"Don't Say 'I Don't Want to Fail' — Say This Instead." I want to be honest with you today. I have tried many things over the years and failed at them — painfully. These were the kind of failures that left scars on you... But miraculously I kept getting up. So when God laid a specific assignment in my heart to work with teenagers, and I stepped into it — I discovered that some times when I went out to pray in general or the thought of the assignment crossed my heart I would find myself saying... "Lord, please don't let me fail." I prayed... It was a very specific prayer bore out of my past failures. Because I was afraid to fail.. You see my thoughts were, if he wanted me on this deal he should help me not to fail because I was tired of failing and I was concerned about what people would say if I failed. But every time I prayed it, something inside me rebuked me saying... "That is the spirit of King Saul." And I'll stop in my track because I knew who Saul was and at that moment I would try to rephrase or skip the prayer. Though deep down inside of me I don't want to fail... Then this morning, while walking to work, the prayer surfaced again automatically: "Lord, I don't want to fail..." And this time instead of a rebuke, I heard something gentle and clear replace it: "Don't say you don't want to fail. Say — Lord, help me to rise every time I fail. Lord help me not to be scared of failing. "Lord help me to know how to succeed from failing." Because without failing you won't know how to succeed and it's when you stay in failure you have actually failed. You see.. King Saul's problem was never that he failed. It was because he was ashamed to be called a failure...and was more concerned about what people would say about him when he fails. He was too big to accept to fail. So instead of learning from his failures like David did and see the reasons why he failed in order to make corrections he chose to act differently. Micah wrote in Micah 7:8 saying though I fall, I will rise.. Which invariably I can say to you though you fall you shall rise.. You see God wasn't rebuking my desire to succeed in His purpose. He was correcting my heart posture. He knows that, "don't let me fail" gives me no room to follow his process and trust him completely. And it places me in a position of fear... However, "help me rise when I fail" states that I should trust God through the process. So if you or your— Teenager is afraid to try again after being hurt. And you have been asking God to help you not to fail... Then I think it's high time you change your prayer and ask him to help you to rise every time you fall. #movingmountainfaith #faith #fear #trustingGod