Stop Letting Disappointment Write Your Story

Apostle Marla Eash | Faith Center | September 27, 2026, Sunday AM

Central message: What you repeatedly meditate on shapes how you interpret circumstances and respond to them. Marla calls believers to remember God’s faithfulness, guard His Word, and act courageously on His instructions. She presents this as preparation for taking back lost territory and entering new assignments in 2027. Pasted text(4)

1. Begin by remembering God’s faithfulness and giving Him the glory

• Marla opens with gratitude for what God has accomplished in the church and in individual families:

○ Healing and deliverance. ○ Freedom from addiction. ○ Broken chains and restored lives. ○ Grace and strength to fulfill God-given assignments.

• Casting crowns at Jesus’ feet represents acknowledging the source of every victory.

○ Believers participate in God’s work. ○ Their ability to accomplish it comes from His grace, authority, and faithfulness.

• Past victories should remain living testimonies.

○ Do not become so familiar with God’s goodness that it loses significance. ○ Do not treat yesterday’s healing or deliverance as yesterday’s news. ○ Continue remembering, thanking, and glorifying Him.

Key application: Remembering what God has done strengthens confidence in who He will continue to be.

1. God is increasing His people’s capacity

• 2026 is a year of increase.
• She describes increase primarily as an inward work:

○ Greater capacity to trust God. ○ A larger understanding of who He is. ○ Greater readiness to respond to His Word. ○ Increased ability to carry out His assignments.

• Outward changes may accompany that growth, but the foundation is what God develops within the believer.

Healing as a household expectation

• She describes healing as “the bread of every household.”
• Her encouragement is to develop a consistent practice of turning to Jesus in prayer when physical needs arise.
• She connects this to the church’s healing school and Sunday evening teaching:

○ Repeated instruction helps people become practiced in applying their faith.

○ Testimonies help establish an expectation of God’s faithfulness.

• She also emphasizes a generational inheritance:

○ Children and grandchildren should see prayer modeled. ○ Families can pass down confidence in God and familiarity with His Word.

Key application: Spiritual growth should become part of everyday family life.

1. Repeated hearing prepares believers to apply the truth

Primary reference: John 8:44

• Encourages listeners to revisit the previous messages in this series.
• Hearing a teaching once does not mean it has become an established practice.
• She connects learning and application:

○ The more intentionally believers hear the Word, the more readily they remember

it.

○ The more deeply they learn it, the more prepared they are to act on it.

• She contrasts repeated truth with repeated lies:

○ The enemy returns to familiar fears, accusations, and discouraging images. ○ A repeatedly entertained lie can become the story a person lives by. ○ Believers must intentionally return to what God has said.

Her description of meditation includes:

• Speaking and repeating the Word.
• Studying and considering it.
• Imagining life in light of it.
• Quietly rehearsing it.
• Planning a response consistent with it.

Key application: Be persistent in rehearsing truth rather than allowing discouragement to become the most familiar voice.

1. Faith looks toward what God has prepared

Primary references: Genesis 1:1–3; Hebrews 11:1; Hebrews 4:3; Habakkuk 2:2–3

• Marla reviews her teaching about the “observation of faith.”
• In her interpretation of Genesis 1:

○ God first created what she describes as the substance of creation. ○ The Spirit hovered over the waters. ○ God spoke, and creation took form.

• She connects this with Hebrews 11:1:

○ Faith is the substance of things hoped for. ○ What is not yet visible can still be the object of faith.

• Her emphasis is that believers should respond to God’s promises with confidence in His provision.
• She also connects vision with an appointed season:

○ A God-given vision gives direction to hope. ○ A delay in visible fulfillment does not automatically mean the vision has failed. ○ Believers continue holding to what God has spoken.

Key application: Let God’s promise shape expectation before circumstances provide visible confirmation.

1. Hope expresses itself through praise and thanksgiving

Primary references: Psalm 71:14; Romans 1:20–21

• Marla defines hope as a confident expectation of God’s good.
• She emphasizes the relationship between continual hope and increasing praise.
• Praise keeps attention on:

○ God’s character. ○ His previous faithfulness. ○ His ability to fulfill what He has spoken.

• Remembering past victories gives substance to present encouragement.
• In her application of Romans 1:20–21, failing to glorify and thank God makes room for empty reasoning and darkened expectations.
• Gratitude helps preserve awareness of what God has already done.

Key application: Thanksgiving is a deliberate way to keep God’s faithfulness in view while waiting.

1. Do not become consumed with figuring out “how”

• Marla distinguishes between trusting what God has said and insisting on understanding how He must accomplish it.
• Fixation on the “how” can lead to:

○ Measuring every obstacle. ○ Comparing one’s circumstances with someone else’s. ○ Rehearsing what might go wrong. ○ Limiting expectations to familiar solutions.

• Her instruction is to keep attention on God’s Word while leaving the means of fulfillment to Him.

Her observer-effect illustration

• She draws on her earlier teaching about quantum physics and the observer effect.
• She uses this to illustrate her spiritual point that fixation on natural limitations can undermine confidence.
• This portion is presented here as her teaching illustration, rather than as established scientific proof that thoughts or spoken declarations determine external events.

Key application: You can obey a clear instruction from God without first understanding every part of the outcome.

1. God’s promises do not eliminate resistance

Primary reference: Mark 10:28–30

• Marla discusses Jesus’ conversation with Peter after the rich young ruler leaves.
• Peter points out that the disciples have left everything to follow Jesus.
• Jesus speaks of receiving a hundredfold, together with persecutions.
• Marla emphasizes that promise and opposition can exist at the same time.
• Resistance does not, by itself, mean:

○ God has abandoned the believer. ○ The promise is invalid. ○ Obedience has failed.

• She describes the enemy’s strategy as attempting to:

○ Steal confidence in God. ○ Introduce fearful imaginations. ○ Make believers forget previous victories. ○ Shift attention from the promise to the obstacle.

Key application: Expect opposition without allowing it to become the authority that determines your response.

1. Receiving involves taking hold and carrying truth into life

• Marla emphasizes an active response to God’s Word.
• She describes receiving as:

○ Taking hold. ○ Laying hold for use. ○ Becoming a carrier of what has been received.

• A teaching should move beyond agreement into practice.
• What believers learn about prayer, authority, healing, or trust should accompany them into actual situations.

Her personal example: making room for God’s goodness

• Marla recalls becoming frustrated with a situation.
• She describes sensing the Holy Spirit instruct her that choosing not to complain, accuse, or voice an unnecessary opinion made room for His goodness.
• That instruction became something she carried into later situations.
• Instead of repeatedly feeding frustration, she practiced turning her attention back to God.

Key application: Carry a received truth into the next moment when you have an opportunity to respond differently.

1. Focus on the table God prepared, even when enemies are present

Primary reference: Psalm 23:5–6

• God prepares a table in the presence of enemies.
• Marla emphasizes that the presence of opposition does not remove the provision at the table.
• She describes the table as representing:

○ God’s Word. ○ His covenant. ○ The work of Jesus. ○ Spiritual nourishment. ○ Provision, healing, restoration, and authority.

• The believer’s responsibility is to attend to what God provides:

○ Feed on it. ○ Meditate on it. ○ Speak it. ○ Apply it.

• She connects this with confidence that goodness and mercy continue to follow God’s people.

Key application: Pay greater attention to God’s provision than to the opposition surrounding it.

1. Joshua shows how meditation prepares people to take territory

Primary reference: Joshua 1:1–9

A. A new assignment requires readiness

• After Moses’ death, God tells Joshua to prepare to lead Israel across the Jordan.
• Joshua must step into responsibility for the next season.
• Marla presents the current teaching series as a similar call for Faith Center to get ready.

B. God identifies the territory and promises His presence

• The land is promised, but it is occupied.
• The assignment includes real resistance.
• God assures Joshua that He will be with him as He was with Moses.

C. Strength and courage are commanded

• Joshua is told to be strong and courageous.
• Courage is grounded in God’s presence and instruction.
• Fear must not determine whether Joshua moves forward.

D. Meditation supports obedience

• Joshua must keep the Word in his mouth and meditate on it day and night.
• The purpose is to observe and do what God commands.
• Marla explains “observe” as involving:

○ Guarding. ○ Keeping. ○ Watching over. ○ Carefully attending to the Word.

E. Meditation changes the believer’s frame of reference

• Joshua needs to interpret the assignment through God’s promise.
• Meditation helps move the Word from something known to something that governs decisions.
• The goal is an obedient response.

Key application: Guard the Word closely enough that it becomes your first reference point when making decisions.

1. Jericho illustrates obedience without understanding the mechanism

Primary reference: Joshua 6:5

• God’s instructions at Jericho did not resemble an ordinary military strategy.
• Joshua could have questioned how marching, trumpets, and shouting would bring down fortified walls.
• Marla emphasizes that God required obedience without a full explanation of the mechanism.
• God brought down the walls; Israel participated through obedience.

Knowing the Word versus living from it

• A believer may know a promise intellectually while responding primarily to fear.
• Circumstances may appear unchanged.
• Emotions may insist that nothing is happening.
• Faith responds by continuing to attend to what God has instructed.

How meditation helps

• It changes what a person notices and treats as decisive.
• It helps believers recognize opportunities to obey.
• It shapes the response even before the visible situation changes.

Key application: Ask what faithful action is available now, instead of waiting until every uncertainty disappears.

1. The twelve spies demonstrate how the same facts can produce different responses

Biblical account referenced: Numbers 13–14

• All twelve spies encountered the same land:

○ Fruitfulness. ○ Fortified cities. ○ Powerful inhabitants. ○ Significant obstacles.

• Ten focused on their inability to overcome those obstacles.
• Joshua and Caleb viewed the land in light of God’s promise and previous deliverance.
• Marla points to what Israel had already witnessed:

○ Deliverance from Egypt. ○ The plagues. ○ The opening of the Red Sea.

• Their history with God provided a basis for confidence in the next assignment.

Key application: The facts you encounter matter, but so does the history of God’s faithfulness through which you interpret them.

1. David’s meditation prepared him to respond differently to Goliath

Primary references: Psalm 63:6; Psalm 143:5; 1 Samuel 17:37 Additional account referenced: David at Ziklag, 1 Samuel 30

A. David remembered God personally

• He meditated on God during the night.
• He remembered earlier days and considered the works of God’s hands.
• His meditation included God’s character and faithfulness, as well as His promises.

B. Israel repeatedly heard Goliath’s threats

• Goliath threatened Israel morning and evening for forty days.
• Marla describes those repeated threats as becoming Israel’s meditation.
• Their attention became organized around the giant’s apparent power.

C. David had a different reference point

• David remembered deliverance from the lion and the bear.
• He interpreted the present threat through that past faithfulness.
• The giant was the same, but David’s perception and response differed.

D. David also strengthened himself after loss

• Marla references Ziklag, where David faced devastation and the capture of his family.
• He encouraged himself in the Lord and moved toward recovery.

Key application: Rehearse God’s faithfulness until it meaningfully influences how you respond to the next challenge.

1. The congregational call: prepare to take back territory in 2027

• Marla presents 2027 as a year of taking territory:

○ Recovering territory that has been lost. ○ Entering new territory. ○ Responding to assignments God places before individuals and families.

• She connects this with the increased capacity she has emphasized for 2026.
• This is presented as her prophetic emphasis for the congregation.

The assignment is personal

• Listeners should not assume the responsibility belongs only to pastors or someone more qualified.
• She calls each person to:

○ Recognize the assignment. ○ Receive courage. ○ Speak God’s Word over the home and family. ○ Take an active step of obedience.

Key application: Identify what God is calling you to take responsibility for, rather than automatically assigning it to someone else.

1. The closing response: change the framework and continue in it

A. Repent of allowing discouragement to define the story

• Marla leads the congregation in acknowledging where repeated lies, disappointment, or fear have shaped their outlook.
• The prayer turns attention back to God’s faithfulness and provision.

B. Ask for a word to hold and guard

• Listeners are encouraged to ask God what they should meditate on.
• They commit to holding it, guarding it, and moving in response to it.
• The prayer includes the declaration: “You are my how.”

C. Return to God after disappointment

• Marla addresses those who have withdrawn from God because of hurt or discouragement.
• She invites them to return, emphasizing that He has not forsaken them.

D. Make an ongoing change beyond the altar moment

• She addresses the thought, “I’ve done that so many times and it hasn’t worked.”
• Her emphasis is that a public response must be followed by a different daily pattern.
• Returning to the same meditation after prayer leaves the old framework in place.

E. Give the Word time and attention

• The closing prayer asks for:

○ Renewed hearts and thinking. ○ Courage and boldness. ○ Remembrance of the Word during opposition. ○ Diligence in applying what was heard.

• She encourages listeners to give God’s work space rather than rushing away.

Practical response drawn from the teaching

1. Identify the repeated thought: What fear, disappointment, or accusation has been

shaping your expectations?

1. Remember specific testimonies: Write down ways God has previously helped,

provided, restored, or sustained you.

1. Choose a Scripture to meditate on: Read it carefully, speak it, and consider how to

apply it.

1. Practice thanksgiving: Deliberately return to God’s faithfulness.
2. Name the assignment: Identify the area of life that needs renewed attention and

obedience.

1. Take one concrete step: Act on what is clear without requiring every detail of the

outcome.

1. Continue when resistance appears: Return to the Word and the new response you

have chosen.

Scripture-reference clarification: The transcript’s wording about the vision “breathing” toward its end corresponds to Habakkuk 2:3 in Young’s Literal Translation; the Spirit hovering over the waters is Genesis 1:2; David’s statement about deliverance from the lion and bear is 1 Samuel 17:37.