success or failure. Though I’d read it many times before, I’d never actually applied this verse to my ministry. While I could certainly sabotage my ministry, thereby guaranteeing failure, there was nothing I could do to guarantee victory. That was out of my control. My job was simply to prepare the horse for battle the best I could. It was God’s job to decide who won and who lost the battle. This revolutionary insight called for a drastic change in the goals I set and the way I judged my ministry.