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You've Got To Work For It!
'Though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again' Proverbs 24:16
Stand up and take a bow, Winston Churchill. Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during World War II, Nobel prize winner and patron saint of bow ties and bowler hats (not actually true). Yet when asked what prepared him best for the pressures of leading a country to war, he remembered the time he was made to repeat a year of school: 'You failed a year at school?' quizzed the interviewer. 'I never failed anything; I was given a second opportunity to get it right', he replied.
Our attitude and response to failure is crucial in deciding what we make of our lives. Failing isn't falling down, it's staying down. With God's help, we can keep on getting back up again. Still, it takes guts.
Before Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for polio that finally worked, he tried 200 unsuccessful ones. He didn't even use the word 'failure' when talking about that journey of discovery, but instead audaciously stated, 'I just discovered 200 ways how not to vaccinate polio.'
Mistakes and 'failures' are going to be part of daring to live the kind of life Jesus lived on earth - full of excitement and even potential danger.
The other option is to drift through life, ticking all the boxes of what a Christian is meant to do, yet never taking a single risk. The choice is ours.
So, ask yourself: Is failure when things don't work out the way we hoped or expected? Or is failure not having the courage to risk living out our dreams?
written by Bob Gass
'Though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again' Proverbs 24:16
Stand up and take a bow, Winston Churchill. Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during World War II, Nobel prize winner and patron saint of bow ties and bowler hats (not actually true). Yet when asked what prepared him best for the pressures of leading a country to war, he remembered the time he was made to repeat a year of school: 'You failed a year at school?' quizzed the interviewer. 'I never failed anything; I was given a second opportunity to get it right', he replied.
Our attitude and response to failure is crucial in deciding what we make of our lives. Failing isn't falling down, it's staying down. With God's help, we can keep on getting back up again. Still, it takes guts.
Before Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for polio that finally worked, he tried 200 unsuccessful ones. He didn't even use the word 'failure' when talking about that journey of discovery, but instead audaciously stated, 'I just discovered 200 ways how not to vaccinate polio.'
Mistakes and 'failures' are going to be part of daring to live the kind of life Jesus lived on earth - full of excitement and even potential danger.
The other option is to drift through life, ticking all the boxes of what a Christian is meant to do, yet never taking a single risk. The choice is ours.
So, ask yourself: Is failure when things don't work out the way we hoped or expected? Or is failure not having the courage to risk living out our dreams?
written by Bob Gass
