GET UP, DON’T GIVE UP
“For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief.”- Proverbs 24:16
You can fail without being a failure. The fact is, you can’t succeed at anything without failing on occasion. Even those who have experienced the greatest success have also failed. They succeeded because they got up rather than gave up.
When Thomas Edison was trying to invent the light bulb he tried 700 things that failed. A friend said to him, “Mr. Edison, you have failed 700 times. Why don’t you quit?” Edison replied, “I have not failed 700 time; I discovered 700 things that won’t work.” It’s no wonder that he is responsible for more than 1,000 inventions. He refused to let failures stop him. That’s the attitude we all need.
Dr. Bob Jones used to say, “Make chariot wheels out of your failures and ride them to success.” That’s good advice! We aren’t a failure because we fail. We are a failure when we stop trying. Think about it—we learn from our failures and that enables us to succeed. None of us learned the alphabet on our first try. Neither did we learn to walk or ride a bicycle on our first attempt–we fell, we got bumps and bruises, and we got up and tried again and again, until we finally learned how to do it. That’s a good lesson for life.
Everybody fails, but only the failures quit trying. Regardless of how you have failed, get up, brush yourself off, learn from your mistakes and try again. Don’t be discouraged by your failures, they are the stuff that that success is made of. As Winston Churchill said, “Never give up!”. We all act out of character sometimes and do things we normally wouldn’t do, but your failure doesn’t have to be final. Get up! —H.D.S.
David Stone
Lakeway Baptist Church
5801 FM 1960 E
Humble, TX. 77346
