What You Started: Failure to Launch with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

So excited to announce that on December 8th of this year, we will be opening a meta church venue in Helotus, Texas, at the 4H Activity Center, right across the street from O'Connor High School.

We need to consolidate to be healthy as individuals so we can be healthy as an organization.

To do this, we are going to pause our Sunday services at our Helotus venue.

When the time is right, we will reopen Helotus.

We ran for about nine weeks and COVID shut everything down.

We still hold that lease.

In faith we never broke it.

Our goal in the next five years is to have enough metachurch locations that everyone in town is within 20 minutes of a meta church that they can visit.

And our plan is to start next year by reopening our Helotus location.

So we are planning this year to open our second location.

We already have our physical building.

It's the Helotus 4-H.

Our targeted date to open is October 20th of this year.

For what you started, you will complete what comes against us.

You will defeat.

I want to welcome you here to our Holotus venue, our Patrenko venue, and for everyone watching online.

We're so glad that you joined us today.

We're in week four of our What You Started series, and we've been talking about the responsibility that we have to participate in what God is doing on the earth.

How we at MetaCurch decided when we started that we would be a movement of people who would do whatever it takes to get people to Jesus.

Last week we saw that all the blessings God has brought MetaCurch are really miracles that He has brought our way.

And we learned from Joshua and the Israelites that we have to manage our miracles by being set apart, focused, and active.

Now, today my message is for those who may not be convinced that they have a role to play in what God is doing.

Those who wrestle with doubts about their worth or value to the movement of Jesus.

My message today is called failure to launch.

Failure to launch.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you.

We thank you so much for your great love for us.

I thank you for everyone who has gathered here at MetaCurch across our locations.

I pray, Holy Spirit, that you would speak to us, that we would humble ourselves, open our minds, and open our hearts for what you would have us do.

We love you, we pray these things in Jesus' name.

And if you want to avoid being a failure to launch, say amen.

Amen.

I want to talk a little bit about failure.

Fear of failure is very real and it is very visceral, and it follows us.

It doesn't just appear when we turn 30.

It starts when we're very little.

Maybe it's the fear of not having any friends the first day out at recess, or the fear of not wanting to strike out in kickball.

Fear of the unknown cripples us.

There is fear of putting yourself out there, of being rejected, of the relationship not working, of the investment going south, of the weight loss not sticking.

It's all fear of failure.

And it all comes from experience.

We all know what it feels like to fail, and maybe some of us even know what it feels like to be a failure, at least that's what you have believed.

Then there are other categories.

There are what we call moral failures, when you are unfaithful or caught in a web of lies, when you let others down or betray those that you love, when you use your words to cut somebody down.

There are times when we fail God.

Maybe you became a believer and then you got baptized, but when the old addiction sneaks back in, or you find yourself telling those little lies again, or your anger comes back with a vengeance and disrupts the relationships that you have built.

And here's where it gets even more difficult when you talk about the fear of failure.

If, like somehow, if you are able to wall yourself off and protect yourself from every potential failure in life, you will have created for yourself such an insignificant existence that you could wake up someday and realize that the lack of courage to try anything new was the biggest failure of them all.

Often a failure to try is still a failure in and of itself.

We are surrounded by the potential for failure all the time, and we are highly motivated by the fear of failure.

And part of the reason is because when we experience failure, it makes us feel disqualified.

And I see this a lot, especially when people believe in Jesus and then start trying to follow Jesus.

And there are so many new believers who very quickly start thinking things like, you know, I guess God probably should just use somebody else.

Maybe I wasn't really cut out to be a follower of Jesus.

I knew I would screw this up.

This is what I do with everything.

I'm always messing things up.

And Jesus gave me this great gift, and now I'm not using it appropriately.

How do we overcome our fear of failure to live lives on purpose and with purpose?

To grasp hold of the life that God has given us?

What are the things in your life that cause you fear because there's the potential for failure in the endeavor that so far you've been unwilling to take?

Last week we followed Joshua, a young, brand new leader, as he took the Israelites into the promised land and he set them apart to manage their miracle.

Today, what we're going to do is watch Joshua fail.

And he is going to fail catastrophically.

As a matter of fact, this failure very early in his leadership could have caused him to be what we call a failure to launch.

Now, this is not just a Matthew McConaughey movie, right?

Failure to launch is an actual term.

Maybe we didn't know it before the rom-com, right?

But what it means is when a young person struggles to take hold of their adult life, of their responsibilities to get off the ground.

This moment that we're gonna look at could have easily derailed Joshua to the point where he could have been a failure to launch.

Moses had handed him the leadership, and almost immediately he has a massive failure.

So first, we need to understand a little bit of context.

Last week we saw Joshua lead the Israelites into the promised land.

We watched them get set apart and get ready because they were going to have to fight for the land that God had given them.

There were huge kingdoms, fortified cities.

They were gonna have to go into battle again and again and again.

And God had given them prior to this very clear instructions.

You see, the Israelites were God's chosen people, and their promise was that through them, someday, all the nations of the world would be blessed.

And this comes to pass when Jesus eventually comes through that lineage as the savior of the world.

The people who lived in the promised land were evil almost beyond belief.

I mean, really, truly, hideously evil people.

And God knew that if they interacted and connected themselves in any way with these evil pagan idolaters, it would take them off course.

And so God demanded none of that.

On Deuteronomy 7, this is instructions before they even got into the land, God says, When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess, and he drives out many nations before you, the Heathites, the Gergeshites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and more powerful than you.

And when the Lord your God delivers them over to you and you defeat them, you must completely destroy them.

Make no treaty with them, show them no mercy.

You must not intermarry with them, and you must not give your daughters or sons to take daughters for your sons, because they will turn your sons away from me to worship other gods.

And then the Lord's anger will burn against you, and he will swiftly destroy you.

The battle plan is clear.

You have to drive out every single person from the promised land.

Now this seems harsh, but God is not messing around.

He is protecting his people who will one day bring Jesus to save everyone from their sins.

The nations that lived there were overflowing with evil.

They sacrificed their children, they raped the young women, they worshiped idols.

It was crazy there, and God wanted to drive all of them out, and he made it clear there are to be no exceptions.

No exceptions to this rule.

In our series so far, we have seen Moses die, Joshua take over, Israel crossed into the promised land.

And when they got into the promised land, they went up against two huge powers.

They went against Jericho and they went against I.

Both Jericho and I, just looking at their military power, should have handled Israel easily, but they did not.

Because of God's power and might, Jericho and I were both defeated.

And news of this began to spread throughout the promised land of Canaan.

And people became terrified, not specifically of Israel, but of Israel's God.

And that brings us to chapter 9.

Now Israel's feeling pretty good about themselves.

They defeated Jericho, and if you know the story, all they did was walk around a bunch of times and then scream really loudly.

Like they're feeling pretty confident.

They went against I, this big, powerful nation, and they came up through God with this incredible strategy.

No one had ever seen anything like it in the history of military conquest.

They're really feeling themselves.

They're on a winning streak.

Maybe they're getting a little bit arrogant, and this is when their downfall comes.

In Joshua 9, it says, When the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and I, they acted deceptively.

They gathered provisions, they took worn-out sacks on their donkeys and old wineskins cracked and mended.

They wore old patched sandals on their feet and threadbare clothing on their bodies.

Their entire provision of bread was dry and crumbly.

And they went to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal, and they said to him and to the men of Israel, We have come from a distant land.

So please make a treaty with us.

They're working to try and deceive Joshua and deceive the leaders of Israel.

So what is the con?

The con is they actually live right up the road.

Gibeon is about one day's march from where they are currently camped at Gilgal.

But they put on clothes, they raided the back of the closet, right?

They got their bread and let it get old and stale and crusty and crumbly.

They got their oldest wineskins, they made themselves dirty like they haven't bathed in weeks, and they made it appear as if they just traveled from Timbuktu, and now they're in the land, but they're not of the land.

Because if they are of the land, then they know they are in trouble.

And they know that they have defeated Jericho and they have defeated I, huge, massive, royal cities, really without lifting a finger.

The Gibeonites are scared of the power of God, and so they are trying to trick Joshua into a treaty.

In verse 7, the men of Israel replied to the Hivites, Perhaps you live among us.

How can we make a treaty with you?

And then they said to Joshua, We are your servants.

And Joshua asked them, Who are you and where do you come from?

Now they're putting on a good show, but you notice Joshua, he's got a little bit of discernment.

The leaders of Israel, they've got a little bit of discernment.

They're like, Not so fast.

Who are you?

Where do you come from?

How do we know you don't actually live in the land?

In verse 9, they replied to Joshua, Your servants have come from a far away land, because of the reputation of the Lord your God, for we have heard of his fame and all that he did in Egypt, and all that he did to the two Amorite kings beyond the Jordan, King Sihon of Heshbon and King Og of Bashan, who live in the Ashtaroth.

So not only do they completely dodge the question, it's like, who specifically are you?

And where specifically do you come from?

Not only are they like, look, I'm gonna tell you exactly, like precisely, I'm gonna give you longitude and latitude, all right?

It's really far away.

That's where we came from.

Like, don't really worry, it's so far away, like go really far and then just keep on going, right?

They don't give any specifics, and then they switch and they just start buttering them up, right?

Like immediately they're like, we live really, really far away.

And also, Joshua, have you been working out?

Like, you really, you're glowing right now, honestly.

I mean, y'all are on top of your game.

We've heard about your God, he sounds awesome, so don't worry about it.

From far away, we really love you guys.

Let's do this.

Let's sign a treaty.

They doubled down.

It says in verse 11 so our elders and the inhabitants of our land told us, take provisions with you for the journey.

Go and meet them and say, We are your servants, please make a treaty with us.

This bread of ours, man, look how good they are at this manipulation.

This bread of ours, it was warm when we took it from our houses as food on the day we left to come to you, but now dry and crumbly.

These wineskins, they were new when we filled them, but see, now they are cracked.

These clothes and sandals of ours, they were fresh off the rack.

Now look at them.

We've been on an extremely long journey.

They're playing the long con, and they've really thought this through, and they have their story patched together perfectly, and it really reveals the fear that they have of the God of the Israelites and the impact that the one true God has already made in the promised land.

Now, Joshua is under strict command to not make treaties with anyone in the land, and it's clear that he already has some suspicions, but the Gibeonites are putting on a very, very impressive show.

Now, if only Joshua had access to someone who held all wisdom, who could see both the past and the future, who was available to him 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, if only there was some godlike entity that he could go to and had direct access to.

And of course I'm being facetious.

The one thing that we know about Joshua from their time in the wilderness, we don't hear a lot about him, other than Joshua never left the tabernacle.

Joshua always stayed in communication with God.

It is his number one qualification for succeeding Moses in leadership of the nation.

Joshua brought everything to the Lord.

He didn't take one step without seeking what God's will was, what God's plan was.

But Joshua is moving quickly, and he has got land to conquer.

And he's got a few victories already in his belt.

And so the one guy in all of Israel who always sought the Lord made a decision without God.

It says in verse 14 that the men of Israel took some of their provisions, but did not seek the Lord's decision.

In verse 15, so Joshua established peace with them and made a treaty to let them live, and the leaders of the community swore an oath to them.

Three days after making the treaty with them, they heard that the Gibeonites were their neighbors, living among them.

See, Israel was feeling itself, they were killing it so far.

They've already had these victories.

Joshua signs this treaty and is now in between a rock and a hard place.

On the one hand, there are strict instructions.

Kick everyone out of the promised land, do not make an oath with them, do not sign a treaty with them.

But in the Hebrew law that Joshua was also bound to, there was very, very clear instructions on how if you made an oath, if you made a treaty, you had to keep it.

And so Joshua did the best with the cards that he was dealt.

He kept his oath not to destroy Gibeon.

He brought them in and incorporated them as a working class among the people.

And when God said to Joshua, there are to be no exceptions, almost immediately upon entering the land, he makes an exception that would last forever.

This is a huge failure.

They have just started to conquer the land that God has given them.

Forty years wandering in the wilderness to finally enter in the promise.

Already Joshua, fresh in the leadership, makes a massive mistake.

And this massive mistake would have massive consequences.

And that's typically how it works.

We have small failures all the time, and typically small failures have small consequences, and we deal with them and we move on.

But probably every person here today has also experienced big failures.

And big failures usually have big consequences, and they affect people outside of just ourselves.

And they make us feel like we are disqualified, and they feed our false inner narratives that already are pushing us to set ourselves aside and not live a life of purpose.

This is a staggering failure by Joshua, who is one of the absolute heroes of scripture.

I want you to see just how big the consequence would be.

In the very next chapter, Joshua chapter 10, it opens like this.

Joshua 10 · chapter mention

Now King Adonai Zedek of Jerusalem heard that Joshua had captured I and completely destroyed it, treating I and its king as he had Jericho and its king, and that the inhabitants of Gibeon had now made peace with Israel and were living among them.

And so Adonai Zedek and his people were greatly alarmed.

We're about to get some more context here.

They were alarmed because Gibeon was a large city, like one of the royal cities.

It was larger than I, who Israel had defeated, and all of its men were warriors.

In chapter 9, Gibeon comes to Israel with its tail between its legs, willing to deceive and embarrass themselves and put on a show anything for a peace treaty, and we find out that Gibeon is not some ragtag small town.

It is a massive city with a massive military.

This is how significant of an impact the power of God had made upon the inhabitants of the land.

Now there's another huge problem that the people who originally would have read the Old Testament would have instinctively understood that we're just out of context.

We live on the other side of the world about 2,000 years later.

The thing that they would have understood is that Gibeon, which was about a day march from Gilgal, where the Israelites were camped, was not only a day away, it was a day away uphill the entire way for Israel.

Not only were they a massive fortified city, not only did they have a massive military, but Gibeon had the greatest military advantage.

They had the high ground.

And there are no uh fighter jets, there are no long-range missiles, this is hand-to-hand combat.

If you have the high ground, you have everything.

But the power of God had gone before them, and Gibeon had given that up.

And now the other kings of the area are getting nervous.

And they decide if Gibeon's with Israel, then we'll take out Gibeon.

If Gibeon's with Israel, and Gibeon has the high ground over Israel, we'll take out Gibeon, and now we have the high ground over Israel.

This is really, really bad news for Joshua because Joshua has now signed a peace treaty with the Gibeonites, which means if someone attacks Gibeon, Israel now has to fight.

In verse 3, it says, Therefore, King Adonized of Jerusalem sent word to King Hoham of Hebron, King Piram of Jarmuth, King Jephia of Lakish, King Dabir of Eglon, if y'all are pregnant, all of those names available, just letting you know.

Saying this, come up and help me.

And we will attack Gibeon, because they have made peace with Joshua and the Israelites.

Remember when I said this was a big mistake and it would have massive consequences?

Not only Are they now drawn into a war that they would not have had to fight because Gibeon is now in a peace treaty with them?

But because Gibeon went in with Israel, and Gibeon is only a day away, and Gibeon has the high ground, five kings representing five kingdoms who don't even like each other, have now come together with one super army.

All five kingdoms, like the evil Avengers just assembled on Joshua, okay?

This is bad news, it's the worst news.

Big failure, even bigger consequence.

Now Joshua has to fight four people who just deceived him, not against one kingdom, against five kingdoms, five militaries, who now will have the strategic high ground.

This is devastating news.

If God does not intervene, Joshua, who just became the leader, they just crossed into the promised land.

Joshua will be a failure to launch.

He will lose his leadership just as quickly as he got it.

He might lose his nation.

They might lose the promised land.

See, this is really hard because some of us grew up with parents or authority figures who, as soon as you failed, they were done with you.

Constant reminders that you weren't good enough, that you were a failure.

Some of you had coaches like this, some of you along the way had a boyfriend or a girlfriend like this.

Throughout our lives, we carry with us the pain of what failure has caused us in the past.

And what's even more dangerous is we often project that onto God, our Heavenly Father.

There were some churches that I grew up in that every time I messed up, I just spent the next several days waiting for God to take me out, assuming that God was done with me, that maybe I had a chance to follow him, but because I made a mistake, because I fell back into sin, because I repeated an old pattern, that God was just done.

That's often how the world treats us, and it's not a huge leap in logic to assume that a perfect and holy God might treat us that way as well.

And so we give up on ourselves, even though God has not given up on us.

This was going to be different, and I want you to pay really close attention to what happens next in the story.

In verse 8, it says, The Lord said to Joshua.

So what happened?

Joshua, in this time of great need, went and sought the Lord.

Joshua messed up in chapter 9.

He did not seek the Lord.

A huge mistake signing this treaty, which now has massive consequence.

And what happened so often, and I can tell you, this was my pattern growing up.

These were my incorrect beliefs about my Heavenly Father, is I would mess up, fall into sin.

I just knew that this version of God I had, who was like kind of angry all the time and just had a lightning bolt in the chamber and was just ready, you know, ready to strike me down.

And so I would think, I screwed this up.

God obviously doesn't want to hear from me right now.

I'm the screw up, and so I will fix it on my own.

I'll go do enough good things.

I'll go fight hard enough.

I'll go take my lumps.

I'll go lose the battle.

That's my consequence, obviously.

And then once I have paid my penance, and once I have been punished enough, and once I feel that everything has crashed down on me, then maybe with my tail tucked, I'll go back to God and say, I got what I deserved, and maybe hopefully we can be back in relationship now.

Do you see how that cycle could have happened to Joshua?

Joshua did not seek the Lord, and therefore he was deceived into directly disobeying the Lord.

He led the entire nation astray.

Over a million people would suffer the consequence of Joshua's leadership decision.

And maybe you know that feeling, feeling like you failed God, and so the last person you want to go to for help is God.

And you just repeat the cycle, and you got into the mess because you wouldn't seek the Lord.

And now, because of your shame, you continue to not seek the Lord, and so you continue to repeat the mistakes.

It is a cycle, and Joshua, it's not that he failed that defines him as a leader.

In fact, unless you have carefully read the book of Joshua, you may not even know about Joshua's failure.

He goes down as one of the great heroes of scripture because it's not about the failure, it's about his response to the failure.

Joshua had this insight into who the Lord was.

Joshua was the man in the wilderness who would not leave the tent of the Lord.

Day and night he would stand in the Lord's presence and seek him, and because of that, he knew the heart of his heavenly father.

He knew that even though he had failed, and even though he had disobeyed, and even though he had led the nation astray, and even though now five kings were after them all at the same time, and they had the high grounds, that because of the heart of his good God, he could still go to him.

He could still go and seek wisdom, he could still have confidence that God was for him, fighting his battles, giving him answers.

Joshua sought the Lord, and it made all of the difference, and it tells us that even when we fail, God wants to hear from us.

Chapter 9 was a very dark day.

It had ongoing consequence with the Gibeonites, but we serve the God of the new day, of new beginnings, the God of rebirth and fresh starts.

And so watch what God does.

Verse 8 The Lord said to Joshua, Do not be afraid of them, for I have handed them over to you.

Not one of them will be able to stand against you.

And so here's what Joshua does in verse 9.

So Joshua caught them by surprise after marching all night from Gilgal.

Now this is crazy, and we don't live in the area where this was written, and so we don't really understand what that means.

But what it actually means is that Joshua had so much confidence in the Lord that he gathered the troops right then and in the dark of night sprinted to surprise them uphill the entire way.

A day's march they did in one night, uphill the entire way.

And the five kings who thought they had the element of surprise, they had gathered all their forces together.

They had strategically taken the high ground.

Now they were surprised when they woke up in the morning and Joshua and his army were already there taking names.

He had confidence in the Lord, and so he acted immediately.

And oftentimes I think this is what God is waiting for.

He's waiting for a movement of people who are willing to acknowledge, yes, I am screwed up.

I do have a lot of flaws.

I am working through my worst ways, I am dealing with sin patterns in my life, but I've been redeemed by the blood of my Savior.

I have been given new life.

I have been given a purpose to live a life on purpose and with purpose, and I'm not gonna wait to get everything together.

If God has spoken, I will move and I will move immediately.

And I hate what we do often in the church, is people come into faith in Jesus and they are so filled and they are so focused and they're so on fire, and we say, you know what?

I'm not sure you're ready yet.

Can you even quote lots of scripture yet?

Can you even sing the harmonies to the worship songs yet?

Can you even tie a double whimsor knot yet?

Y'all are like, I don't even know what that means.

That's a tie you wear ties, people used to wear ties to church.

Do you know how to speak the little secret Christian language?

You still have photos on your Instagram of drinking.

You just need to sit on the sideline and go to enough classes until you've lost all of the fire that is inside of you.

And then once you're really burnt out like the rest of us, you can just attend service and lose all these ideas about like going out and changing the world.

Joshua goes from perhaps the biggest screw up since Adam and Eve ate the apple.

And immediately God says, I've got you, you go fight.

And like before God can finish the sentence, Joshua is sprinting uphill all night long to claim his victory.

What happens to us as Christians is we develop a fear of failure.

And a lot of that is our quote-unquote Christian culture that we live in, where people spend time like it's their full-time job, finding ways to nitpick and judge Christians who are trying to get active in their faith.

Well, your team that you started, you know, I don't even know that you have a theology degree really, and I don't even know if you really know, and you don't even speak in tongues yet, and you don't even, it's like we find all of these reasons that people cannot participate in the things that God is calling them to do.

And a lot of the things I hear, why people think others can't really be involved and go take the mountain and go sprint uphill and go grab some victories for the kingdom of God are things that aren't even biblical themselves.

We have allowed a culture to create a fear of failure to put Christians who have the hope of God inside of them on their heels.

And because of that, the movement has stopped moving.

Because of that, Christianity has become about gathering in buildings once a week and singing some songs and hearing a message instead of what the church was meant to be, which is a movement of people who come together, and then church actually starts when you walk out of the doors of our venues and get into the real world and start taking ground.

And yes, you have problems, I have problems.

You have sins you're dealing with, I have sins I'm dealing with.

We are working to die daily to ourselves and pick up our cross and follow after Jesus.

The problem is we're so afraid to fail that we're not willing to take any actionable steps.

And so if you showed up today and you are living in this chapter of your life that is broken or confusing or disorganized, addicted, depressed, in debt, it is not an accident that you're here at Metachurch.

God has been fighting for you already.

God had me preach this sermon so you would know that the failures of yesterday can be the very means to your miracle today.

God does bring consequence into our life, but if you are willing to stand back up and triumphantly follow Jesus, he can even use your failures and even use your consequences for his victory.

You see, Joshua could have said, five kingdoms come together, took the high ground, this is what I get.

This is my consequence.

You know what God saw?

He saw the ability to call Joshua into action.

And even though it is true, those five kings are there because of the mistake that Joshua made, they are now going to take out five birds with one battle.

They are now going to defeat five kingdoms that would have been five different battles on five different battlefields.

They're going to do it at once.

The more opposition that comes against you, the more the power of God can shine bright into your life.

God can use not just your strengths, God is wanting to use your weaknesses, and God is even wanting to redeem your failures for his kingdom if you will let him.

These are the incredible promises of God.

Joshua did not allow a failure in chapter 9 to define him.

Instead, it set him up for one of the greatest victories Israel would ever witness.

God acted miraculously, and they did defeat not just one kingdom, but all five at once.

We live afraid of failure, and maybe we don't want to be a failure to launch.

We started a business, we don't want it to fail, we started a relationship, we don't want it to dissolve.

We've saved some money, we don't want to lose it.

We don't want to be that failure to launch.

Here's what I found.

It often takes a failure to launch true faith in your purpose.

I'll share quickly.

In 2020, we had spent three years investing extraordinary amounts of time and energy and money into what we believed would be our broadcast location.

It was a 410 in Marbach, it's a giant, abandoned Kmart.

I can't hear Kmart without having a little PTSD, just so you guys know.

Blue lights trigger me, all right?

I it's very tough.

It all fell apart spectacularly.

Lots of time, lots of money.

Lots of me standing on stages inspiring people towards a Kmart we were gonna go to.

Around the same time, it became evident, like you have heard in the series video that opens every sermon, that we needed to consolidate and pause Helotus.

Now, I can look in retrospect, and I know that God was working in all of that.

Can I tell you what it felt like when I had to come on stage and make those announcements?

It felt like very public failure.

It felt deeply embarrassing.

I got a thousand people super inspired to go to a building, but that was not gonna happen.

And it often takes a failure to launch true faith in your purpose.

And what God did in me during that season was crystallize what I have preached from day one.

That the church is not the building.

That if we have to meet in a big tent in parks, the church is still there and the movement is still moving.

It did not break down my faith in what God is doing at MetaCurch.

In fact, it might be the most important thing in our history that built my faith in what we are doing.

And because of that, God gave us a broadcast location that we weren't even looking for, that we're not renting.

We own it now.

Because of that, God set us on a page not just to reopen Helotus, but for Holodas to be step one in a vision to get within 20 minutes of every person in San Antonio.

If you will allow God, He will take your failures and use them for your destiny and your future.

That's the kind of God that we serve.

I need you to hear me say this really clearly: your failures do not disqualify you from God's purpose on your life.

You hear and feel and intuit the opposite of that so often, I'm gonna say it one more time.

Your failures do not disqualify you from God's purpose for your life.

You need to know that.

And for all of us, our call is to get our eyes up onto Jesus.

Because your fear of failure is targeting your value, it's targeting your worth, it's targeting your confidence.

And as long as your value, worth, and confidence are found in your accomplishments here on the earth, the fear of failure will hold you back from fully embracing the life that God has called you to live.

But if your value and your worth and your confidence come not from you or your earthly accomplishments, but from Jesus.

When you look not to yourself, but you look to the cross of Christ and realize that you are so valuable and you are worth so much, if the God of the universe stepped off of his throne down into our world and exchanged his perfect life for yours and mine, sinful lives, then that will build the confidence you need that even when you fail, God will use it, and he will use it for his glory.

As we close service right where you're at, I want to give us some time for reflection and for application.

If you would just bow your head, across our venues, close your eyes, create some space for yourself and for the people around you.

I wonder today, what are the fears of failure that are guiding your life right now?

What are the things in your life that make you feel like you are currently failing?

What are the things in life that make you maybe even feel like you are a failure?

The difference between Joshua chapter 9 and Joshua chapter 10 is that Joshua came back and sought the Lord.

Joshua 9 · chapter mention Joshua 10 · chapter mention

What would it look like for you to take your feels, fears of failure, the areas you you believe you are failing, the areas that have made you feel like you are a failure, and to bring them to God today.

How might God be able to position you to take even your mistakes and place them in his hands and allow him to redeem them and use them for your good?

The truth is we all fail.

All we like sheep have gone astray.

All have sinned, and we've all fallen short of God's glorious standard.

And the wages of our sin is death.

And yet Jesus loved us so much, and he proved his love, and that while we were still sinners, while we were still failing God, God came down and gave his life for us.

If you're at one of our venues today and you've never had a moment in time where you have consciously decided to put your faith in Jesus, I want to give you the opportunity to do that today.

Right now, with everyone's heads bowed and eyes closed, I want you to consider whether you've had a moment in your life where you have decided that Jesus is your only hope for today and for your eternal life.

Where you've decided to believe that he is who he says he is, and he's done what he says that he is done.

Putting your faith in Jesus brings you into relationship with God and is the first step to redeeming even your failures.

If that's you, and you're ready today to put your faith in Jesus, I want to ask you across our venues to simply raise your hand right where you're sitting.

As a symbolic gesture, by raising your hand, you're saying, Today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

For those who've raised a hand, I want you to know that God sees your faith and accepts it.

Your sins are forgiven, and you have now been given eternal life, a gift that no one and nothing can ever take away from you.

And so I want to help you very simply acknowledge this moment.

I'm gonna ask you to repeat a prayer with me, and I'm gonna ask all the believers at our venues to pray this as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

Man, I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.