“For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes.” (Proverbs 24:16 NIV)
I heard a great Winston Churchill quote. I think it describes hope beautifully. “Success (hope) is going from failure to failure and never losing your enthusiasm.” Of course as a leader during WW 2, the British lost a lot of battles especially early in the war. But they persevered and learned from their defeat and went on to win the war.
God wants to give us an attitude of hope to process failure in our life. I don’t mean to minimize or imply we should be careless when it comes to failure. Especially in the area of sin. I do mean that God wants us to metabolize failure in a way that we can learn, grow, and even help others from how we rebound from failure. The main difference between victorious Christians and defeated Christians is how they rebound from failure.
I especially like to tell people I train in ministry that failure is a vital step in the process. I ask them to list the number of failures they’ve had in sincere attempts to serve the Lord. I share from my personal experience that the way I both found what God called me to do and became effective was through all of the mistakes I made and learned from.
I like the story of a kid playing baseball by himself in his backyard. His mom was looking out the window. He yells to his mom, “I am the greatest hitter in the world.” He throws the ball up and swings his bat. He says: “strike one”. He wasn’t discouraged and picks up the ball. Throws it up and swings. Strike two. His mom looks at him. He says mom, “It’s ok I am the greatest hitter in the world.” He throws the ball up again and this time swings so hard he falls on the ground. His mom is feeling bad for him, the greatest hitter in the world just struck out. She says, “I am so sorry.” The boy says, “Don’t be sorry; it’s ok, I’ve discovered something. I just struck out the greatest hitter in the world. I am the greatest pitcher in the world!”
If he had never tried he would’ve never discovered his true talent. The Bible says in Proverbs 24:16 “For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes.”
Maybe some of you have tried a lot of things with home schooling your kids recently or trying to have family altar. It hasn’t gone very well. That failure is to point you to something else to try that will make you successful.
When someone criticized Thomas Edison over the fact that he had some 2000 failed attempts before he discovered how to make the light bulb. He said, “I didn’t fail 2000 times I discovered the 2000 steps it takes to get to the discovery of a light bulb.”
Don’t give up, get up, you are on your way to victory!
Love,
Dale
To watch a short video on the subject go to: https://www.facebook.com/HeartfortheWorldChurch/videos/3176432339035267/
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