in whom we have boldness and access in confidence through our faith in him.
Dr. Jerry Grillo on Building Confidence Through Faith and Overcoming Failure
About this episode
Dr. Jerry Grillo, pastor of Church 180 in Hickory, North Carolina and author of nearly 40 books on faith and Kingdom living, joins Philip Cameron for a life-changing conversation on how God hides equity inside every failure. Drawing on Ephesians 3:12 — "in Jesus and through faith in Jesus, we have this confidence" — Dr. Grillo unpacks why confidence is not simply belief in God, but a deep, settled belief in yourself as God's creation. At the heart of the episode is Dr. Grillo's CTFAR framework: Circumstance, Thought, Feeling, Action, Result. He argues that most believers keep trying to fix their results without ever addressing the thoughts and feelings that produced them. "You can never lose in the Kingdom of God," he tells Philip — failure is God's mechanism for building the confidence to thrive. He illustrates the point with Thomas Edison's 10,000 attempts to invent the light bulb, each "failure" teaching Edison exactly how not to do it. Dr. Grillo also challenges the false humility that causes believers to reject God's blessings, and points to the James Webb Space Telescope as a stunning reminder of God's infinite abundance. His books — including Live It to Win, Survive to Thrive, and 31 Favor Decisions — are available on Amazon Kindle. Explore his full library and ministry at liveit2win.com.
Part of our Faith collection of conversations.
More by Dr. Jerry Grillo
What's Discussed
Pastor and author Dr. Jerry Grillo of Church 180 in Hickory, North Carolina shares a Kingdom-rooted framework for turning failure into confidence. Anchored in Ephesians 3:12, he introduces the CTFAR model — Circumstance, Thought, Feeling, Action, Result — explaining that lasting change begins in the mind, not in external circumstances. Dr. Grillo draws a sharp distinction between conditional freedom (dependent on circumstances) and positional freedom (rooted in the Kingdom within, per Luke 17:21). He uses Thomas Edison's 10,000 attempts at the light bulb and the James Webb Space Telescope's images of the universe to illustrate God's limitless abundance and the danger of false humility. His core message: failure is God's training ground for confidence, and confidence is the inner persuasion that attracts the life God intends.
- Getting Equity Out of Your Failure
- Kingdom vs. Natural Mindset
- Ephesians 3:12 and Positional Confidence
- The CTFAR Framework Explained
- Failure as God's Growth Mechanism
- Thomas Edison and Learning Through Failure
- False Humility and Receiving God's Abundance
- James Webb Telescope and God's Infinite Provision
Scripture in this episode
neither will they say, ‘Look, here!’ or, ‘Look, there!’ for behold, God’s Kingdom is within you.”
Episode Transcript
Auto-generated · click any timestamp to jump the video
Intro
Philip:Hello, my friend. My name is Philip Cameron, and this is Daily Faith. And I am so glad to have you with us. We have got a fabulous show today, and I know this show is going to lift your spirit, let you see beyond the doubt — the trees of doubt that are so, you know, you can't see the forest for the trees. Sometimes the devil plants those trees right in front of your face.
Philip:But what we need to do is to be elevated above our circumstance, above our emotions, above our feelings, to see how God sees things. If we could see how God sees things, our entire perspective of life will change. God is not concerned with the attacks of the devil the way we are, because the devil has no power. This isn't a 49-51 like we're talking about the Senate — will it be a Republican or Democrat? Oh, just one seat swing. Let me tell you something. This is not a 51-49% power play between God and the devil.
Philip:He has been defeated. Satan is under our feet. We are more than conquerors in the name of Jesus. So if you could only see beyond the blur of your circumstance to see the God who controls your circumstance, you could have a holiday from concern. And with me today, my friend Dr. Jerry Grillo is with us on the program, and he is full of faith.
Philip:He has written a library on faith, and I'm going to tell you how to get some of these books. You need to get this library on faith, and when you do that I promise you you will never be the same again. Every time he comes and talks to me, every time we speak on the phone, every time I'm with him — the only word I can use, I don't really use it, I'm not like it, but in Scotland you still are called bamboozled. He bamboozles me with information. He pours into my spirit, and I know he's going to do the same thing for you.
Philip:Now, listen, I want to talk about something very, very serious. As you know, our ministry for 33 years has been involved in Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine. As you know, there's a war going on in Ukraine, and we have had to move our girls out of our house in Odessa, Ukraine and move them to Moldova — Cristina, Moldova — with a village there called River Village, a beautiful place, six houses, and our kids are there right now.
Philip:At this moment the war has, as you can see by the news, ground to a halt. It is a very dangerous situation right now because Putin can't win on the ground, and he can't go back to Russia without winning on the ground because they'll kill him. Putin is in an impossible situation, and now they're attacking with drones from Iran and all, you know, all the circumstances. We have in Moldova the Ukrainian girls who want to go back to Ukraine.
Philip:It's their home. They're living in a land that's a foreign country, foreign language. They don't know anything about Moldova other than we took them there for safety. There is also the concern in Moldova — they're having power cuts because they gain their fuel from Ukraine, which is now being obliterated. Yesterday they blew up 30% of the power grid of Ukraine in one day. So things are in an impossible situation.
Philip:To make things even more difficult, the house that the girls — that we lease for the last number of years for these girls to stay in — is being sold. And we've got to buy this house. In a war zone, you have a step of faith. But these lives are so important, and we've made the decision that whether Ukraine is in control or Russia is in control, this house will be desperately needed. There is a crisis that will not go away and will not be mitigated over the next year, two years — I don't know how long.
Philip:So we made a decision as a ministry to buy this house that is up for sale. If the house is sold elsewhere, we have nowhere to put our girls. So we have got to secure this home. And how the Lord spoke when this happened — I prayed about it for days and days and days, and the Lord challenged me to give a $2,000 gift personally. And he said to me — my thought process was, I said, look, how can you know, what's the wisdom of buying a house in a war zone?
Philip:And he said, what's the wisdom, naturally speaking, of letting my Son die on a cross? He risked everything for me. So he said to me, would you give $2,000, risking it, to save 24 girls' lives? Would you do it? And I said yes, I would. $200 a girl — I mean, it's insane. Actually, it's less than that, less than a hundred dollars a girl. And I said I'm gonna do it.
Philip:So I talked to my pastor and he said, well, I'll give $2,000 too. And I spoke to another pastor, Rusty Nelson, in Huntsville, and he said, Philip, I'll do it too. And ever since then, folks have been doing this and saying, I'm going to be in on this. And I'm asking you to pray — if you could help me buy this home in Odessa, Ukraine. I would hate to have no place to send these girls. It would be absolutely horrendous. So I want you to watch this video and pray as you watch it, and see if God would have you be a part of this miracle.
Watch this video. When God challenged us to open a home in Odessa years ago, we looked for many months to find a place big enough to make a difference in young girls' lives. We finally found the perfect place that can house 24 girls. We signed a long-term lease with the owner, and it has just ended. At the moment, we are able to house the Ukrainian girls in Moldova, but as the war drags on there is pressure to have those who escaped the Russian invasion to return to Ukraine. Moldova simply cannot afford the cost of maintaining so many refugees. Many have returned to Ukraine. Many have left for Europe and the USA and will never return.
Our girls wait every day to return to their homeland. If their home is sold, there will be nowhere for them to go. In the natural, it seems impossible. We have already strained every sinew in our ministry this year to care for thousands of destitute lives. We are about to send at least two containers packed with warm clothes to help these lost souls survive the brutal winter. But what about the young lives we already committed to protecting? Where would they go?
Can you imagine handing them a bus ticket to a death zone and telling them, you are on your own? We have nowhere for you to go. Your home has been sold. How would they survive in a country stuck in the no man's land of war? We are going to believe God to buy this special place. We will continue our work in Ukraine and trust him for protection as the days ahead unfold. We will be right there in the middle of tragic events, with a place of refuge for young girls to find rest in a home provided by loving hearts.
If God moves, the home we need is already waiting. We just need you. Will you pray? Will you give? I'm certain everyone who could wouldn't even hesitate to help this miracle take place. That is how this huge door of opportunity could open. We can minister to these dear souls for years to come and be a beacon of hope on the battlefield of despair.
Philip:I need to pray right now about this. I need you to ask God, could you be part of this miracle? $2,000 is a lot of money, especially in these days we're living in. But when you give to the poor, you lend to the Lord. The greatest investment — a lot of folks are sitting with stocks and they're being lost, and everything with interest rates, I know everything is going on. I'm in the same boat as you are. But I know that if I connect to God, something takes place in my life.
Philip:There are two ways you can help us. One is if you can partner with us to give a thousand dollars, two thousand dollars, to help this house be bought. If you can give to help us support — we've just taken 25 new kids into Cristina Village. I need you to stand with us today. Please pray. PO Box 25, Clinton, Tennessee 37716. The Orphan's Hands. PO Box 25, Clinton, Tennessee 37716. Help me build or buy this home and let these kids live, in the name of Jesus.
Philip:I am delighted to have my friend with me today, and he has been such a blessing in my life personally. Dr. Jerry Grillo pastors a church — Church 180 — in Hickory, North Carolina. Jerry, I'm delighted to have you with me, my friend, and I'm just excited about what God is putting on your heart today.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:I'm excited about being here. I love — I'll tell you what, that video is so hard. That'll break your heart, but it also lifts my faith to know that the people watching — you know, if we all come together, what is that saying? It's inch by inch it's a cinch, yard by yard it's hard. So if we all come together and do what we can, we can take care of this need.
Philip:Yeah. Come on, tell us what God's been talking to you about faith this week, because I am excited to hear it.
Getting Equity Out of Your Failure
Dr. Jerry Grillo:I tell you what's been strong on me — I did a Kingdom talk yesterday, and it's just been strong on me right now: how to get equity out of your failure, how to have confidence to realize that God has already put a return and an increase in every failed decision I've made in my life. That in the kingdom, sometimes you win, sometimes you learn, but listen to me — you can never lose, Philip, in the kingdom of God. There's no losing. As the saying goes, nothing's wasted. That's one of my favorite things — nothing's wasted.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:We have to understand that our walk with God and in the kingdom of God is a whole different thing. The kingdom of God is an internal process for external control. The world lives with external control that creates an internal process. But that's why the Bible says you renew your mind. That's why when you get into the kingdom of God, you start learning that the key to the kingdom is confidence. Ephesians 3:12 says in Jesus and through faith in Jesus we have this confidence, and we have believed and are persuaded that neither death nor life nor principalities nor power are part of failure.
Kingdom vs. Natural Mindset
Dr. Jerry Grillo:God hid in everybody's failure, Philip, equity. Every failed decision created in me an internal — and I allowed it to — you must allow it to. You're either gonna let the failure defeat you, or the failures that we've experienced are nothing more than the incremental system of growth. Conditional freedom — I call it. Are you conditionally or positionally free? In the kingdom of God, you should be positionally free. In the world, we're conditionally free. The problem with conditional freedom is you're only free if, you're only happy, you're only joyful, you're only feeling your faith two or three times a week, and that's it.
Ephesians 3:12 and Positional Confidence
Dr. Jerry Grillo:90% of the time you're stuck in a ruminated mind of looping over-thought and obsession. Because the circles — let me give you a formula, because I know we're in a rush. We've got a few minutes. CTFAR. You should write this down — CTFAR. Here's a formula to get equity out of your failure: circumstance, thought, feeling, action, results. Every failure, every circumstance is activating and triggering a state of mind, a thought. And every thought comes from a feeling, so every thought creates a feeling.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:How I was raised, what I experienced, the events I've been through — they're all what my mind gravitates to immediately in a circumstance. Now the problem with that is that's not kingdom. That is natural. You know, the word nature comes from the word natural. Did you know that natural means nature? If I see things naturally happening in my world, it happened because of my nature. My nature created my natural — not the devil.
The CTFAR Framework Explained
Philip:So true. My nature — coming from — I'm Scottish by culture. I've been here for 53 years, and my culture, where I come from, affects me still. And I've been out of that culture for 53 years and it still affects how I look at things, how I treat myself, how I react to circumstances. And I'm living in a totally different world from where I came from, but yet I've taken that into my new world and I still battle things that are culturally that nature part of me. And the church is exactly the same way.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:And the battle is over-thought and feeling, because my thoughts and feelings create my actions, my actions create my results. Now, we all are result-oriented. Everybody's result-oriented. So we keep trying to fix the result. We keep going after the result, never thinking that the result of the action came from my own mind and my own feelings. And so failure is set up by God. The danger — the danger for people is when they separate failure and success. They try to put them in two different rooms. No, no — failure and success must be in the same room, because I don't succeed without failure and I don't fail without succeeding.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:So when I learned this — that failure is not destroying me, failure is creating in me the ability and the confidence to realize that everything I survived has prepared me to thrive. I'm thriving because of the failures I survived. When Thomas Edison was discovering the light bulb, he failed over — 10,000 — every time he failed he got excited. And one day one of the guys said, how come you're excited? He said, I've just learned how not to do it.
Failure as God's Growth Mechanism
Dr. Jerry Grillo:So actually, Philip, it was 10,000 tries. I went to the Thomas Edison Museum in Fort Myers, Florida, and this is what he said: we are the only two humans on Earth that know 9,999 ways how not to make a light bulb. But he used his failure as a confidence of learning.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:Here's why — anything I've learned, I cannot get unlearned. So anything learned cannot be unlearned. Failure trains people. Ponder this: when they fail, they celebrate when they succeed. You learn very little in winning. You learn a whole lot in failing. And failing is God's mechanism to teach you confidence. Confidence is not belief in God — confidence is my belief in myself.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:I can never move in the earth greater than the level I believe I can. I can never have more than I believe I deserve. I hate when Christians say this — I hate when people say this: when you give somebody a gift, they say, well, I don't deserve it. But you just robbed the giver of the greatest pleasure of giving you a gift. You just told him he was wrong, that you didn't deserve it. And God is this giver — same as he wants to give you the best.
Thomas Edison and Learning Through Failure
Dr. Jerry Grillo:He wants to give you the earth, to give you the wealth, and you have allowed a state of mind to create in you that you don't deserve it — because it's false humility, or it makes you feel humble. Oh no. If God is the giver, I'm confident enough to know that if he gives you the gift, you deserve to receive it. And you receive that gift with the understanding that this is what I deserve. So we have this undeservability, we have this false humility, that is literally robbing us of a Father who —
Dr. Jerry Grillo:I'm fascinated by this new telescope they put up in space. The Webb Telescope is just bringing some of the most incredible pictures of the universe. And I saw a picture the other day of this huge mass of universe, and there's a tiny circle — you couldn't see what was inside the circle — and it says, that's us. This little speck, and you could barely even see the speck, but it just drew the general location where Earth is. And God is sitting there with the universe, and the Bible says he fills the universe with himself.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:And we're here acting like orphans, and we limit him by this tiny aperture that we allow of defeat into our life. When I put gas in my car and I stand there with the hose and I've got this little nozzle and I put it in my car — if I only knew that that hose, the thing that's in my car, goes back to a machine that goes into a tank, that tank is attached to other tanks, and those tanks are attached to ships, and those ships are attached to oil wells sucking oil out of the earth. And we live in the world of the nozzle instead of saying, my God, he fills the universe.
False Humility and Receiving God's Abundance
Dr. Jerry Grillo:He is everywhere around us, and he has me written in the palm of his hands. And somewhere between the two realizations there's a gap, there's a break, and we never see what God is for us actually. And that's your confidence — in him, in Jesus, and through faith in Jesus. And that's the word — in the word and through faith in the word, we have confidence and freedom. What kind of freedom? Positional freedom, not conditional freedom. My freedom cannot be conditional, because Luke 17:21 says the kingdom of God is in you. That means my freedom is not external, it's internal. If my mind is free, my world is free.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:My confidence has to be in Jesus. It has to be in the word, but it has to be in me. It's easy to have external confidence, but what about what I believe about me? See, because once I do that, I position myself in a higher place. I read a quote one time and it says, believe you can and you're halfway there. Believe you can have it and you're halfway there. Believe you deserve it and you're halfway there. You're already halfway to the finish line just because you believe you can.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:We sell ourselves short sadly. If there are 66 trillion stars — 66 trillion stars — and the Bible says God knows every one by name, 66 trillion stars, and God said he knows every one by name, and then he is God enough to know the number of hairs on your head — to think that he would want you to live anything less than the source of abundance is satanic. Do you understand that?
Philip:You have got a library now. Listen to me, folks — I want you to get in contact with this man, because what he speaks is life-giving. This is real, honest-to-goodness faith that you can use in your life every day. Every one of these books — how many books have you written altogether, Jerry? How many is it?
Dr. Jerry Grillo:It's like, I'm almost at 40. Yeah. How you get in contact with me is www.liveit2winit.com — live it to win it dot com. Or you can go on Amazon, type my name in, and almost all of my books are on Amazon Kindle. You can download a library of faith on Kindle.
James Webb Telescope and God's Infinite Provision
Philip:Now listen to me — this will reprogram your mind as to how you see. And this is the newest book he's just written — I love it — Live Big, Dream Big. And that is exactly what we need to do. Listen, guys, we are in the dying days of time. The world is in turmoil, and the church better have an answer bigger than what we've been in the past, because the world is looking for someone to say, this is the way, walk in it. And unless you're believing in yourself and believing what God has put inside you, you won't be believed by anyone.
Philip:Let me read some of these books: Live It to Win, Saved but Damaged — boy, that's a good book — Daddy God: Healing the Orphan Spirit. Everybody needs to have that. Every one of us has an orphan spirit that we need to be delivered from, and that book will help. This book here, More Than Restored: From Mess to Message — I'm going to read that one — and Survive to Thrive. Every one of these books speaks into your circumstance. 31 Favor Decisions — I am convinced that we have no concept of the favor process of God.
Philip:And if you can grasp how God sees you and you can realize how God wants you to see yourself — not arrogant, but just confident that I'm not dependent on my circumstance because this thing is inside me.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:Amen. That's the difference. Wow, Jerry — believing in you as much as you believe. It's easy to believe in God, Philip, because God is here. But do you believe in yourself? Confidence attracts money. Confidence attracts people. Confidence is the inner persuasion that you are the person for the job. When you enter the room, everybody ought to know you're there — not by any sound, but by the essence of your confidence in who you are. And you're not gonna get that in the world. You're going to get that in the word of God, in the kingdom of God — that God knew you before the foundation of the earth.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:The greatest healing in my life was to realize that I had in me greatness — God's greatness, not human greatness, God's greatness. And when you tap your potential, the power of the mountains shrinks, because your confidence makes you look at the mountain and you have these three thoughts: it's either climbable, solvable, or removable. But it is not a hindrance to who I am.
Philip:Dr. Jerry Grillo, I love you. You can get in contact with him — I want you to get in contact with this man and get these books. He pastors Church 180 in Hickory, North Carolina. If you're anywhere near there, go visit with him, because I know he's gonna speak life into your life. We've got about 10 seconds left, brother. Thank you for being with us today. We are going to do this again and again and again until I get what you're talking about, because the church needs to hear it. I love you, my friend. We'll see you again.
Dr. Jerry Grillo:Love you. Thank you.
Philip:Thank you for watching Daily Faith today. You're important. Be a part of this miracle in Ukraine. Bye-bye.
For over 25 years, the Cameron family has been changing the lives of orphans in Romania and Moldova — from providing running water, flushing toilets, and clean wells, to coal for heat, new windows, as well as food and clothing. They championed the physical needs of the orphans in these broken and desolate countries. Many of Moldova's orphans are saved from the horrors of trafficking through homes founded by the Camerons, and in the process orphans become daughters and sons. They come to know their heavenly Father and are forever changed by the love of Jesus.
God helped the Camerons lift these amazing young men and women out of darkness. Now, no longer orphans, they want to return and invade that very same darkness with the light of Jesus Christ. The Orphan's Hands equips these daughters and sons to become missionaries. Your monthly gift of $31 will allow us to rescue and take in more girls and boys, saving them from the hell of human trafficking. Your monthly partnership will allow us to care for those in the Orphan's Hands homes in Moldova and Ukraine.
If you want to join Philip and Chrissy in taking care of these precious young people, please contact us today by calling 833-DAILY-FAITH. You can also give by going online to www.dailyfaith.tv, or by writing to Post Office Box 25, Clinton, Tennessee 37716. So many lives depend on what we do. Thank you for loving the lost.
Topics
jerry grillokingdom confidenceovercoming failurefaith and identitypositional freedomchristian self-beliefctfar framework