in us, but life in you.

In life, we want our vessels or clay jars to be okay.

But it is important that we have invested in the core things of spiritual life instead of contemporary things.

Invest in the life of the Spirit and in prayer and in the Word of God.

Have the substance of God and the memories of the things that God has done in your life.

A voice that is backed up by the Word of God can swing things.

2 Corinthians 4:13-18 New International Version (NIV)
13 It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.”[a] Since we have that same spirit of[b] faith, we also believe and therefore speak, 14 because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. 15 All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.

16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

We are not forsaken. The Lord comforts us and stands by us.

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