There have been so many successes with hearts in need over my years but if I’m honest I often feel the failures most.

 

The times when I prayed for healing, and it just didn’t come on this side of Heaven. When I did the work for someone to get into a place of care, and they left. When someone I had been praying over for months ended up worse than before.

 

When you take what you do seriously, it can hurt sometimes.

 

It hurts to see people reject your counsel. It hurts to see others misunderstand what you know through experience is true. It hurts to see hearts become enamored with things that will be fruitless and cease to grow.

 

It often doesn’t make much sense to me that many choose to walk away from the power of God to go back to Egypt.

 

Egypt can be a dead religion that brings no life, but it’s so familiar they refuse to risk a new thing.

 

Egypt can be a place of lukewarmness where the world just wins the pull over the Kingdom.

 

Egypt can be the place where we refuse to be transformed and become new with new life behaviors and mindset changes.

 

Egypt can be when someone has an opportunity for healing, and they just rebel because it’s too hard. Thus, they stop short and abandon all efforts.

 

I long for miracles. I long for wonders. I long for breakthroughs from strongholds. I long to see it “work out right.”

 

But it doesn’t always.

People have free will.

And I’m not God.

 

If I’m not careful, I’ll try to take it personally. “Surely, I could have done something different, offered them more, held them tighter…”

 

But it’s not that.

People choose.

Some just aren’t ready.

 

Releasing people to their choices is super hard. I used to run after them. I still do to a measure, but there’s a moment now when I can hear the Lord whisper, “Let them go…”

 

I grieve this part of ministry…yet I know the Lord will pursue by other means. It just might not include me.

 

For the ministers out there who cry over their people. For those who ache because some choose to remain lost. For those who want to give up at times because it seems the failures mount up….

 

Failure would have been doing nothing and caring little…so cut yourself some slack.

 

Keep loving.

Keep shepherding.

Keep trying.

Keep praying.

Keep laying hands.

Keep working the land.

 

There’s a promise for us to cling to, “In due time you will reap a harvest…”