BECOMING A STRANGER TO FAILURE | Power For Explosive Success by Dr. D.K. Olukoya

BECOMING A STRANGER TO FAILURE

Success is achievable. To succeed, you need divine power. You need to receive the raw power of God, in order to succeed, and become a stranger to failure. To help you cultivate the habit of succeeding in life’s endeavour, we shall begin with examining what it takes to become a stranger to failure.

To become a stranger to failure, you need to learn the basics of the successful lifestyle. To benefit maximally from this chapter, I want you to pray the following prayer points:

PRAYER POINTS

1. Every yoke manufacturer, die with your yoke, in the name of Jesus.

• Powers, that are swallowing my breakthroughs, vomit them, in the name of Jesus.

• Pharaoh from my place of birth, I bury you in the Red Sea, in the name of Jesus.

Failure is not your lot. Success is your birthright. In fact, God expects you to be a total stranger to failure. Why? It is simply, because your Creator has never known failure. Thus, being the works of His hands, you should not be failure.

Failure is not God’s handiwork. It is the devil that engineers failure. My prayer is that the Lord will help you, to become a total stranger to failure.

There is a message of hope for you. If you have recorded any failure in any area of your life, the Lord will rewrite your story, and will make you a

symbol of success. Give heed to the divine instruction today, and, you will never remain the same. Here is God’s Word for you.

Job 14:7-9: For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root there of wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; Yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant.

Somebody has rightly stated that failing is not what matter, what really matter is whether you remain a failure. Do not ever weep, or pity yourself over the failures of the past, because something new is about to happen in your life. Your name will soon become a household name. Get ready for enlargement and promotion because the God of heaven will make you a stranger to failure.

It does not take God much time to perform glorious things in your life. The Lord can bless you in a split second, and all you lay your hands upon will become prosperous. Allow God to have His way in your life, and you will never know failure. A day of breakthrough can make you forget years of sufferings. A moment of divine favour is all you need to forget all the years of fruitless labour. Your night will soon be turned to a glorious day.

THE GREATEST SUCCESS

If you are asked to give an answer to what constitute the greatest success upon the face of the earth, what would be your answer? Maybe, you might conclude hastily, that it is buying the most expensive car, or building a mansion. Friend, that is far from the truth.

The greatest success was achieved by Jesus Christ. Although, going by human calculation, some people might look at it as a failure. Jesus Christ was born to a poor and lowly family of a carpenter. He started His ministry at 30. He fasted in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, after which some people did not recognize Him, as a Saviour.

Jesus was received in Jerusalem during His triumphant entry as king, but was later to be crucified in a bitter way on the cross of Calvary. Jesus Christ

later gathered about 70 people, but later we did not hear much about them. He had to pray and do vigils to select His 12 disciples. Out of these disciples, one of them also chosen by prayer, became a traitor.

Jesus Christ invested in the lives of his disciples for three and half years, only to see none of them at the close of His ministry; they all ran away, when Jesus was arrested. The only person who stood was Peter, and he later denied Jesus.

John Mark (the writer of the gospel of Mark) was busy watching, what they were doing to Jesus. When they ran after him to arrest him, he removed his clothes and threw it at them. He had to run away naked. The ministry of Jesus did not go beyond a place called Palestine. He did not sound like a successful man.

By the time He rose from the dead ordinary women discovered that He had risen again. In fact, the disciples did not believe the risen story. They took all the stories of resurrection as a mere tale. We are made to know that they were searching for Jesus at the cemetery until an angel confronted them, asking them an eternal question -“why seek ye the living among the dead?”

Thomas Didymus doubted the resurrection of Jesus. He was an epitome of an honest and scientific doubter, who wanted to put his hands inside the place where Jesus had been nailed, to confirm the authenticity of Jesus’ resurrection.

You will also discover that the disciples, who had been called to be fishers of men, soon forgot God’s mandate upon their lives. After the departure of Jesus, they quickly resumed fishing career. Jesus had to go back to the place, where he had called them to still fetch them.

If you examine the ministry of Jesus with the eyes of men, you might conclude that it was a failure. But it is the greatest success the world has ever witnessed. Can you imagine that those unlettered fishermen and tax collectors were the materials used by God, to bring the gospel to you and I?

THE GREATEST FAILURE

Having seen the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus as the greatest success, through which salvation has come to man, you will then discover what constitutes the greatest failure upon the face of the earth. The greatest failure a man could ever experience then, is to despise and throw down the offer of salvation.

Being rich materially and financially is not the ultimate. For you to be a stranger to failure, you must be rich in God. The richest man with all his riches; will perish one day, just as the poorest man will die. In eternity, riches will not matter. It is only the way you have lived your life on earth that will determine your success.

To be rich in God, is the step towards enjoying eternity with God in heaven. Repentance and salvation will make you to be rich in God. God will move you from failure to success, as you appropriate the gift of salvation into your life. The Bible laments the failure of rich men, who lack salvation in James 5:1-6.

James 5:1-6: Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.

IGNORANCE, THE TRAGEDY OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE

All tragedies of human experience can be traceable to ignorance. Ignorance will impoverish and enslave you. It is ignorance that makes you a friend to failure, and a stranger to success. It is ignorance that will make you to roam about the beach, seeking for solution to life’s problems. It is ignorance that will make a sister to visit a false prophet and to undress

herself, and in the name of seeking for help, the false prophet will rob her body with an egg, all because she is looking for a husband.

Nothing but ignorance will make somebody, who bags a Master’s degree from Cambridge to subject himself to a ritual bath. A University lecturer was once told to mount a live goat on his back, and go to the market for ritual, just to solve a particular problem. The lecturer asked if there was another way out aside the first option; without going through the ordeals of shamefully backing a goat. Prior to this time, he had fainted and was carried like a little boy. He was given another unpalatable option of breaking several coconuts at different junctions at night. Eventually, the lecturer ran to Jesus for help.

There is no help outside God. God is the only one, who can give you the power to overcome the surmountable mountains before you. That is why God should control your life.

WHAT IS IGNORANCE

Ignorance simply means lack of knowledge. When you do not have the knowledge of God, His word and a particular fact or information, you are ignorant. Ignorance is detrimental and dangerous.

There are many educated, enlightened and intelligent men, who are still suffering from ignorance. Your educational attainment cannot exclude you from ignorance. In fact, there are some people, who are educated, but are ignorant of basic things in the Scriptures.

I was in a high-level government meeting sometimes ago, where the participants were supposed to be very intelligent people. One man had a hot argument with me over a thing in the Scriptures. The man told me that Moses in the Bible was so close to God, and prayed so powerfully to a level that horns came out of his head. “Horns on Moses’ head?” I queried. He answered “Yes.” I had to bring out my Bible, for him to show me that place in the Bible. He could not show me yet he insisted that it was in the Bible. One of them later said, “Dr. Olukoya, are you telling us that you have memorized every word and sentence in the Bible, that you now know that what the other man said was not in the Bible?”

As a Christian who wants to be a stranger to failure, there is a need for you to have a deep knowledge of the Scriptures. In fact, you should follow a guide that will make you to read the whole Bible through in one year. The Bible has shown us the peril of ignorance.

Isaiah 5:13-14: Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst. Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.

Ignorance of the word of God, will not only make you a failure in life it will bring you into captivity and bondage. Ignorance will bring about eternal destruction in hell. If you can read your books as a student, and, if you can devote time to read newspapers, you have no excuse for not reading the Bible. Make the Bible your companion, and failure will be far from you. It is until you give time to Bible study, that you can have more understanding than your teachers.

Psalm 119:97-100: O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day. Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies: for they are ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients because I keep thy precepts.

SMART, BUT NOT WISE

It is possible for you to be smart but not wise. If a man is planting an evil seed, though he is ignorant of this, it will not keep the evil seed from growing. Education is very good, yet, it does not induce wisdom all the time.

In fact there are many educated illiterates around. As a matter of fact, those who are confusing the world, are very educated and intelligent people.

Information is not the same as wisdom. You can fill your heads with data, but may still be unwise. Age is not also equivalent to wisdom. One of my teachers in the secondary school has rightly said, “If beards were to signify

intelligence, the goat would have been a genius.” So, old age is not wisdom. It is very possible, for someone to spend the whole of his life learning the wrong thing.

A person can be an expert in ignorance. One can learn everything about nothing, without knowing anything tangible. Failure is an orphan. You would almost always notice that there is nobody, who wants to be associated with failure.

YOUR POSITION

Your position as a Christian is a glorious and enviable one. You are not supposed to beg anybody. People should seek help from you. It is a shame for unbelievers to question your faith, because of failure, or poverty. Jesus Christ became poor, so that you could be rich, spiritually and physically. Why not close your eyes and pray this prayer fervently: I shall not beg to eat, I shall not befriend poverty, in the name of Jesus.

THE YOKE OF FAILURE

Everybody wants to win, but not everybody is winning. The yoke of failure had griped men in seven major areas.

1. Business

• Spiritual

• Marriage

• Career

• Health

• Ministry

• Academics

SUCCESS NUGGETS

The secret of success is constancy of purpose

Anything you want to do, and, you are not constant, you will fail.

There is something worse than giving up and that is, not beginning at all.

To give up is bad, but not beginning at all, is worse.

Laziness is the attitude of resting, before you are tired

Everyone is in the gutter of life

The only difference is that some pack the mud underneath, while the others aim at the stars.

When a person is a loser, he will always visualise failure

When a person is a winner, he will visualise success, and that is why everything he does, must succeed.

Many people lose the substance, because they are busy chasing shadows.

This reminds me of the good old days when I was in primary School. Before any term begins, one of our teachers used to tell us an interesting story. He went thus:

In a particular village, a dog decided to go to the meat market in order to pick from the meat, which the butchers were selling. The dog did, as if it was sleeping in the market. Shortly after, a big meat was laying somewhere, without anybody there. The dog ran quickly, and picked it up. It later ran away, though people shouted and threw stones at it. Later the dog had to cross a river, in order to eat the meat at the other side. Something interesting happened. The dog discovered a dog, with a big meat inside the river. Little did it know that it was only its reflection. The dog in anger, opened its mouth, so as to chase the shadow dog with the big meat, but eventually discovered that it was just its image. So, by chasing the shadow, the dog lost the substance.

The activities you do are different from your achievements.

You may do lots of things without achieving anything.

If you are thoroughly satisfied with your present position, you are a failure.

Any problem you have carries the seed of its destruction.

Close your eyes and pray this deep prayer: Let my problems destroy themselves, in the name of Jesus.

God can do great things, through imperfect people, praying for perfection.

Everything in life, follows the principle of starling from the bottom to the top.

The only exception to this is, when you are digging a hole. In other words, you will have to work yourself from up downwards.

No man is a failure, until he begins to fail from the inside.

CAUSES OF FAILURE IN LIFE

Living a floating life, without definite aims or purposes.

In other words, you will fail when you do not know why you were born, why you are on earth, where you are coming from, where you are going and why you are doing what you are doing.

Some years ago, a man used to pass through our house shouting, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This he does every 5:00 am in his white garment. I woke up around this time one day, and decided to challenge him. I beckoned to this preacher, and I asked him, “What do you mean by repentance?” To worsen the matter, “I demanded to know which kingdom of heaven is at hand?” He only stopped and looked straight at me and said, “It is not given unto the son of man to explain.”

Surprisingly, he made me realise, that it is not his pleasure to be doing, what he was doing. He also told me that it was one prophet, who told him to be doing the morning cry, because, if he did not do it, he would die. It is not good to live a floating life, without understanding what one is doing.

INHERITED FAILURE

Failure can be inherited, therefore you need to check your foundation. Abraham told lies that Sarah was not his wife, after which Isaac followed suit; he told lies again, that his own wife was not his wife. By the time the spirit of lies had gone from Abraham to Isaac, it doubled itself in Jacob. In fact, Jacob became an expert in lies. Also, the spirit of lie passed down to the children, who told their father, “Joseph, your son is dead.” Check your foundation very well. Do not allow inherited failure to destroy your future.

The Bible says that David had many wives. This anointing of immorality was transferred to Solomon. He had 300 wives and 700 concubines (girlfriends). Solomon begat Rehoboam, who had 18 wives and married 60 girlfriends. Rehoboam’s son called Abijah, also had 14 wives. The trend continued!

The seed of failure in your great grand fathers could be transferred to you, if serious prayer is not done. It is possible for your great grand parents to have dedicated you to idols, and the covenant might remain binding, if you do not go through deliverance.

A sister had a woeful result in her SSCE, and she ran home to meet her mother. The mother took her to a herbalist, who told her that since she had got the child through the river, there is need for her to make sacrifices to the river in June of every year. With this, the mother bought bags of rice and beans, chicken and other things. She threw everything inside the river at the command of the herbalist. After doing this, the sister got distinctions in her next result.

Later on, this sister got born again in a church, where deliverance was not practised. Thus, she stopped making sacrifices to the river. The devil waited to deal with her in the matrimonial home. One day, her husband brought three girls to the matrimonial home, and slept with all of them on the same

bed. This made the sister to run back to her mother, who simply told her to make fresh sacrifice to the ruler-goddess. And not until the sister went for deliverance, was the problem solved. She had inherited failure in her background.

The Scripture says, “If the foundation be destroyed what can the righteous do?

Close your eyes, lay one hand on your stomach and pray these prayer points, with all your strength:

1. Every foundation of witchcraft in my family, die now, in the name of Jesus.

• Every seed of failure in my root, die, in the name of Jesus

• Every seed of witchcraft in my foundation, die, in the name of Jesus.

INDISCIPLINE

This is a major cause of failure. If you have the habit of a glutton, you can eat up anything available. For you to have success, you must control your emotions, temper, habits and what you eat. It has been said that the best marriage is the one that the wife’s mouth has been padlocked, and the man’s eyes blinded. In other words, there would be discipline, which will make the wife not to say anything wrong. The husband, too, will not see what will annoy the wife. This is what will bring about peace and success in life.

BAD HEALTH

If you are an ardent student of the Bible, you will discover that healing promises are found everywhere in the Scriptures. God knows that anybody who has good prospects, but in a deplorable health situation, cannot perform well. There is no point having millions in the bank only to squander it on bad health. For you to be a stranger to failure, you must avoid bad health and pray to God for sound health.

UNFAVOURABLE CHILDHOOD ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCE.

Where you lived during your childhood, will either have positive or negative influence on you. There are some people, who have been assaulted sexually due to the environment of their childhood. This goes on to affect their adulthood. Scientists have made us to know, that character is already formed at the age of childhood.

Pray this prayer with all your heart: Every childhood pollution, affecting my destiny, clear away, in the name of Jesus.

LACK OF VISION

Vision is paramount to successful achievement. Somebody has rightly said that if you never have a dream, you cannot make a dream to happen. The Bible says:

Proverbs 29:18: Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.

SELFISHNESS

Selfish people are always miserable. When you are selfish, you are only planning for failure. Selfish people have the habit of saying “Me, I, Myself, and that is all.” The more people you help to go up, the more ladders you create for yourself to move up.

DESIRE FOR REVENGE

When you always want to retaliate, you are planning for failure. Have the spirit of forgiveness. Manifest the spirit of forgiveness from your heart, when people step on your toes. Offences will always come, but you must not take offence, or be offended. This is a mark of a true child of God who wants to be a stranger to failure.

INDULGING IN NEGATIVE GOSSIP ABOUT THE AFFAIRS OF OTHER PEOPLE

You cannot speak evil about others and expect prosperity. It is not possible for you to be a satanic broadcaster, and expect success from God. It

is what you want others to do for you that you should learn to do to others. In the house of God, some people are gossips, spreading untrue rumours. If somebody wants to tell you something, ask, if he could repeat the statement in front of the person concerned. Gossips never prosper, because it is one of the works of the devil. Do not therefore run errands for satan.

UNBELIEF OR LACK OF FAITH

IGNORANCE ABOUT PRAYING

This is peculiar to everybody in the church. Both the leader and the laity as well might be ignorant of some prayer points.

This reminds me of a pastor who used to criticize The Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries. He complained about our kind of prayers, as well as our aggressiveness in prayer. Something happened to him one day as he took some converts to the water for baptism. The first lady to be baptized stepped forward, and the pastor immersed her in water saying “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.” Before he concluded that prayer, the girl suddenly disappeared. The pastor thought he was in a dream; he did not believe his eyes. The people around advised him to run away immediately before the arrival of the police. The next person on the queue also refused to get baptized because she was afraid of the outcome.

It was at that point that the pastor remembered few of the fire prayer points he used to condemn in our church. Right in the water, the pastor began to pray that the girl should appear by fire of the Holy Ghost. He prayed even more aggressively. After about five minutes of hot and intense prayers, the girl appeared. The girl simply said, “Pastor, sorry for the embarrassment. I just felt like saying good-bye to my mates in the water.” The pastor simply parked his Bible and left without conducting any baptism for that day.

After this experience, the pastor turned his church to a serious praying church. He learnt his lesson in the hard way. So, ignorance about praying, will cause a major failure.

IGNORANCE ABOUT THE WORD OF GOD.

UNGODLY COUNSEL

Rehoboam, the son of Solomon imbibed the counseling from the young men of his days, and despised the counsel of the elders. He increased the people’s burdens, and the kingdom of Israel was split into two. Till today, they have not recovered.

BORROWING CULTURES

LYING OR FALSEHOOD

CRITICAL SPIRIT

GREED

Believers who need success must always learn to give and not be greedy.

The more you give, the more you will receive.

LACK OF CONFIDENCE

There was an occasion, where a king had a very beautiful daughter. The king made it clear that his daughter would not marry the way other people marry. He, therefore called all men, who wanted to marry his daughter to a competition. Many young men were gathered to hear the condition for marrying the daughter of the king.

The king displayed his beautiful daughter in the full glare of everybody; he made it clear that anyone who wanted to marry the daughter would have to swim across a river. Meanwhile, the trouble with that river was that it had a minimum of 100 hungry crocodiles. Since anyone, who would marry the daughter must swim safely across this death-trap river, the great crowd of men that gathered began to turn back one after the other.

All of a sudden, they just heard a great noise in the river. Somebody has entered the river and the crocodiles began to pursue him. The man swam with all the strength he ever had. Just as the crocodiles grabbed his shoe, he landed on the other side. The king approached him and told him, congratulations! You have won my daughter. The man said, “Please, don’t

congratulate me, just show me the man, who pushed me inside the water. I want to know him.”

This shows that the man would never have entered that river, without being pushed. He would not have swum through the valley of the shadow of death, without being under pressure. In other words, the man had the capacity to win, but there was no pressure! It took a shock experience for him to attempt the impossible.

Pray this prayer point: Every dry bone, in my destiny, hear the word of the Lord, receive life, in the name of Jesus.