WHEN YOU HAVE DONE EVERYTHING YOU KNOW TO DO… AND NOTHING IS WORKING

I have been thinking about an important subject that wouldn’t just go away and I believe this may just be for some of us here today.

There is a kind of tiredness that sleep cannot cure.

It is the exhaustion of trying. You have prayed. You have fasted. You have planned. You have applied. You have sent the proposals. You have attended the conferences. You have upgraded your qualifications. You have changed your strategy. You have called people. You have swallowed your pride. You have started again.

And still… nothing seems to be working.

The bills are waiting.

The ideas are plenty, but the money is not.

Your certificates are beautifully arranged, yet opportunities seem to walk past your address.

People tell you how gifted you are, but sometimes you want to ask them, “If I am this gifted, why is my life this difficult?”

You know what makes it worse?

People depend on you.

There is a spouse looking at you believing that somehow you will figure it out. Children whose school fees don’t understand that Daddy or Mummy is going through a season. Parents you would love to take care of. Employees waiting for salaries. Dreams waiting for funding. And somewhere between faith and frustration, you begin having conversations with God that you cannot repeat in church.

“Lord, where exactly are You?”

“Did I hear You correctly?”

“Why did You give me this vision if You weren’t going to provide for it?”

“Why are people who don’t even seem to care about You moving forward while I am struggling to breathe?”

Perhaps you have never said it aloud, but if we’re going to be truthful over coffee this morning, there are seasons when it is only courtesy that stops you from forgetting about God or asking whether heaven has become Yahoo.

I know that place.

I know what it means to release your faith toward something and watch the date come and go.

I know what it means to believe so strongly that something will happen that you can almost touch it only to discover that it didn’t. And one of the most painful parts of disappointment is not merely that it didn’t happen; It is having to explain to yourself why it didn’t happen.

Because when you have done everything you know to do and nothing appears to work, eventually the problem stops looking like the economy, the opportunity, the system or the timing.

The problem starts looking like you. That is where you must be careful. Because there is something adversity often attempts to take from you before it takes anything else: your interpretation of yourself. A failed attempt is an event. But “I am a failure” is an identity. Don’t confuse your current evidence with your final identity.

So if life has brought you to that strange intersection where prayer, competence, effort and expectation appear to have produced very little, may I sit with you over coffee and give you five things I want you to remember?

1. DON’T LET YOUR RESULTS NAME YOU

You may be broke but you are not broken. Your business may have failed but you are not the business. Separate WHO YOU ARE from WHAT IS HAPPENING.

2. STOP ASKING ONLY, “WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?” ASK, “WHAT IS THIS SEASON TEACHING ME?”

Pain has information. Sometimes what looks like opposition is feedback. Maybe your gift is excellent but your distribution is poor(you may want to check my entire series on the laws of creation on YouTube). A person who can extract intelligence from disappointment can turn yesterday’s tears into tomorrow’s strategy.

3. REDUCE THE SIZE OF THE BATTLE

When everything is failing simultaneously, the mind starts trying to solve the next ten years before breakfast. Sometimes destiny does not need a giant leap; It needs another faithful step.

4. BORROW STRENGTH UNTIL YOUR OWN RETURNS

Please don’t disappear because you are embarrassed. There are seasons when you need people who can remember who you are when disappointment has made you forget. Find someone before whom you don’t have to perform. Someone you can tell: “I am tired.” Sometimes the miracle is having somebody sit beside you long enough for you to want to try again.

5. KEEP YOUR SPIRIT ALIVE WHILE YOU REENGINEER YOUR STRATEGY

This may be the most important one. You can lose money and recover it. But when you lose your capacity to imagine tomorrow, you have lost something far more expensive. Protect your relationship with God even if your prayer right now is:

“God, I don’t understand You, but I am still here.” That too is faith.

Your responsibility is to ensure that the person who will be needed for the next chapter survives this one. One day you may look back at this season and discover that the greatest thing it produced wasn’t the opportunity you were desperately asking for; It produced a better version of you. A person whose faith is no longer dependent on everything going according to plan.

So, my friend, today please wipe your face, take another look at the problem because sometimes the evidence that God hasn’t finished with your story is simply this:

You are still here.

I celebrate you.

- Praise Fowowe

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